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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/12/modern-britain-good-tories-food-banks-poverty
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| Why modern Britain is crying out for good Tories | Why modern Britain is crying out for good Tories |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| On the way out of Sainsbury’s yesterday, I stopped by the food bank collection box to put in the usual few quids’ worth of stuff – pasta and chocolate, this time – and noticed that it was more full than I had ever seen it. Sat in a rack nearby were copies of the weekly Frome Standard, with a big story headlined: “Rising numbers of families struggling to afford food”– the accompanying text referred to this week’s Feeding Britain report by MPs and church leaders, and described local people who had not just been given things to eat, but also “nappies, sanitary products and toiletries”. | On the way out of Sainsbury’s yesterday, I stopped by the food bank collection box to put in the usual few quids’ worth of stuff – pasta and chocolate, this time – and noticed that it was more full than I had ever seen it. Sat in a rack nearby were copies of the weekly Frome Standard, with a big story headlined: “Rising numbers of families struggling to afford food”– the accompanying text referred to this week’s Feeding Britain report by MPs and church leaders, and described local people who had not just been given things to eat, but also “nappies, sanitary products and toiletries”. |
| The charity responsible – which, thanks to the progressive independents who seized power from the Lib Dems three years ago, is part-funded by our town council – said it was also “collecting toys and small gifts”, in preparation for Christmas.And, once again, the realisation hit home: that as the usual consumerist din reaches its peak, the seasonal zeitgeist includes a mounting sense of dread about the condition of the country – not just on the part of social activists and bleeding hearts but among the public. Because we are British, it is manifested in sighing dismay rather than seething anger, but it is there all the same. | The charity responsible – which, thanks to the progressive independents who seized power from the Lib Dems three years ago, is part-funded by our town council – said it was also “collecting toys and small gifts”, in preparation for Christmas.And, once again, the realisation hit home: that as the usual consumerist din reaches its peak, the seasonal zeitgeist includes a mounting sense of dread about the condition of the country – not just on the part of social activists and bleeding hearts but among the public. Because we are British, it is manifested in sighing dismay rather than seething anger, but it is there all the same. |
| A long election campaign will decisively begin in a few weeks’ time: where I live, the Tories fancy their chances. And one wonders: what will all this mean for them? Twelve years after Theresa May warned them of the perils of being seen as the nasty party, and nine since David Cameron began his brief spurt of so-called repositioning, they surely find themselves on the wrong side of far too many big questions. | A long election campaign will decisively begin in a few weeks’ time: where I live, the Tories fancy their chances. And one wonders: what will all this mean for them? Twelve years after Theresa May warned them of the perils of being seen as the nasty party, and nine since David Cameron began his brief spurt of so-called repositioning, they surely find themselves on the wrong side of far too many big questions. |
| Their party is locked out of the English north, irrelevant in Scotland, mistrusted by black and ethnic minority voters, and seemingly unable to push much beyond 30% in the national polls. Moreover, the sense that it is tied to mounting failure goes beyond public morals and into the unarguable stuff of fiscal mathematics. Our low-paid, insecure labour market has depressed revenue from income tax; that we have to subsidise wages via tax credits and housing benefit has had big repercussions for benefits spending. Flatlining wages are now such an ingrained national issue as to barely need mentioning. And now the OECD says that had inequality not ballooned since the Thatcherite 1980s, the British economy might have been as much as 20% bigger. | Their party is locked out of the English north, irrelevant in Scotland, mistrusted by black and ethnic minority voters, and seemingly unable to push much beyond 30% in the national polls. Moreover, the sense that it is tied to mounting failure goes beyond public morals and into the unarguable stuff of fiscal mathematics. Our low-paid, insecure labour market has depressed revenue from income tax; that we have to subsidise wages via tax credits and housing benefit has had big repercussions for benefits spending. Flatlining wages are now such an ingrained national issue as to barely need mentioning. And now the OECD says that had inequality not ballooned since the Thatcherite 1980s, the British economy might have been as much as 20% bigger. |
| All those references to George Osborne taking us back to the 1930s might be about projected levels of spending, but there are also echoes of the last time laissez-faire ideas ran into the ground and an entire system ceased to function. Back then, the collectivising experience of war and the rise of the Labour party eventually led to the country’s repair – whereas now, politics is in too confused and fractious a state to offer any obvious remedies. | All those references to George Osborne taking us back to the 1930s might be about projected levels of spending, but there are also echoes of the last time laissez-faire ideas ran into the ground and an entire system ceased to function. Back then, the collectivising experience of war and the rise of the Labour party eventually led to the country’s repair – whereas now, politics is in too confused and fractious a state to offer any obvious remedies. |
| But one lesson from that era endures: for all the current awfulness of the Tories, do not think that if any convincing change is to happen we will be able to write them off as political vermin, and imagine they can be pushed to the sidelines for good and all. The current alternative on the right is Ukip, who clearly have no answers to anything. What remains of the left, up to and including the Labour party, is surely too weak to do anything enduringly transformative on its own. No: if food banks are to go out of business for good, the imported notion of “welfare” is to be replaced with something less punitive, and we are to at least to try to reinvent the labour market, English Conservatism – or at least parts of it – will have to rediscover a social conscience. | |
| Guffaw if you want, but it has happened before, as evidenced by bits of Tory history that sometimes seem to be in danger of being mislaid – not least, the post-1930s Conservatism of Harold Macmillan, Rab Butler and the Tory Reform committee founded in 1943 which played its part in 1945’s great leap forward, sustained the postwar consensus, and very occasionally still informs attempts to take modern Conservatism somewhere different. Not that long ago the briefly vogueish academic Philip Blondgot the attention of David Cameron, and proposed a reformed Conservatism that would be conscious of the party’s past cruelties and as keenly aware of the iniquities of the free market as the drawbacks of the big state. There are similar flashes of what might now be required in a still-marginal Tory ginger group called Renewal, who speak highly of public sector workers and want to boost the minimum wage and build new council houses. | Guffaw if you want, but it has happened before, as evidenced by bits of Tory history that sometimes seem to be in danger of being mislaid – not least, the post-1930s Conservatism of Harold Macmillan, Rab Butler and the Tory Reform committee founded in 1943 which played its part in 1945’s great leap forward, sustained the postwar consensus, and very occasionally still informs attempts to take modern Conservatism somewhere different. Not that long ago the briefly vogueish academic Philip Blondgot the attention of David Cameron, and proposed a reformed Conservatism that would be conscious of the party’s past cruelties and as keenly aware of the iniquities of the free market as the drawbacks of the big state. There are similar flashes of what might now be required in a still-marginal Tory ginger group called Renewal, who speak highly of public sector workers and want to boost the minimum wage and build new council houses. |
| All told, it is not hard to conceive of what an alternative modern Toryism might entail: the belated development of the idea of the “big society”, a deep scepticism about centralised government (and, obviously, the EU) that didn’t teeter into hacking back the state with no concern for the consequences, and an understanding that most poverty is not caused by individual failings but something deep within our economic model that we will have to start to root out. All that, and the return of recognisable Conservatism: not the drive to tarmac the country à la Osborne, nor the quest to subjugate life to the “global race”one hears from some of the mad-eyed intake of 2010, but something altogether more human – and, dare I say it, patriotic. | All told, it is not hard to conceive of what an alternative modern Toryism might entail: the belated development of the idea of the “big society”, a deep scepticism about centralised government (and, obviously, the EU) that didn’t teeter into hacking back the state with no concern for the consequences, and an understanding that most poverty is not caused by individual failings but something deep within our economic model that we will have to start to root out. All that, and the return of recognisable Conservatism: not the drive to tarmac the country à la Osborne, nor the quest to subjugate life to the “global race”one hears from some of the mad-eyed intake of 2010, but something altogether more human – and, dare I say it, patriotic. |
| There are, needless to say, precious few signs of such thinking at the top. There again, if the long history of the Tories is reducible to any simple essence, it is surely divided between the urge for power and a deep sense of nationhood. On the first count, enlightened and ideologically flexible Tories should mull over a simple truth: that if they do not change, the electoral price could be punishing. On the second, they ought to realise that when shires and cities are stalked by the same hunger and worry, a love of one’s country – however deep – runs the risk of amounting to nothing at all. | There are, needless to say, precious few signs of such thinking at the top. There again, if the long history of the Tories is reducible to any simple essence, it is surely divided between the urge for power and a deep sense of nationhood. On the first count, enlightened and ideologically flexible Tories should mull over a simple truth: that if they do not change, the electoral price could be punishing. On the second, they ought to realise that when shires and cities are stalked by the same hunger and worry, a love of one’s country – however deep – runs the risk of amounting to nothing at all. |
| Meanwhile, the rest of us might want to get our heads around one of history’s more difficult lessons: that if lasting change is to happen it often requires transformations on the right, just as much as the left. | Meanwhile, the rest of us might want to get our heads around one of history’s more difficult lessons: that if lasting change is to happen it often requires transformations on the right, just as much as the left. |