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Nick Timothy (left) on visit to Darlington
‘Nick Timothy (left) admits that he made mistakes, and was quick to take responsibility for them. Would that other Conservatives had behaved so honourably after the election.’ Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
‘Nick Timothy (left) admits that he made mistakes, and was quick to take responsibility for them. Would that other Conservatives had behaved so honourably after the election.’ Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

The Tories need fresh ideas. Without them, they risk electoral obliteration

This article is more than 6 years old
Matthew d'Ancona
Worn-out Thatcherite doctrine no longer works. As Theresa May’s ex-adviser Nick Timothy points out, the party must look honestly at today’s social landscape

To Conservatives, the Thatcherite 80s are what Venezuela is to the Labour left: an ideological model whose defects they are profoundly and instinctively reluctant to acknowledge.

True, there has been no shortage of centre-right experimentation since the fall of the Iron Lady in 1990: John Major’s civic conservatism, David Cameron’s “big society”, Theresa May’s bid to persuade her party that government is more than a necessary evil. But, under stress, Tories tend to revert to the default of state-shrinkage, tax-slashing and deregulation. What is meant to look macho is actually the cringe of panic.

Yet, as two of May’s ex-advisers have warned this weekend, it need not be so. In an interview with the Telegraph, Nick Timothy, who was the PM’s joint chief of staff until 9 June, correctly observed: “Overall the lesson of the election for the party and for the government cannot be: ‘Oh well, we tried that and we didn’t win the election we were hoping for so let’s not try it any more.’”

In similar spirit, Will Tanner, former deputy head of May’s policy unit, wrote in the Observer that “if [the party] reverts to the free-market fundamentalism of the past, it will fail”. The election was not “an endorsement of the way the economy is run. Nor was it a vote for unbridled capitalism, nor a call for a smaller, less interfering state.”

It may amaze many non-Conservatives that this point needs to be made. But it most certainly does. Of course there should be a centre-right party that inclines towards less government, less taxation and fiscal conservatism. But there is a huge difference between inclination and fixation, between instinct and doctrine. The challenge for the Tories now is whether, having been punched in the stomach by the electorate, they have the necessary powers of recovery to scrutinise and learn from the social landscape as it truly is.

Timothy is the first to admit that he made mistakes, and, along with his fellow chief of staff, Fiona Hill, was quick to take responsibility for them. Would that other Conservatives had behaved so honourably after the election. Instead of acknowledging the scale of their humiliation and seeking to understand it, too many senior Tories took pathetic refuge in the old trope of “evil counsel”: the PM had been badly advised by a tiny group of aides, who were almost entirely responsible for the fiasco. Once this kitchen cabinet had been purged, and a parliamentary pact with the Democratic Unionist party sealed with £1bn of taxpayers’ money, the normal business of government – or at least of being in office – could be resumed.

There are notable exceptions. May’s longtime friend and now first secretary of state, Damian Green, has declared that it is not an option “to keep calm and carry on. We need to think hard, work hard, and change hard.” But for every Green there are at least three Tories greedily anticipating Brexit as an opportunity to double-down on worn-out doctrine, as though nothing had happened on 8 June.

Timothy is also right that the core campaign message of “reassurance and continuity” conflicted with May’s previous insistence that “we get the anger, we get the need to change, we’re on the side of change”. Indeed, in an era of transformative disruption – globalisation, unprecedented population mobility, automation, digital technology – I wonder if the promise of stability and steadiness will ever again be sufficient to win an election. Why did so many who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 go on to vote for Donald Trump last year? Because both presidential candidates – in radically different ways – promised change. So did Jeremy Corbyn. Unless the Tories absorb this lesson, they are in for a shock that will make the last election seem like a mild irritant.

But what sort of change? I disagree with Timothy and Tanner about immigration, which I see as both cultural good and economic necessity. But they are right about much else. As has long been clear to progressive Tories, for instance, the taxation of wealth (as opposed to income) is now a priority, if the most basic needs of our evolving society are to be met.

Increasing longevity, the social housing crisis, care of the elderly, the strain upon the NHS, our crumbling infrastructure: all present fundamental fiscal challenges. The idea dismissed as the “dementia tax” may have been presented poorly, but was also the most important and radical proposal made by either main party during the election campaign. To fund social care from personal assets but leave an individual’s heirs with £100,000 would have transformed a famously patchy service, offered inter-generational fairness, and spared the elderly the fear of losing their homes during their lifetimes. That idea has now been ditched. What will the Tories offer in its place?

One of the worst conceits of the right is a variant upon the Marxist notion of “false consciousness”: namely that people only feel poor, excluded or denied opportunity. The standard ploy is to present an inventory of statistics demonstrating how much better-off we all are, how much healthier, how blessed by technology and credit and holidays abroad. Impressive indeed, but not much consolation to those using food banks, or the welfare claimant forced to self-harm to have his case reviewed, or the exhausted zero-hours contract worker who reads that she is the beneficiary of a system offering wonderful “flexibility”.

As Timothy has argued, what such people long for is not the condescending promise of “escape” from their communities, or hymns to “aspiration”, but the prospect of a decent life. The horror of Grenfell Tower was also a ghastly warning that deregulation and outsourcing – both key features of the Thatcherite toolbox – have very clear limits. This is not 1979: the mission is different, and the methods must change.

The question is whether the party has what it takes to generate what Timothy calls a “reformed Conservative proposition”. So far, the zeal with which the Tories have clung to power has been matched only by a general failure to reflect seriously upon the scale of the task ahead. And that task could scarcely be more urgent. For now, it is partially concealed in the sleepy doldrums of August. But the falling leaves and pitiless winds of autumn are not so far away.

Matthew d’Ancona is a Guardian columnist

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