Has Dave abandoned the self-made man?

Cameron’s inclinations are to help the rich and the ‘romantic’ poor and do little for those who’ve bettered themselves, says Ross Clark. But can he rely on the middle-class vote?

There may be no big idea but there is an important concept lurking on the back page of the Conservatives’ draft manifesto on health. And if party strategists want to get through the election campaign without offending a large sector of its core vote, they had better make sure it stays there. The idea is worded thus: ‘we will weight public health funding so that extra resources go to the poorest areas with the worst health outcomes through a new health premium’.

Put another way, if you live in a poor area, the Conservatives will spend more on your health than if you live in a wealthy area. It isn’t just health to which this principle is to be introduced. The Tories have already announced that they want to fund their new independent state schools partly by means of a ‘pupil premium’ — which would mean schools receiving extra funding for taking poor children on to their rolls.

At the launch of the draft manifesto last week, Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, described the new thinking as ‘progressive conservativism’. Some might call it enhanced socialism. Instead of ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’, the motto of a Cameron government might be ‘from each according to his means, to each according to the inverse of his means’. It is one thing asking better-off taxpayers to accept that they are being asked to pay an above-average contribution for a service that will be provided universally to all. It is quite another when you are telling those taxpayers that they will be paying more, yet receiving inferior public services to those provided to the poor.