This was the week when the Conservatives finally started to get it right. After several false starts, disastrous poster campaigns and tragicomic errors, an agenda is now emerging. Handled properly, it could win David Cameron the majority he so badly needs — and rapidly undo the damage of the Labour years.
Mr Cameron said on Monday that the next election would not be about transferring power from Labour to the Tories, but from government to the people. In an era when voters do not trust politicians of any hue, it is a powerful message. It could sound like a Barack Obama cliché were it not backed by something concrete. Mr Cameron proposes to allow as many public sector workers as possible to put together what is, in effect, a management buyout: taking over and running the services they offer. They would work as independent units, under contract from the state, and reinvesting any profit which they make through efficiencies.
It is an extension of what is, by some margin, the best Tory policy: Michael Gove’s plan to let new independent schools open and be paid by the state for every pupil they educate. Standing on doorsteps saying that the Tories will increase the Department of Health’s budget prompts only blank stares and a good dollop of suspicion. Tell a parent that their child will have the choice of attending an independent school in their neighbourhood for free — as the Tories are offering — and suddenly you start to capture people’s imaginations. It is affordable, too, if the £5,500 now spent educating each child goes instead to a school of a parent’s choice. Those who want but cannot afford independent education have two options: win the lottery or vote Conservative.
Extending this idea across more public services, the Tories can say that patients would be allowed to take the (soaring) cost of their NHS operation anywhere, even abroad. This would not be ‘opting out’ but extending and redefining the NHS system for the 21st century. As the former Labour health secretary, Alan Milburn, has said, the NHS should be seen as a way of paying for treatment — not providing it. Such a system would threaten no one apart from the trade unions, the bureaucratic elite and those who currently hold NHS patients in a captive market.
Hitherto, the Tories balked at health reform, afraid of upsetting the producer interests. Now, this is changing. Their proposed ‘NHS Independence Act’ would not make the NHS independent of politicians, but would be limited to dividing health spending between the regions. This leaves room for the Conservatives to complete their choice agenda, and create the internal market that Tony Blair would have set up had he not been derailed by Gordon Brown.
Why should it just be the rich who choose their schools or hospitals? This should be the Tories’ rallying election cry. It is one that cuts across party boundaries. Labour has, disastrously, abandoned this idea — and its champions, such as John Hutton, Mr Milburn and Stephen Byers, have accepted defeat and are leaving parliament. Only James Purnell is left, forlornly proclaiming empowerment as a Labour mission. Labour now represents the old guard, with a vested interest in the status quo.
As Tony Blair realised, empowerment — awful as the word sounds — is the key to British politics. Labour cannot champion this agenda because it is bankrolled by those who oppose it. Voters may not trust the Conservatives much, but they do believe that, for example, they could find a good school for their own child if the state would allow them to do so. In offering this, Mr Cameron has struck an elegant balance between humility and radicalism. After 13 years of hubris and deadlock, it is long overdue.
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