Are the Tories in the business of managing decline?

Kwasi Kwarteng’s speech to Tory conference was an attempt to get his party back behind him after his U-turn on the 45p rate. He acknowledged it a number of times in his address, opening by saying it had been a ‘tough’ day, but insisted that the government needed to keep going. The members in the hall laughed as he referred to ‘a little turbulence’ and insisted that ‘we are listening’.

After the U-turn, it was quite audacious to insist the government had an ‘iron commitment’ to anything, but his commitment today was to ‘fiscal discipline’ and the ‘central and guiding mission’ of the government to grow the economy. It was an attempt to reassure colleagues that they could and should stick with the other policies he was pursuing. But in his list of the things that would achieve this growth lay the clues of what was going to cause trouble next. He promised ‘more businesses, more jobs, higher pay, more money for public services’, arguing that ‘we can’t have a strong NHS without a strong economy’, and so on. But public services will be squeezed as a result of the commitment to fiscal discipline, which is something Tory MPs expressed concerns about to Kwarteng when he held ‘listening’ meetings with them yesterday. He promised to reignite traditional party rows, too, saying the government will ‘speed up housebuilding’.

A striking passage in the speech came later on when the Chancellor listed Tory achievements since 2010. This was remarkable for two reasons: the first was that the leadership contest largely featured the candidates, Liz Truss included, trashing the record of their party in government. Secondly, the list was reminiscent of the one Gordon Brown produced in his 2009 conference speech. Brown’s one was better-received by the hall: members roared with delighted as he thundered ‘the minimum wage!’, but it didn’t make much of a difference: Labour lost the election less than a year later. The mood among Tory MPs today has had a weary resignation to it: most of them are now talking about how they head into opposition in a dignified way, rather than whether they can really win a fifth term in government.

For a full list of Spectator Tory conference fringe events, click here