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Sunday 12 October 2008

The Tories should not let their caution on tax conceal the radicalism of their other policies

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics

Tax is, though, in many ways a proxy issue. It is increasingly to the conservative movement — if not the parliamentary party — what Europe used to be; the issue on which passions run highest and the one that instantly identifies the faction to which a Tory belongs.

Many of those who want tax cuts suspect that the leadership’s failure to offer them is proof that it isn’t really Conservative at all. They fear that Cameron is too politically timid to do more than govern. For all the talk of ‘being the change’, they say, Cameron is just offering more of the same.

Cameron hardly refutes that charge when he sums up the Tory pitch as: ‘Let’s stop making it worse, that is both something we could do and something that is believable.’ But a Tory government would do radical things. Both its education and welfare policies are things that the right have long craved. But the leadership is failing to communicate this message.

When the polls show the party 16 or 13 points ahead this hardly matters. But if Brown fights back (and as his record shows Brown is nothing if not resilient) Cameron will want the right squarely behind him. There are, obviously, some who will never be reconciled to Project Cameron. Their issues are more personal than substantive. But those whose concerns can be eased should be at least partially reassured by what the Conservatives have planned for the coming months.

The shadow Cabinet will soon start talking far more aggressively about waste, making the case that the dramatic increase in public spending under Labour — it is now a higher proportion of GDP than in Germany — has failed to deliver the world-class public services that Labour claimed it would. Once the party has rolled out its green tax proposals it will be able to specify what family taxes will be cut from the money raised. There is also word that Osborne is casting around for another set of symbolic — but cheap — targeted tax cuts similar to the inheritance and stamp duty ones announced with such success at conference last year.

Following these two commanding Tory poll leads, the question is whether the boring Budget finally marked the moment when Britain became bored of New Labour for good. It might have done. But if the Tories are to lock in their poll lead, Cameron must, to borrow a phrase from Obama — something which the Tory leader’s spring conference speech showed he is not averse to — demonstrate that he understands ‘the fierce urgency of now’. Relying on Labour to lose the election all by itself would give the dogged Brown an opportunity to claw his way back to parity.

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