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Politics

The hoodie-hugging, Polly-praising, huskie-drawn days are over. The Tories are back

Fraser Nelson

Wednesday, 3rd October 2007

Fraser Nelson on what happened at the Tory conference

By Monday, it was clear that all this was to change. The same candidates can now say — for instance — that a vote for the Tories is a vote to raise the inheritance tax threshold from £300,000 to £1 million. This is a political masterstroke, addressing the heartfelt concerns of millions who spend much time thinking of ways to cut the taxman out of their will. The abolition of stamp duty under £250,000 is a gesture, but a welcome gesture nonetheless, aligning the party with the spirit of aspiration. And few will shed a tear for the 117,000 foreign workers with non-domicile status from whom the party is (rather optimistically) looking for the cash to balance the books.

Many of the policies which came out of this conference have yet to be picked up properly by the media. Take, for example, the welfare reform which Mr Cameron almost casually announced. A few months ago, he privately ruled out campaigning on this very area of policy in case he was accused of being heartless. Now, he explicitly presents as his model the robust welfare reform pioneered in Wisconsin. Those on incapacity benefits who refuse a proffered job will disqualify for benefits, he says. Tough love, indeed.

Mr Cameron believes that this agenda has tremendous potential: once, he might have been accused of targeting the most vulnerable, but now the public increasingly regards welfare dependency as a scourge that needs to be tackled. In ten years of economic growth, the number on out-of-work benefits has fallen from 5.7 million to 5.4 million — an appallingly insignificant change. This is Mr Cameron’s way into the immigration debate: explaining how the unprecedented influx of newcomers to our shores is a direct result of paying so many people to do nothing.

But perhaps the most radical policy is on education. Without undue fanfare Michael Gove, the schools spokesman, has pledged to bring to Britain the policy which revolutionised education in Sweden. Any group of teachers would now be able to set up a school, so long as it met certain minimum standards. Such schools would be genuinely independently run. These simple rules offer the prospect of nothing less than a supply side revolution in education. In his own speech, Mr Cameron placed this policy at the heart of his party’s education programme.

His task now that the conference has dispersed will be to get across just how radical these policies are. Just as it was hard for Soviet-era Muscovites to imagine bulging supermarkets, so will the British electorate struggle to imagine a world in which pupils and their parents choose schools and not vice versa. Villages, churches or Montessori groups will be able to open and run state schools. The poorest children will be worth most to teach. So Mr Cameron can fight the next election pledging that only the Tories can eradicate sink schools.

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Anthony Hanwell

October 5th, 2007 1:30pm

Here is one disgruntled long term Tory returned to the fold. At last we know what a Government or a Government in waiting might actually DO! I was just girding my loins to protest at the whole political class by voting UKIP at the next opportunity, when along comes Cameron and says what we have all been waiting to hear. In the nick of time!

David Buckle.

October 15th, 2007 8:21pm

Gordon Browns' only mistake was not to announce there would not be a general election two days before the Tory Conference. Had he done so, the right wing of the Tory Party would have torn Cameron to bits. G Brwon saved Cameron for the malling he will get from the Tory Right,given time Cameron knows that his time will come as that Party always stabs its leaders in the back.

A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

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Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.