Now David Cameron and the Conservatives must make a well-defined, unambiguous fight over state power versus individual liberty
By Janet Daley
Somehow it has become the received wisdom that Ed Miliband’s conference
speech presents David Cameron with a big problem. In the blink of an eye –
or in the course of just over an hour – the Labour leader went from hapless,
hopeless loser to Major Electoral Threat. Never mind that almost nobody in
the street (if the broadcast vox pops and endless anecdotal evidence are any
indication) seemed to believe the Miliband promise of frozen energy bills.
Forget that he had nothing to say about the issues that we know the voters actually care about: the economy, immigration, welfare reform, etc. No, by some peculiar commentariat alchemy, Mr Miliband’s address – aimed shamelessly at the hall, rather than at the country – was a game-changer.
Well, there is a sense in which that is true, but it isn’t the one that Labour supporters would wish for. The concrete Miliband proposals – which were presumably kept few in number so as to guarantee headline coverage – were so thin and obviously ill-thought-out that they should scarcely have been worthy of rebuttal. Threatening an energy price freeze years in advance would obviously damage investment in the industry and give rise to an immediate increase in charges. Not to mention the inconvenient truth that cutting the energy companies’ profits would reduce the amount of tax revenue they produce for a government drowning in debt. Then there was the seizing of property from its legal owners who were not doing what the state wanted them to do with it, which would involve either payment of enormous compensation from a government that is already broke or a forcible confiscation of private assets unprecedented in peacetime. This speech was a game-changer all right but only in the sense that it locked Labour into a position that Mr Cameron should relish. All the indications are that he knows this. And that does not necessarily mean – contrary to the mad squawking of headless chickens racing in circles around the Tory farmyard – that he is complacent.
Although it might mean that. By the middle of this week, we should have the answer. Mr Cameron may yet choose to interpret Labour’s attempt at a Marxist revival in the post-Soviet world as simply a retreat from the precious Centre Ground of Politics in which he – Mr Cameron – can now blissfully curl up and go to sleep.
With Mr Miliband haring off to the Left, Mr Cameron could claim sole ownership of that indeterminate space between the poles of debate: neither here nor there, neither this nor that, not too hot, not too cold, in which he has been advised that all elections are won. The modernisers will be hissing ecstatically in his ear that this is his opportunity to bring that original project home: the single theme with which he could vanquish not just his official electoral opponents but his own dreaded irreconcilable backbenches. The Conservatives, they will say, can hold an unchallenged monopoly of the sensible middle. No visceral convictions needed. No radical enthusiasms. Just moderation, pragmatism and common decency in the face of an opposition that has once again chosen to cast itself as ideologically extreme.
I have written so much about the dangers of this kind of thinking that I am tired of hearing it myself. Let’s just say that the bizarre turn-around in Mr Miliband’s standing over the past few days is a perfect example of how malleable the notion of the “centre ground” – of what is electorally appealing to the mass of people – can be.
It is nothing more than the consensus of fashionable talk. It is a protean, insubstantial thing that can contract and expand in response to a passing mood or a series of trivial events that will scarcely be remembered in a few months’ time. It can be shifted by glib presentation (or misrepresentation) or even, particularly in Westminster media circles, by sheer boredom with the prevailing mood – as happened with the Miliband farrago. In fact, the Labour move to the Left repudiated the doctrine of the sacred centre ground on two counts. Not only has it abandoned safe policies for more dogmatic Leftist ones but it has also declared that ideology and passion are back in the game.
What will Mr Cameron make of that? There are a lot of hints – including in the interview we publish today – that he fully understands how dangerous the Miliband rewinding of history is for the country. For the official Opposition to return to the anti-free-market rhetoric of 1982 could be damaging even if there was little likelihood of them being returned to power.
The warnings of future price-freezes, of confiscation, of higher business taxes, of punitive regulation create the sense of a culture in which enterprise and inward investment would be unwise to venture. The new Miliband revivalism brings back the threat of nationalisation and state seizure that did so much to wreck the prospects of post-war British industry.
And yes, Mr Cameron makes it clear that he sees all this. He also appears to appreciate how truly backward-looking and reactionary it is. This is a belief system that collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions a generation ago. So definitively discredited was the statist solution that it did not even enjoy a renaissance after the spectacular financial crash of 2008: failed banks may have been taken into public ownership but everybody agreed that this should be a temporary measure for the duration of the present emergency. Nobody wanted the government to control the financial institutions for a moment longer than was necessary. If mass public opinion didn’t revert to socialist theology then, it never will.
Yet here it is, flickering into life again: the Old Religion with its seductive dream of a perfect, state-controlled economy in which no one makes “too much” profit and no one ever earns less than he needs.
The Tories need to go after this argument at full throttle: to make a well-defined, unambiguous fight over state power versus individual liberty.
It’s important to note that what was compelling about the Miliband show was not the half-baked policies but the personal belief with which they were delivered. This is an opportunity for Mr Cameron to make his case with similar clarity and conviction: to say that Tories, too, accept that there is a cost-of-living crisis but that their solution is for the government to charge you less in tax and give you more real choice of services – which will make them cost less, too. It is about giving more spending power to people and less to government.
It is extraordinary that state socialism should be stalking the land once again. Out of sheer desperation, Labour decided to lift the lid on a coffin. In Manchester this week, Mr Cameron needs to wield a good stout wooden stake.
Forget that he had nothing to say about the issues that we know the voters actually care about: the economy, immigration, welfare reform, etc. No, by some peculiar commentariat alchemy, Mr Miliband’s address – aimed shamelessly at the hall, rather than at the country – was a game-changer.
Well, there is a sense in which that is true, but it isn’t the one that Labour supporters would wish for. The concrete Miliband proposals – which were presumably kept few in number so as to guarantee headline coverage – were so thin and obviously ill-thought-out that they should scarcely have been worthy of rebuttal. Threatening an energy price freeze years in advance would obviously damage investment in the industry and give rise to an immediate increase in charges. Not to mention the inconvenient truth that cutting the energy companies’ profits would reduce the amount of tax revenue they produce for a government drowning in debt. Then there was the seizing of property from its legal owners who were not doing what the state wanted them to do with it, which would involve either payment of enormous compensation from a government that is already broke or a forcible confiscation of private assets unprecedented in peacetime. This speech was a game-changer all right but only in the sense that it locked Labour into a position that Mr Cameron should relish. All the indications are that he knows this. And that does not necessarily mean – contrary to the mad squawking of headless chickens racing in circles around the Tory farmyard – that he is complacent.
Although it might mean that. By the middle of this week, we should have the answer. Mr Cameron may yet choose to interpret Labour’s attempt at a Marxist revival in the post-Soviet world as simply a retreat from the precious Centre Ground of Politics in which he – Mr Cameron – can now blissfully curl up and go to sleep.
With Mr Miliband haring off to the Left, Mr Cameron could claim sole ownership of that indeterminate space between the poles of debate: neither here nor there, neither this nor that, not too hot, not too cold, in which he has been advised that all elections are won. The modernisers will be hissing ecstatically in his ear that this is his opportunity to bring that original project home: the single theme with which he could vanquish not just his official electoral opponents but his own dreaded irreconcilable backbenches. The Conservatives, they will say, can hold an unchallenged monopoly of the sensible middle. No visceral convictions needed. No radical enthusiasms. Just moderation, pragmatism and common decency in the face of an opposition that has once again chosen to cast itself as ideologically extreme.
I have written so much about the dangers of this kind of thinking that I am tired of hearing it myself. Let’s just say that the bizarre turn-around in Mr Miliband’s standing over the past few days is a perfect example of how malleable the notion of the “centre ground” – of what is electorally appealing to the mass of people – can be.
It is nothing more than the consensus of fashionable talk. It is a protean, insubstantial thing that can contract and expand in response to a passing mood or a series of trivial events that will scarcely be remembered in a few months’ time. It can be shifted by glib presentation (or misrepresentation) or even, particularly in Westminster media circles, by sheer boredom with the prevailing mood – as happened with the Miliband farrago. In fact, the Labour move to the Left repudiated the doctrine of the sacred centre ground on two counts. Not only has it abandoned safe policies for more dogmatic Leftist ones but it has also declared that ideology and passion are back in the game.
What will Mr Cameron make of that? There are a lot of hints – including in the interview we publish today – that he fully understands how dangerous the Miliband rewinding of history is for the country. For the official Opposition to return to the anti-free-market rhetoric of 1982 could be damaging even if there was little likelihood of them being returned to power.
The warnings of future price-freezes, of confiscation, of higher business taxes, of punitive regulation create the sense of a culture in which enterprise and inward investment would be unwise to venture. The new Miliband revivalism brings back the threat of nationalisation and state seizure that did so much to wreck the prospects of post-war British industry.
And yes, Mr Cameron makes it clear that he sees all this. He also appears to appreciate how truly backward-looking and reactionary it is. This is a belief system that collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions a generation ago. So definitively discredited was the statist solution that it did not even enjoy a renaissance after the spectacular financial crash of 2008: failed banks may have been taken into public ownership but everybody agreed that this should be a temporary measure for the duration of the present emergency. Nobody wanted the government to control the financial institutions for a moment longer than was necessary. If mass public opinion didn’t revert to socialist theology then, it never will.
Yet here it is, flickering into life again: the Old Religion with its seductive dream of a perfect, state-controlled economy in which no one makes “too much” profit and no one ever earns less than he needs.
The Tories need to go after this argument at full throttle: to make a well-defined, unambiguous fight over state power versus individual liberty.
It’s important to note that what was compelling about the Miliband show was not the half-baked policies but the personal belief with which they were delivered. This is an opportunity for Mr Cameron to make his case with similar clarity and conviction: to say that Tories, too, accept that there is a cost-of-living crisis but that their solution is for the government to charge you less in tax and give you more real choice of services – which will make them cost less, too. It is about giving more spending power to people and less to government.
It is extraordinary that state socialism should be stalking the land once again. Out of sheer desperation, Labour decided to lift the lid on a coffin. In Manchester this week, Mr Cameron needs to wield a good stout wooden stake.
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