A desire to fix things, to repair that which is broken, or being broken, has to be our way forward

“Things working makes me happy — something’s broken and you’ve fixed it. There’s a joy that comes from fixing things. I had to rewire a switch and my husband said, ‘Let’s just call the electrician,’ and I said, ‘I can do it.’ And I did and it was fine. I felt really good about that. I think being able to fix the stuff that’s not working, from potholes to pensions, would be amazing.” Kemi Badenoch, Sunday Times Interview August 24^th

There’s a lot in Kemi Badenoch’s interview with the Sunday Times, some of which I’ll come back to in another piece this week, but this comment at the end resonated with me.

I too have always understood and experienced the joy of fixing things.

There is immense satisfaction in the whole process.

Understanding something is broken, assessing what is required to fix it, working out how best to make the fix, and if possible, finally seeing something work again, even better than it did before.

Apart from the occasional bout of saccharine sentimentality, this is why the Repair Shop has been so successful on TV. Watching something so obviously broken be revealed at the end as working and looking great is a magical formula. It also plays to something politics has to understand, how it makes people feel.

So fixing a country, how it works and works better for all the people who care that it does, is hardly an unsurprising goal. Indeed it’s the essential one.

Also, there’s never been such a clamour for it.

As is so often the case in our political discourse, a phrase emerges, usually with a ring to it, and it gets adopted by people who think it chimes with their own life experience and outlook, and it goes from sharp observation to widespread narrative. “Broken Britian” has taken that journey.

Labour promised they could fix it. After a year, and their endless protestations that they have, fewer and fewer people are convinced.

To me there are many things that are broken in Britain, but I don’t think the country itself is broken. All the requisite pieces required for it to work better for all of us, are there, it’s just, over 30 years they’ve been worn down, badly rewired, patched up but not fixed or simply left to grind slower while the ‘it’ll last a while longer’ excuses are made.

All parties of government have played a part in that. No denying that.

I wrote recently about politics now becoming a three way split, of those that get it, those that really don’t, and the worst, those that get it, but refuse to accept it, or try to dodge it.

I won’t repeat the piece but, in essence, we need a radical repair based on a fundamental.

That is, for decades, we have expected and grown accustomed if not entitled to the State delivering more to us, than it is possibly able to do via general taxation. We have borrowed to patch over this problem and maintain the illusion but if we continue on this course, we’ll bankrupt our children and grandchildren.

With that and anaemic growth we will become a public service, or welfare system, that has a country attached.  Sooner than we think.

At the moment too many politicians cannot even diagnose where or what the repair should be, and many others will still argue that no fix is required. A new breed say they’ve got the answers to everything, but can’t explain how they’ll fix anything.

Fixes shouldn’t be rushed, blueprints need to be thought through and deliverable but that takes time, and these days people are not generous with time.

Insta-policy just sounds too good, but like fast food you want it in a rush, and so often regret it afterwards.

One thing is very clear; if there are a handful in the Labour Government get the problem, they are simply not up to the task required. In so many areas Labour have either offered a sticking plaster option – and claimed on social media it’s been fixed – or worse they’ve botched their ‘fix’ and made the problem even worse. The economy is a clear example of the latter.

Overall I still think they believe they’ll ‘turn things around’ – with or without Starmer – but I’m not convinced. What Conservatives need to be persuaded is, that a party leadership who clearly does get it, and has said so a number of times, can get into a position to make a fix, and a fix that might actually work.

That, I am duty bound to report, is still moot. Kemi Badenoch seemed to acknowledge that in her weekend interview, though it’s clear she’s determined to stay the course, because she feel she’s set a course.

If that is to reconnect to Conservative values and fashion policy for tomorrow founded on ideas from the party’s accumulated history I do wonder whether it’s worth trying is a bit of a ‘Tory Policy Repair Shop’. After all isn’t part of our ethos to ‘conserve’?

Every iteration of the party, especially those periods associated with a particular leader have had their ‘big ideas’ but often they go out of fashion, sometimes too quickly abandoned because of their association with a ‘failed’ leadership or electoral defeat. Some policies deserve to be binned, but in some cases ‘babies and bathwater’ spring to mind

There some of them sit, abandoned, rusting, coated with the detritus of a political landscape that’s changed and either forgotten them or tried to. Some are too broken, too outdated to suit the now, but some might have potential to be properly fixed.

I’ll start with a long shot. If you washed away the mire that surrounds the idea of the Truss supply side reforms, and both her and Rishi Sunak’s desire to cut taxes, if you removed the personal patina that has made an idea unpopular because of how it was delivered, and got to re-working the basics and adding in innovations, and tackling the counters, might not smaller state, low tax look attractive once again?

You don’t like that? Ok we might need to give a proper overhaul to the “austerity” that the early Cameron government implemented. We know ‘living within our means’ is a hard message to sell, and if we are to look seriously at spending cuts then repairing the image of ‘belt tightening for the common good’ is not the worst idea. Saving our children from a debt crisis might be the new paint we are looking for.

While we are at it, even as we were trying to make it work Rwanda was a policy that did not convince all Tories. But in the light of Labour’s abject inability to tackle illegal immigration, repairing the central concept that you need a deterrent is surely right.Whether a Rwanda deal or a deal like it we might need to grab what’s been left and rework a deterrent policy. Other countries already are.

I still believe if Labour had done this last autumn, they’d have stolen a march on the Tories and Reform. But they aren’t bold enough for that kind of strategic outflanking or willing to accept the stakes and scale of the task.

Looking back to the Thatcher era is sometimes too far. People say the problems of the eighties are not those of now, but dusting off some deregulation, digging out some individual freedoms that do make sense now, can’t be worthless. After all this weekend we saw stories of IMF bailouts and reminders of 1976.

If when the time comes, and we all know the clock is ticking on this, you can unveil, some brand new bespoke ideas of how to fix and rewire the political system, and alongside, present revived, repaired and yes renewed versions of familiar policies that surely makes for a bigger more inviting shop window.

Rooted in the best of the past, redesigned to fix the future.

It also demonstrates a level of thought, and thoroughness, about a new programme for the future that other rival parties might struggle to match. After all what’s the point of opposition if it isn’t to sell a version of how you really can fix things.

Imagine the collective satisfaction I described at the start when you can look back over all they said was broken and say – ‘we actually fixed that, and Britain works better now.’