David Cameron will be Britain’s new Prime Minister by next summer — this was the main conclusion drawn from the Labour party conference.
David Cameron will be Britain’s new Prime Minister by next summer — this was the main conclusion drawn from the Labour party conference. It did not need to be announced formally, but it suffused everything, from the desperation in the platform speeches to the gallows humour in the Brighton bars. This week, Britain has seen the spectacle of a party whose MPs are going back to their constituencies and are preparing for retirement — or abject defeat followed by a brutal civil war.
There is now only one party of government in Britain, and it meets in Manchester on Monday. Yet the Conservative agenda for government has all too much scope for improvement. We do not argue for a moment that any political party should lay out its manifesto months in advance. But it should have announced just enough to give a clear idea about what direction it will take. This can be done next week by a few carefully chosen pledges.
Schools reform is becoming an emblem of Tory reform in general — but too much detail is missing. Many would-be school providers (including our own Toby Young) are waiting to set out their business plans but need to know the particulars. How much would the voucher be? It should be set at £5,000 per pupil, with local variations, and as the architect of the Swedish reforms argues on page 17, these schools must be able to make a profit. There must be an incentive for the education entrepreneurs on whom the Tory plan depends.
The primary Tory role will be the one it has occupied throughout history — repairing the financial damage done by a Labour government. This magazine is vigorously in favour of low taxation, but to tackle the deficit, taxes will have to rise. They should be aimed at consumption rather than income — a temporary VAT rise to 20 per cent, for example. It is also time to acknowledge that, like it or not, the taxpayer does rescue banks which are judged too big to fail. It is time to charge for this insurance, through a new tax.
Iain Duncan Smith’s agenda of dynamic welfare scoring is the only way forward, and should be adopted. Tinkering with a system which has already spawned 52 different types of welfare payments will not do: root-and-branch reform is needed. The idea for universal benefit is clear, and has at its heart the principle that anyone — at any income level — should always be better off in work than in welfare. This will indeed be an upheaval, but there is no more urgent problem in Britain today than the welfare ghettos that scar our inner cities.
Other announcements that can wait until after the election (the 50p tax on the super-rich, for example, should be abolished in the first Tory budget). There must, of course, be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, regardless of how the Irish vote this weekend. The proposed Bill of Rights will be a meaningless ruse unless it is declared senior to the European Convention on Human Rights. Each of these will determine whether the Conservatives, in government, are serious about transforming Britain.
But as for next week, one thing is certain. Inspiring speeches no longer work in British politics: we have been immunised against this by the wasted Blair years. With parliament held in contempt, the public will no longer respond to a politician who says ‘trust me’. The people want to know why. The Conservatives have hesitated to respond with firm policies — which is the reason so much doubt about Mr Cameron remains. As he keeps saying, he has not ‘sealed the deal’. If he wants to, then work must start on Monday.
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