There is something odd about the present Conservative
Government. On the one hand there has just been a decisive purge of Tory
Remainer Wets, on the other Boris Johnson’s Government at least initially is
liable to be one of the most left-wing in Conservative Party history.
Early signs are that Labour doesn’t get it. When a political
party has been comprehensively defeated it needs to change. It needs to be
honest with itself about what it did wrong and why it is unpopular with the
electorate.
Looking on from the outside it is obvious what Labour
must do. It must become a modern social democratic party that says it will use
free market economics to create wealth, but then strive to distribute this
wealth more evenly with the public. This has the chance to be genuinely
popular. This sort of politics has worked to varying degrees in other Western countries.
It could work here.
Socialism has worked nowhere. Labour’s task therefore
is to purge itself of the far left. Get rid of Corbyn and all his friends. Go
through the whole reform progress begun by Neil Kinnock and finished by Tony
Blair. Find a leader who is pleasant and popular and is not a Remainer or a
Rejoiner. We won’t be rejoining the EU. To campaign for that is to hope Britain
fails. Pessimism is a vote loser.
Labour of course will do none of these things. It will
either pick someone from the far left again, or else it will pick a Remainer
tainted with having attempted to make an anti-Semitic Marxist Prime Minister
twice running. I strongly suspect the next Labour Prime Minister, if there ever
is one, will be someone none of us have ever heard of. The present generation
are all guilty by association.
What this means is that the Conservatives will do
everything they can to be popular with those ex-Labour voters in the north of
England who lent us their votes. In the short term this means lots and lots of
public spending and policies that on the surface look similar to the centre
left. Boris will be Blair without the wars and all the other things that made Blair
hated.
One of the key tasks in British politics is to stop
voters voting tribally. For generations people in the north of England voted
Labour automatically. The same was the case in Scotland. It didn’t matter how
good or bad a Conservative Government was, these voters would vote Labour no
matter what. But this has changed in the past five years.
Voters in Scotland have ceased to vote Labour, but
they still vote tribally it’s just the tribe is now yellow rather than red. Labour
used to be the party for those who hated Tories. But they are no longer that in
most of England and Wales. People who used to hate Tories automatically now
vote for them. The hatred is gone. In Scotland the main reason for SNP success
is not so much desire for independence, but rather that the “I hate Tories” mob
has transferred allegiance from Labour to the SNP. The driving factor for
support for independence is tribal hatred of Tories.
But Scotland in fact is very similar to the north of
England. The same sort of problems that affect post-industrial North-East
England also affect the SNP heartlands in the post-industrial Central Belt.
While discontent in England and Wales was expressed by
people voting for Brexit, in Scotland it is frequently expressed by people
voting either for independence, Brexit or both.
The same demographic which in Middlesbrough now votes
Conservative in Scotland votes SNP.
Something stopped ex-Labour voters in England hating
Tories. As Tory Blue crept northwards the tribal voting patterns were
overturned. There is no reason whatsoever that this pattern should not continue
into Scotland.
There is a myth put about by independence supporters
that Scotland in some way is radically different from England. This is because
too many of them know almost nothing about England and loathe tribally what
they have never met. Tory in Scotland is more or less a synonym for English.
But people from England and especially the north of
England are in fact very similar to Scots. What just happened in the north of
England could equally happen in Scotland. The impossible has become the new
normal.
Scotland like England has just lost its tribal
affinity for Labour. Scotland however has kept its tribal hatred of Tories. The
task for Conservatives is to do what it just did in the north of England in
Scotland too.
Conservatives need to reward their ex-Labour voters by
demonstrably improving life in their towns and cities.
Brexit involves one of the greatest changes in the UK
for decades. Well just as during wartime it is justified to borrow huge amounts
in order to win, so too it is justified right now to borrow and spend to reorient
our economy to its post-EU future. So long as interest rates remain low and the
markets retain confidence in the UK Government, we can for a short time spend à
outrance [to excess].
Now is the time to improve British infrastructure,
housing, roads and railways. Give the NHS enough so that even the BBC ceases to
complain. Demonstrate to voters in northern England that they were right to
vote Conservative. Make Scots in the Central Belt envious and wonder if they
voted Tory, they might get a bit of that success too.
The task of the Conservative Government is to park our
tanks all over the Left’s lawn. Give left-wing voters what they want and take
the sting out of Tory hatred. If we can do that we can win anywhere.
What about Thatcherites like me? We must be patient. Long
term I would like much lower taxes. I would like to reform the NHS root and
branch so that its foundation is the free market rather than socialism. I would
like to turn the UK into a free trade, low regulation, low corporation tax business
hub that undercuts the EU and makes us all much more wealthy than we are now.
But let us be patient.
The task now is to completely destroy Labour. Let them
elect another extremist or another Remainer. We are going to make Brexit work
for the whole of the UK. We need to gradually ween the UK away from its love of
the Left. We need to gradually teach the electorate that free markets work and
that they make everyone better off.
Conservatives must win the north of England again. If
Conservatives can do that, they can also win in Scotland. There must be no more negativity about Brexit
from Scottish Conservatives. No more appeasement of the SNP. If Brexit makes the whole UK better off and in
time it will, there will be no more danger from the SNP. If the northern
English can cease hating Tories and vote for us instead, so can Scots.
