David Cameron's 'philosopher king' explains how his party will help those betrayed by Labour

The first time delegates rose to their feet was when he expressed his disgust at the 96 per cent marginal tax rate suffered by the low-paid as they try to get off welfare and into work.

The second, and more heartfelt, ovation came when he pledged to fight for the poor who have been so clearly and so utterly abandoned by New Labour.

These sentiments were reflected not just in the conference hall, but outside at fringe meetings, in the corridors and at late-night bars and parties where Tories of all ages and backgrounds talked with real passion about how to relieve poverty and state-engendered social breakdown.

The Party’s realignment away from the needs of the rich to a Disraelian ‘One Nation’ concern for the very poorest among us is a remarkable about-face and a stunning personal achievement by Cameron.

Ever since Margaret Thatcher was leader, the Tories maintained that only by helping the rich could you help the poor.

They let their economic policy be their social policy – they bought into the idea that wealth, power and opportunity would simply trickle down the socio-economic ladder to help those at the bottom.

Moreover, Mrs Thatcher hoped that by recovering Britain’s economic power and wealth she would restore Victorian morality and a stable and responsible society. Though she achieved her economic goal, the second moral objective entirely eluded her.

Instead what we got was a Harry Enfield ‘Loadsamoney’ generation; unrepentant and irresponsible self-interest at the top of society.

Meanwhile, the bottom end was excluded from assets, education or any chance of a decent outcome and became the neglected and increasingly dysfunctional poor.

The Tories’ failure to address these social problems allowed Tony Blair to keep them out of power for more than a decade.

But it was during those wilderness years that the Conservative Party recovered its soul. Former leader Iain Duncan Smith had a profound personal and political conversion experience when visiting Glasgow’s rundown Easterhouse housing estate.

He saw the terrible lives of poor people trapped on permanent welfare and locked into cycles of drug and alcohol dependency.

It was there that the seeds of Cameron’s vision of mending ‘Broken Britain’ was born. The overwhelming thrust of this new Toryism is to tackle the causes of poverty, not just its symptoms. For Cameron’s new ‘One Nation’ Tories there are five main drivers of poverty.

They are:

Economic dependency: the UK has the highest proportion of children living in workless households out of any EU country;
Educational failure: 44,000 school leavers each year are illiterate;
Family Breakdown: 70 per cent of young offenders are from lone-parent families;
Drink and drug addiction: one million children have alcohol-addicted parents;
Debt: British consumers are twice as indebted as those in Continental Europe.

All of these are now being addressed by Cameron. For example, marginal tax rates imposed on those trying to get off welfare are so high that the poor are often worse off working than they are claiming benefits – a situation Cameron has pledged to change.

Likewise, his schools policy will for the first time in generations provide additional funds to poor children and open up the best schools to the most disadvantaged.

In terms of family breakdown, the value of marriage must be reflected in the tax system and the ‘couple penalty’ – whereby couples who break up can receive more benefits than those who stay together – will be removed.

In effect, the State encourages family breakdown and the taxpayer picks up all the resultant costs. This is madness.

In addition, the number of health visitors will be doubled so that new parents with very young children will have support and advice at the moment of greatest stress and when most family break-ups occur.

This new social agenda now defines all Conservative policies. Even in the midst of the financial crisis, George Osborne has promised to protect the poorest from the public-sector pay freeze and to ensure that child trust funds are maintained for the least well-off.

Now the Tories must work hard to get the detail right. Cutting benefits too quickly when claimants start working has never worked and never will – it simply makes the poor poorer and encourages the black economy.

What does work is letting the poor retain more of what they earn while having some real economic security so that work delivers real change and people seek it out to transform their lives.

Also, we must ensure that the rewards for working are greater. Over half of all poor children are in families where someone works. The current tax-credit system effectively subsidises low-paying employers by getting the State to supplement the wages of employees. Why not consider a so-called ‘living wage’ – a kind of minimum wage for families – as pioneered by Boris Johnson in London, so that work really pays?

Finally, in many areas there are simply no jobs for people to go to. Conservatives need to re-localise the economy to enable the poor to create their own jobs by having access to markets and capital so that they can transform their lives and those of their families.

Big business should be encouraged to open up new opportunities for ownership and wealth transmission in the poorest areas.

For David Cameron to receive two ovations from the Tory faithful for making the end of poverty his mission as Prime Minister was a landmark in the history of the modern Conservative Party.

His task will be complete only when he receives another ovation for having achieved that objective in office.

Phillip Blond is director of ResPublica, a new public policy think-tank.

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