David Willetts is President of the Resolution Foundation and is a member of the House of Lords.
One way out of the Conservative Party’s deep difficulties is a lively constructive debate about policy.
That would be a refreshing contrast to the empty slogans of Reform and the inevitable constraints on Government.
One of the party’s assets is that MPs such as Neil O’Brien, Nick Timothy, and George Freeman are already making lively contributions to these debates. It is one reason why this website matters too.
But there are also barriers to the free flow of ideas and debate.
One is a certain intolerance and dismissal of positions as not really Conservative when they are part of the Conservative tradition. That can inhibit freedom of expression within the Party. Unless we overcome that obstacle there won’t be a proper lively debate and Conservatism will be impoverished.
Here are some examples of what I mean.
First, we are told that the fourteen years of Conservatives in office were wasted because of the lack of any radical change.
Taking Britain out of the EU was one of the most radical changes since the War in Britain’s economy and our position in the world. I personally think that it has proved to be bad for our economy by taking us out of the world’s biggest single market designed, above all, by Margaret Thatcher.
I also think it has weakened our power to shape our own destiny. Brexiteers see things differently. The voters agreed and I respect that. But I certainly don’t see why the Remainer view should somehow be denounced as not part of the Tory tradition and as ‘dangerously left wing’. The fracturing of the Conservative Coalition is one reason for the Party’s weakness now. Rebuilding it matters and won’t be made any easier if the many people who voted Remain are to be dismissed as not properly Conservative.
Then there is climate change.
It is clearly happening. But now we are told that tackling it is too expensive. But it was Conservatives in Opposition before 2010 who led the creation of the Climate Change Committee which regularly produces detailed costed plans. They may not be right. And there are legitimate debates about the balance of costs between adaptation and trying to head it off – alongside many other countries. But if anything the latest estimates show the costs of moving to net zero falling. Again it can all be part of reasonable debate within the party. My Conservative starting point is Margaret Thatcher’s great speech to the UN General Assembly in 1989 calling for a global “convention on climate change”.
Conservatives believe in cutting taxes – when they can be afforded.
And sometimes we have to do the opposite and put them up as incoming Governments did in 1979 and 2010. The failure properly to fund social care is a disaster for old people and their families. The closest we got to tackling it was the Boris Johnson – Rishi Sunak deal to put up taxes by introducing a social care levy. After going through all the political pain of introducing it the subsequent decision by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng to cancel it was a disastrous mistake. And the lack of funding increased our dependence on low paid overseas workers, one of the biggest factors in the subsequent surge in migration.
Universities are one of our great national assets.
They have to be funded somehow. As graduates by and large earn more than non-graduates it makes sense to expect them to pay back when their earnings go above a certain threshold. That is fairer than the alternative of all taxpayers, many earning less, paying for higher education.
There is also a deep-seated trend across most Western countries for more and more people to go into higher education. It is now above 50 per cent in many countries including the US, Australia and us. Tony Blair’s 50 per cent target is irrelevant. It was his usual tactic of taking a forecast and turning it into a target which he could then claim credit for meeting. It is not for Governments to decide how many people should go to university and certainly not for Government planners to set a number limit university by university.
So, I’m proud that we have a higher education system based on personal choice largely funded by graduates not taxpayers and I’m surprised to see this model called “left wing”.
The Conservative tradition is rich and diverse. Today’s Conservative can learn from the best of what generations of Conservatives have thought and said over our long history – sometimes in circumstances for the Party that looked as bad as they do today. Cutting ourselves off from this by rejecting what many Conservatives have said and done as not true Conservatism just makes our problems worse.
It narrows the Party’s base rather than growing it. It is even, if I dare turn the argument around, not very Conservative.
