Though I pity the country, politically the right of politics owes Rachel Reeves a debt of thanks.
She’s good at creating debts.
If she wasn’t making such a complete Horlicks of the economy and then blaming absolutely everyone and anything but herself, the Conservatives might have struggled to get a hearing on what looks and sounds like a far more Conservative attitude to the economy than the party had in the recent past.
Badenoch, Stride and Griffith, might sound like a solid firm of UK wide solicitors, but the three together have been forging a message that whilst still evolving has solid foundations and the main one; we are and have been living beyond our means, is driving our approach to growth.
Work not welfare is the Tory message, echoed by the CSJ this morning on our site.
Meanwhile Reeves is going to find ways to tax anything she can get away with, not just because Rishi Sunak was right when he asked us to ‘mark my words, it’s in their DNA’ but because as Kemi Badenoch outlined in her speech with Mel Stride yesterday, she needs the cash to keep upping welfare.
It’s not just because I’ve argued this point for some time, that I think every fumble, stumble and wilfully obtuse thing the Chancellor does is helping make our case. All parties had until recently avoided confronting the truth, because it’s unpopular and deluding oneself is far more politically comfortable.
I’m not going to re-run the whole argument but I’ve said before post 2024 politics is divided into those that get it, those that don’t get it, and the worst group, those that get it but are too scared or weak to do anything about it.
We have to cut spending, lower our debt because for decades our tax receipts have not matched our spending, particularly on Welfare, Health and Social Care and Debt interest payments.
Kemi has managed to articulate a remedy, not only for our public finances but for her party, that we should tell the truth, however unpalatable and explain why.
Hard though it is – one only needs to look at how “George Osborne’s austerity” has been weaponised by the left with Labour even tweeting a charge that we are egregiously eager to bring Austerity back – the message can be delivered.
Just ballooning further the welfare bill as Reeves is going to do, having spent her last chunk of cash on pay rises to “stop strikes’ benefitting people who funnily enough are still striking for more, is short-termism at its worst.
Then again, I feel sorry for her, like Shabana Mahmood, when they try to drag their party into reality and out of their comfort zone, the party simply stops them, or cries bitterly ‘this is not what a Labour Government is for”, and rebels.
Well I can sympathise; I’m baffled what this Labour Government is for.
It’s not that I disagree with what they are doing – as a Conservative I do – but that on all their stated aims, and promises they are doing the exact opposite or making things far worse.
The Conservatives still suffer from the phase where people say ‘ok we hear what you have proposed instead, and it sounds good, but we don’t believe you’ll do it’. This, astonishingly enough, is progression! Now Kemi Badenoch, slowly – too slowly for some – has started to get a bit of personal momentum. She’s still got lots to start work on, but still, some things are starting to work.
The nay sayers still exist, of course, but like die hard football fans only a long string of outright and overwhelming wins will ever satisfy them, and at least there are signs of strength-in-depth in the team if everyone gets the vapours in May.
Lord Ashcroft’s latest focus groups published on ConservativeHome yesterday had a noticeable sea change in tone on the subject of the Tory leader. People are starting to listen, and like. Has she completely won them over? No, not yet, but they are listening, and as I never cease to remind people that was Iain Duncan Smith’s advice to the party the day it went into opposition ‘you have to earn the right to be heard’
“It’s got better. At the start it looked an absolute shambles but they’ve started to sort themselves out. Kemi Badenoch said recently that she was doing back-office stuff to save the Conservative Party because we’d run out of money and almost went bankrupt, and if that’s the case then that’s definitely what you have to do first. And she probably needed to lie low a bit politically, because everything you said would just look like mudslinging against something you’d handed over. But I think that time has passed.”
That’s from a previous Tory voter who defected away in 2024.
“’I think she’s feisty, and she’s probably sincere to try her best to do things;’ ‘She looks trustable to me.’ However, several said they found it hard to believe in her longer-term prospects because the thing about Tory leaders is that ‘they come and go all the time.’”
There’s a clear message there, and the positive bits, have not really been there if one goes back over a year of these focus groups and polling. I’m told internally she could work on her charm more to colleagues, but right now I’d rather she and the party got heard.
So whilst Kemi is slowly emerging and growing in the role, and Rachel is busy torching what’s left of her credibility and Reform are put more rigorously under the spotlight and Starmer moves from lame duck to dead duck – why do I have a nagging doubt?
It’s because there is an elephant in the room of the argument that says we must live within our means, cut public spending, and reduce borrowing, as the unpleasant medicine that will make us all better (off) eventually.
Sat on our nice bright blue (and getting bluer as we go forwards) sofa is a pachyderm that is bothering me. It is carrying a big heavy tray called the Pensions Triple Lock in its hands and is constantly threatening to smash it down on all the nice blue china cups and tea things.
It’s one of those things people just start to know, and want to pretend they don’t, and whenever any party does that it’s bad. I love the new ethos of being straight with people even if it’s a difficult message, I think Badenoch has – ok let’s just say it because she’s used it – the balls to carry it off. But pretending anything other than the triple lock is utterly unsustainable is economic moonshine.
Now I get that politically doing something now could upset the electoral base that’s left to the Tories over the past 15 months, I don’t think it will be that restricted in three to four years but we can’t ignore the facts right now. I get that no party is advocating abandoning it before the next election, so in effect it’s not running as a competitive edge right now, and Kemi explained that abolishing stamp duty will trigger a number of things that stimulate growth, whereas tackling the triple lock is just another saving, amongst others.
I get all of that, but when a good message, is starting to be heard, that contrasts massively with the Government, and indeed other parties, it’s just worth thinking about anything that undermines the strength of a ‘living within our means’ argument and that frankly, eventually I think most people realise will have to go.
Just finally, to those who insist on regurgitating the “uniparty, nothing has changed, still the same as the last government” I’d urge you to at least watch or listen to the four most recent outings of the Conservative leader, and honestly hand on heart say any of those lines are true.
You can vote how you like, that’s democracy, but it is getting very hard to maintain the pretence within those lines.
The truth is hard, but it always beats fantasy and moonshine eventually.
