The battle for the Tory brain
Phillip Blond vs Tim Montgomerie
By
It seems serious scrutiny is finally shifting to what a David Cameron administration might look like. And not before time: the claim that the Tories are newly ‘progressive' has been drifting in and out of the political consciousness for a while now,without it being immediately obvious what this is supposed to mean – either in policy terms or for party unity. Slowly some signals are trickling out. The rift within the Party on the NHS has shown that the truce between a reformist front bench and the wider Party may be more fragile than even Labour optimists hoped. Add to this the strident reaction from Tory traditionalists to George Osborne's claim that the “torch of progressive politics” had been passed to the Conservatives, and it's clear that the battle for the soul of the Party is far from over.
All of which requires hard thinking about the left's emerging narrative on the Tories. Central to this is an understanding of our own complicity in allowing this ‘progressive' territory to become contested in the first place. The vagueness of a word that first gained traction when David Marquand used it to describe the divided anti-Conservative forces in the early 1990s was its core appeal for New Labour – it meant you could be ‘for the future' without needing to spell out too carefully what that future might look like or what you might have to do to end up there. But Labour and the left's inability to anchor the term with any specific content has exposed it to the current symbolic tug of war.
But key to Labour forming a strong Tory critique is not only knowing where we are coming from but knowing where they are coming from. It is important to take Tory claims of a new approach in good faith and investigate seriously. It is tempting to stick our fingers in our ears and hear nothing but Michael Howard's dog whistles. But even the hardened partisan must be able to notice significant changes on the environment, for example.
What's important is whether these will be turned into actual government policy and which side of the Tory brain will get control of the levers of power. So the question arises: exactly who runs the Conservative Party? We sought answers from two people who can credibly claim to be leading the charge on either side of the party. Tim Montgomerie has the strength of numbers on his side: his ConservativeHome website has become a true blue hub for party members and parliamentary candidates, of whom an overwhelming majority are ideologically aligned with Montgomerie's New Right revivalism. His regular polls of party members seem to confirm that there is a disaffected and increasingly restless Thatcherite majority in the Conservative Party.
Phillip Blond, on the other hand, has the ear of the shadow front bench, and David Cameron in particular, who have bent over backwards to endorse the ‘Progressive Conservatism' project of which Blond has become the established guru. But serious reservations remain as to whether his much trumpeted ‘red Tory' thesis will be translated into action in a Cameron government; and how signed up to the project – whose touchstones include a radical critique of the market and the ‘recapitalisation of the poor' – the average party member can really be.
Phillip Blond is Director of ResPublica
1. What do you think the main difference is between the politics of the right and the left?
Traditionally the difference has been that the left sought to advance its goals by the state and the right by the market. These positions merged under New Labour, as they tried to fuse the two with a vision of the market state. This had disastrous consequences and this triangulation has failed to deliver the results that were hoped. The alternative lies in subordinating the interests of both the state and the market to those of civic society.
2. Should the example of Margaret Thatcher's governments inspire a David Cameron administration or not?
Margaret Thatcher sets a positive example in the sense that she had a radical account of the nature of the crisis was that her Government faced and then she strongly fought against vested interests. But there were limits to Thatcherism: she was blind to some of the negative consequences of the paradigm she created and there was a failure to think through the long-term consequences of a purely economic approach to policy concerns.
3. Should the right support the principle of reducing inequalities in income and wealth in Britain?
Without doubt - Yes.
4. Should the Conservative Party advocate deeper cuts in public spending than they have currently proposed this side of the election? Do you agree with ring-fencing the areas of health and international development from any cuts?
I think the real issue isn't just about cutting – if we cut public spending but don't change how we deliver public services we will be in the worst of all worlds. The key is to innovate; the waste that is currently generated through bureaucracy is far greater than the money that might be saved by any future cuts. We need to restore professionalism in our public services and cut out command and control managerialism.
5. Should it be unthinkable for Britain to leave the European Union, or could we be better off outside it?
Both anti and pro-Europeans get this issue wrong. There are many people on the continent who support the European Union but who see real problems with it and want to radically change how it operates. The EU needs much greater focus on the principle of subsidiarity, to drive down power to the lowest possible level in order to create a genuinely popular Europe. A Europe that genuinely works for all the people of Europe would be popular with all parties – we just have to have an open mind on what that could look like.
6. What is the best thing the Labour government has done since 1997?
The right to roam and the minimum wage.
7. And the worst?
The deprofessionalisation of the public services has been the most destructive aspect of New Labour .
8. What is the one thing that Cameron's Conservatives haven't talked about much that you would like to see developed as a priority if they were in government?
The notion of a transformative and truly popular high culture is unaddressed and unacknowledged. Big Brother just extends the passivity and cynicism of British society; whereas, if you look at the role of classical music on the streets of Venezuela, where slum children learn classical music and how to play instruments they have formed not only a successful orchestra and a mass participative tradition but also a functional and sustaining society.
Tim Montgomerie is the founder and editor of the ConservativeHome website
1. What do you think the main difference is between the politics of the right and the left?
Left and right are no longer particularly helpful describers. More interesting are the debates between localists and centralisers; liberal interventionists and foreign policy ‘realists'; social liberals and social conservatives; radicals and managers. Having said that there are still big differences between the left and right on the size of the state. The left instinctively looks to the state for solutions to problems while the right prefers to look to the market economy and the institutions of free society for progress.
2. Should the example of Margaret Thatcher's Governments inspire a David Cameron administration or not?
Absolutely. Margaret Thatcher was the last Prime Minister to inherit a mismanaged economy from a failed Labour government. Her determination to keep taxes low, liberalise trade, deregulate business and not attempt to do too many things all at once are instructive. A Cameron Government must also do much more, however. The society of 2009 is more broken than that of 1979. Thatcher had no big programme for families, inner cities and schools. The next Government needs to fix British society as well as the British economy.
3. Should the right support the principle of reducing inequalities in income and wealth in Britain?
Without saying inequality does not matter (I believe it does) it's more important that the problem of absolute poverty is addressed. We should be ashamed that the life expectancy in many big British cities is so low compared to much poorer nations. Beveridge had his five giants. Today's giant causes of poverty are family breakdown, failing schools, drug addiction, intergenerational worklessness and what has been called the soft bigotry of low expectations. The Blair-Brown years have proved beyond reasonable doubt that spend, spend, spend is not a sufficient response to the problem of poverty.
4. Should the Conservative party advocate deeper cuts in public spending than they have currently proposed this side of the election? Do you agree with ring-fencing the areas of health and international development from any cuts?
Taxpayers aren't getting value for money from the Labour state. It is not equitable that public sector workers are now getting levels of pay comparable to the private sector as well as the security of a government job. There is a lot of money to be saved therefore and the debt crisis requires larger cuts that currently outlined. In the medium term Britain will need to spend more on health and it should increase its commitment to the world's poorest people. Protecting the NHS and DFID budgets for the next three years, however, will require even deeper cuts in other important public sector budgets and that's not sensible.
5. Should it be unthinkable for Britain to leave the European Union, or could we be better off outside it?
I support leaving the EU. I'm a critic of the EU primarily because it has diluted democracy.Voters should be able to change the way they are governed and they can't change the supranational regime in Brussels. The EU has also become something of a selfish giant. Whether it's aid, trade, the environment or rogue regimes, the EU has been too inward-looking. I'd like a Britain that valued the Commonwealth and the USA as much as it valued relations with Europe.
6. What is the best thing the Labour government has done since 1997?
The (unfinished) liberation of the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan from two hideous regimes.
7. And the worst?
Woeful mismanagement of the public finances.
8. What is the one thing that Cameron's Conservatives haven't talked about much that you would like to see developed as a priority if they were in government?
Ending state and big donor financing of politics so that all parties had to look to ordinary voters for their funding.