In the seven years since she became a senior cabinet minister, it has been commonplace to describe Theresa May as risk averse. I have done so myself. Well, no more.
Whatever you think of the Conservative manifesto, it is emphatically not a blueprint for hedge-betters, difference-splitters, or cautious technocrats. This document represents the most adventurous restatement of Conservatism since Margaret Thatcher and her allies smashed the Butskellite postwar consensus. In an age of verbless sentences and drearily safe political language – the Tories’ own “strong and stable” slogan springs to mind – this manifesto reflects an intelligence, ambition and opposition to populist simplicity that is intrinsically welcome. No less intrinsic, however, are the perils it has courted.
First, there is the document’s explicit contention that “government can and should be a force for good – and its power should be put squarely at the service of this country’s working people.” Though public spending actually rose in real terms during the Thatcher years, the Iron Lady set a philosophical trajectory for her party that endures to this day: tax-cutting, privatising, deregulatory, determined to “roll back the frontiers of the state”.
May would protest that she remains firmly committed to much of this. But the manifesto suggests her compass points in a different direction. “We do not believe in untrammelled free markets,” it declares. “We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality. We see rigid dogma and ideology not just as needless but dangerous.”
Imagine what emotions that passage stirs in the many Tory MPs who were formed by the Thatcher era, and regard Brexit as an opportunity to continue the crusade. In 2012 a collection of essays by rising Conservative stars, Britannia Unchained, called for precisely that: welfare cuts, market deregulation and action to energise British workers, “among the worst idlers in the world”. Two of the authors, Liz Truss and Priti Patel, are now cabinet members. Kwasi Kwarteng, the MP for Spelthorne, is widely tipped for promotion. None of them has, to my knowledge, expressed anything other than fulsome loyalty to the new manifesto. But the tension between neo-Thatcherism and Mayism will undoubtedly become explicit after the election.
Second, May has finalised her breach with the Cameron years. Again, there are continuities with her predecessor’s strategy: the commitment to international aid, the Tory modernisers’ quest to be perceived as more than the party of white men, the (undeliverable) promise to cut net immigration to tens of thousands a year. But the ruptures with the immediate Tory past are much more striking: out go the pension triple lock, the universal winter fuel allowance and the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. Deficit reduction is no longer the government’s core priority. Above all, as I predicted in March, the party now proposes to quarry wealth systematically as a means of funding public services.
Cameron was always hostile to wealth taxes, and made it his mission to insulate properties worth up to £1m owned by couples from all inheritance taxes. Now his successor proposes that those with assets worth more than £100,000 should draw upon them to pay for their care at home. It is hard to exaggerate what a shift this represents in the official Conservative attitude to wealth and its fiscal status.
None of this is lost on Cameron’s allies, who were infuriated on Friday by a Times article by Katie Perrior, May’s former communications director. According to the piece, gay marriage had been “arguably forced upon” him by his Lib Dem coalition partners. This is not so. More sensitive still is Perrior’s charge that “the party under [Cameron] could be elitist” – a polite version of what some of May’s supporters say in private about the “gang of snobs” that used to stroll around No 10.
To this, one could respond that Craig Oliver, Perrior’s predecessor, went to a comprehensive school, as did Oliver Dowden, Cameron’s deputy chief of staff, who was also on free school meals. As for diversity in his team, no aide was closer to him than Kate Fall, or more valued than Ameet Gill, his director of strategy.
The publication of the manifesto grafts policy shifts on to differences of style and personality.
May’s team was not amused by George Osborne’s Evening Standard editorial last week describing her immigration pledge as “economically illiterate”. At present, little more than two weeks from polling day, there is a fragile detente between the two camps. But it will not hold if the sniping continues after the election.
Why has May taken these risks? Though Labour has narrowed her lead in the opinion polls, she is still on course for a decent majority. The prime minister makes little secret of the fact that she does not intend to go on and on. It is quite possible she will stand at another election, but her inclination is not to emulate Thatcher or Tony Blair, who held office for 11 and 10 years respectively. This means, in effect, she has one round in her revolver – one chance to pursue the reforms in which she believes.
The pressures upon her to match rhetoric with reality will be intense. It will scarcely be easy to close “the gender pay gap”, “the race gap”, “the mental health gap” and “the disability gap” – all manifesto subheadings – while negotiating with Brussels and managing a potentially querulous parliamentary party.
But then, isn’t unvarnished ambition of this sort precisely what we have been demanding of our timid political class? Barack Obama spoke of “the audacity of hope.” Should we not also hope for audacity?
