Building a Conservative Majority (8): Shock-and-awe tax cuts

By Tim Montgomerie
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In today's Times (£) I make the case for George Osborne to announce shock-and-awe economy-boosting tax cuts in the Budget. The economy needs them and I also suggest that the Tory Party needs them:

"Ed Miliband is much closer to becoming Prime Minister than many Conservatives realise. It took the Conservative Party 13 years to add 5 per cent to its share of the vote after John Major’s historic defeat in 1997. It took Labour five days. On the day that the coalition was formed, on May 11 2010, two million Britons abandoned the Liberal Democrats and walked into Labour’s arms. These people, generally on the left of the political spectrum, are unlikely to lend their vote to Nick Clegg’s party again — and certainly not if the Deputy Prime Minister remains as leader. Mr Miliband may be a very inadequate leader of the Opposition but, because of the vagaries of Britain’s electoral system, he’s within spitting distance of leading the largest party after the next election. The unpopular, unnecessary and unheralded Health and Social Care Bill could be the factor that gives him a majority."

To change the dynamics of British politics I suggest big tax cuts focused on (1) helping businesses expand and (2) helping lower income workers cope with these difficult times.

Almost everyone seems to think that taxes should be cut. Ed Balls has recommended unfinanced tax cuts. On the sensible side of politics there is the same enthusiasm for tax cuts but an understanding that there's no more scope for extra borrowing. David Laws, the Centre Forum think tank and some Tory MPs, notably Nick Boles and Mark Reckless, have recommended income tax cuts financed by taxes on the wealthy. Liam Fox has urged a cut in NI, financed by deeper spending cuts. Today's FT (£) argues that "imagination is needed to get the UK economy moving" and that there might be better ways of allocating taxes and spending to achieve this objective.

Continue reading "Building a Conservative Majority (8): Shock-and-awe tax cuts" »

Building a Conservative Majority (7): No mercy towards the Liberal Democrats

By Tim Montgomerie
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When Tory MPs are most depressed with the failings and compromises of coalition government they comfort themselves with the thought that it is hurting the Liberal Democrats much more than it is hurting Conservatives. The Lib Dems are the bindweed of British politics. Once they've invaded territory they are hard to get rid of but the next election is our best opportunity in a generation to significantly cut their numbers. While they are down on the floor we shouldn't show mercy. We must finish them off.

The task may not be as easy as some think. The opinion polls are deceptive. Some surveys show Britain's third party as low as 7%. Don't believe them. The evidence from Lord Ashcroft's polling in marginal seats and Rob Hayward's studies of council election results is that local reputations of Lib Dem MPs and the admirable pavement politics of Lib Dem activists will mean that they will significantly out-perform their national poll rating. Nonetheless Lib Dems are likely to be weaker than for a long time. Con HQ are likely to be reluctant to pour resources into LibCon fights for fear of upsetting relations inside Coalition. The 10mph Tory campaign in the Oldham East by-election was an early sign of this.

Continue reading "Building a Conservative Majority (7): No mercy towards the Liberal Democrats" »

Building a Conservative Majority (6)... Building an online Conservative Coalition

By Tim Montgomerie
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I hope you are enjoying this Building A Majority series. It's going to be an uphill struggle to govern on our own after the next election... but it's essential for what we want to achieve... and I believe it's perfectly achievable. After this week the series will take a short pause but it will soon restart and it will, I hope, become central to ConservativeHome's mission up until the next general election.

So far I've proposed four ideas for a Conservative manifesto: (i) Replacing the Barnett formula with a nationwide Social Justice Fund; (ii) Ending windfarm subsidies; (iii) dropping the NHS Bill; and (iv) English votes for English laws.

But victory requires three M's - message and machine as well as manifesto. I'll come back to message soon but the focus of today and tomorrow will be on reforms to the Conservative machine. So far on the machine front I've proposed the recruitment of more northern candidates. Today I suggest we rethink the whole structure of the party. Tomorrow we'll turn to fighting the Liberal Democrats.

Continue reading "Building a Conservative Majority (6)... Building an online Conservative Coalition" »

Building a Conservative Majority (5)... English votes for English laws

By Tim Montgomerie
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There is a view among some Conservatives that Cameron plays into the hands of nationalists when he raises the possibility of further devolution. It's a view that Lord Forsyth espouses in today's Scotsman. In today's Guardian I explain why I disagree with Michael Forsyth and other "über-Unionists":

"Cameron must again face down the uber-unionists in his own party who opposed devolution from the very beginning and believe you stop independence by maintaining the status quo. In reality the UK will be kept together by ensuring that voters normally get the type of government they vote for. Current arrangements are unsustainable. You can't have responsible government in Holyrood when, as now, MSPs control 60% of public expenditure in Scotland but only raise 6% of tax revenues. Devolution that ensures Scotland has to balance its budget is not another step towards independence but a final step towards a sustainable settlement."

Continue reading "Building a Conservative Majority (5)... English votes for English laws" »

Building a Conservative Majority (4)... Take the NHS off the table. Again.

By Tim Montgomerie
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It's been exactly one week since I urged David Cameron to drop the NHS Bill in what turned out to be the most-read post in the seven year history of ConHome.

As I said in TV interviews at the time I didn't expect the PM to heed my advice and I completely understand why he didn't. At this late stage there are no easy options. Mr Cameron either mounts a humiliating retreat by dumping all of the NHS Bill's contentious components or he ploughs on in the teeth of opposition from NHS professionals and the public. I am still of the view that ploughing on is the worst course and it is the one that Labour desperately wants the Coalition to take.

If we plough on Labour will blame the Bill - unfairly - for everything that goes wrong in the NHS in the rest of the parliament. And more things than usual are set to go wrong because the squeeze on NHS budgets is going to be severe. The Bill would be forgivable if it wasn't going to deliver deliver big efficiencies. The tragedy is, however, that the Bill is unnecessary. Stephen Dorrell, Chairman of the Health Select Committee, has argued convincingly that just about all of the necessary reforms could have been pursued without an Act of Parliament. Reasonable people would have blamed the economic situation for the cuts. Many will now blame the Bill. Worse, Labour will repeat their old mantra that the Conservatives can't be trusted with the NHS. In opposition, Labour will say, Cameron vowed not to introduce a top-down reorganisation and then in government did precisely that.

Continue reading "Building a Conservative Majority (4)... Take the NHS off the table. Again." »

Building a Conservative Majority (3)... Ending windfarm subsidies

By Tim Montgomerie
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In the first part of this series on Building A Majority I advocated recruiting more northern Tory candidates. Yesterday I recommended replacing the Barnett formula with a nationwide social justice fund. Today, windfarms.

(3) NO MORE SUBSIDIES FOR WINDFARMS

Two weeks ago more than 100 Tory MPs wrote to the Prime Minister calling for a cut in the subsidy of windfarms. Chris Heaton-Harris implied that many more Tories would have signed the letter if he had had more time to gather names. PPSs and Ministers were, of course, forbidden from signing the letter but the presence of normally uber-loyal backbenchers like Matt Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi on the list of signatures proved that the letter writers were speaking for large parts of the Tory frontbench. The best single piece I've read against windfarms was written by Chris Pincher MP for ConHome. Wind farms are expensive, unreliable, damage local environments and subsidise foreign industry, he wrote. That pretty well sums up the craziness of the policy perfectly.

Crucial to Tory success at the next election is a breakthrough with the striving classes - the people who are struggling to make ends meet. They can't afford to pay higher energy prices for no good reason. Perhaps if higher energy prices were our contribution to a global carbon emmissions deal then it would be at least arguable that it was a worthwhile sacrifice. But with China, India and other fast-growing economies increasing their carbon footprint there is no good reason for (a) the British pensioner to be worried about heating her home or (b) the Midlands manufacturer to be considering relocating abroad in search of a jurisdiction with more sensible energy policies.

Breaking with the cross-party consensus on climate change would put Cameron on the side of families and manufacturers. Perhaps free from the obsession with change-the-world environmentalism we could also be freed up as a party to focus on a more practical, local environmentalism. Conservatives should, of course, be conservationists but our focus should be on cleaner rivers, planting trees and protecting habitats of outstanding beauty. Yes, we should invest in clean technologies that will help the global environment but we shouldn't be spending money on imported and immature windfarm technologies.

Building a Conservative Majority (2)... Replacing the Barnett formula with a nationwide Social Justice Fund

By Tim Montgomerie
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Yesterday in the first part of this series on Building A Majority I advocated recruiting more northern Tory candidates. Today I turn to the Barnett formula.

(2) A FAIRER WAY OF DISTRIBUTING TAXPAYERS' MONEY ACROSS THE UK

One of the big themes of MajorityConservatism will be the need for a fairer constitutional settlement for England. The Coalition has dragged its heels on subjects such as English Votes for English Laws despite the best efforts of backbench MPs like Harriett Baldwin. I see both greater fairness and huge political opportunities for the Conservative Party if it champions the interests of England and of Wales.

I'll get into other parts of these 'English questions' on another day but want to start with the Barnett formula. Drawn up more than three decades ago by now Lord Barnett the formula distributes taxpayers' money across the UK. Even Lord Barnett now describes the formula as "unfair". On both the Left (IPPR) and Right (TaxPayers' Alliance) there is agreement that the formula is well past its sell-by date. Scotland and Northern Ireland receive a much greater share of UK taxpayers' money than need in either country would require. The biggest losers are the poorer English regions and Wales. There has long been a campaign in Cardiff for Barnett's reform.

This seems one of the great no-brainers of British politics. England is losing up to £4.5 billion every year because a Conservative-led government is sending that money to parts of the UK that stubbornly refuse to vote Conservative AND there is widespread agreement that the system isn't driven by social need.

The Liberal Democrats with nine Scottish MPs - but facing meltdown north of the border - are reluctant to tamper with the formula. There is also the question of the looming independence referendum. Some in Whitehall are understandably anxious about antagonising Scottish opinion. I do not think we should try and keep Scotland in the UK by bribing them. If the Barnett formula is unfair then it is unfair. Both the SNP and the Liberal Democrats make a big deal out of their commitment to concepts like social justice and solidarity. So let a Conservative Prime Minister call for the phased ending of the Barnett formula and over, say, five years the savings be poured into a social justice fund. This fund would be available to every part of the UK - including Scotland, Anglesey but also Hackney, and the poorest part of Britain, Jaywick Sands in Essex. It would fund projects that were working with the most disadvantaged people in Britain. It could be run in ways similar to the City Challenge programme introduced by John Major in the 1990s.

It would be a policy that was fair in two important ways: (1) It would be fair to England and to Wales and (2) fairer to Britain's poorest communities. It could be one of compassionate conservatism's biggest ideas. What is not to like?

Building a Conservative Majority (1)... Recruitment of more northern candidates

By Tim Montgomerie
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When I launched Majority Conservatism I listed some of the reasons why winning the next election will be an uphill struggle for the Conservative Party.

Two weeks ago I revealed that clouds of gloom had descended on Downing Street as Cameron's advisers struggled to identify a clear path to a Conservative majority.

Yesterday, in a brilliant essay, Paul Goodman identified some of the structural factors that explain the weakness of the Tory position. Prominent in Paul's analysis was our terrible performance in Scotland and the big increase in the number of people who receive income from the state.

Today we start getting positive. ConservativeHome believes we can win the next election and that we must. Unless we win a working majority the Liberal Democrats will continue to be the great roadblocks to common sense reforms. There'll be no repatriation of powers from Europe. No reform of the European Court of Human Rights. Inadequate control of immigration. No support for marriage. More and more social engineering in our universities. More expensive windfarms. More tinkering with our constitution.

Each day - in no particular order of importance or potency - we'll be listing ideas to build the majority we need. I'm starting off with the need to win in the north.

(1) RECRUITMENT OF MORE NORTHERN CANDIDATES

The Tory challenge in Northern England will become one of ConHome's biggest themes and I'm grateful to David Skelton and Nick Pickles for already contributing their thoughts on the subject.

In this weekend's Mail on Sunday I suggested the party went for the wrong kind of candidate diversity:

"The under-representation of women and ethnic minorities was a real problem, but the excessive emphasis on these dimensions of the Conservative Party’s lack of diversity was revealing of how Cameron and his advisers thought. Swapping a white lawyer for a black lawyer, or a rich City banker in a tie for a rich City banker in a skirt, wasn’t real change. Real change would have seen the party recruit gritty Northern candidates; people from outside the world of politics who had come up through grammar and comprehensive schools; people who couldn’t afford an outfit that would look good on the cover of Tatler or GQ."

All of the evidence is that local credentials are much more important in improving performance than gender or ethnicity. The Tories are further behind Labour in the north today than at the start of the Thatcher years. We must take action to change this.

• During this series we'll be suggesting many things but ensuring that northern voices represent the party locally and on TV is vital. From the new intake, for example, a switched on CCHQ would ensure the likes of Graham Evans, Fiona Bruce and Kris Hopkins were never off the airwaves.
• Someone like Samuel Coates, previously of this parish, should be fast-tracked as a candidate. Wise beyond his years, brought up in Liverpool (although half-Yorkshire!), just returned from serving his country in Afghanistan and steeped in compassionate conservatism, he should be our candidate in a seat like Sefton Central.
• We should also consider financial support for candidates. Being a candidate is an expensive business (2006 statistics). People from less privileged backgrounds with conservative principles should be helped to be flagship candidates for us at the next election.

Why Labour won four of the last five elections: a 2024 letter to Prime Minister Miliband

Paul Goodman looks forward to 2024 and in doing so explains some of the hurdles between the Tories and winning a majority.

Tuesday December 31 2024

Dear Prime Minister,

Why the Tories last governed with an overall majority in 1992 - over 30 years ago

Let me say at the start how grateful I am for the opportunity you have given me once again to serve the Labour Party, and of course the country, as Deputy Prime Minister since you first won office in 2015. As you know, I have been your strongest supporter from the very beginning.

Having won two successive election victories and being now on the verge of a third - an achievement that would match both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair - you will presently be besieged by memos advising you how to achieve it.

I have no wish to add to their number, but believe that it is useful to review the history of the last half-century to help establish why Labour is achieving Roy Jenkins's strategic aim of making the centre-left as dominant in this century as the centre-right was during the last one.

Labour has won four out of the last five elections.

Of the ten general elections that have taken place in the past 50 years, five saw a Labour Prime Minister take office and five a Conservative one. The last 25 years, however, show a trend. We have won four out of the last five polls. The Tories last governed with an overall majority in 1992.

How has this come about? It is evident from our poor share of the vote - we have won the last two elections without reaching the 41% share of the vote that we achieved in 2001, let alone the 44% share in 1997 - that the explanation lies with Conservative failure, not Labour success.

Continue reading "Why Labour won four of the last five elections: a 2024 letter to Prime Minister Miliband" »

There is a compassionate and ambitious alternative to Cameronism and Tory members prefer it

By Tim Montgomerie
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Cameronism has involved three massive gambles...

• Remember the "change to win" slogan? Half of it was fulfilled. The party was changed in significant ways but we still fell short of a majority and in almost perfect electoral conditions.
• We then entered a Coalition government when the preference of the majority of members was to govern as a minority government and then hold a second election as soon as possible. Instead we have entered an alliance with a party that is resisting so many of the things that are necessary for the country's recovery.
• Gamble three has been an economic policy that has increased taxes, defended the Euro, raised the cost of energy and done little about red tape. The result is an economic league table performance that is more Wycombe Wanderers than Manchester United.

Some in Team Cameron would have us believe that the only alternative to their project is a right-wing project that has already been defeated in 2001 and 2005. Andrew Lilico did a very good job of rebutting the idea that 01 and 05 were anything like ideal centre right campaigns. These new pages of ConHome are dedicated to advancing a conservatism...

• that is more serious about conservatism's compassionate credentials;
• more serious about creating the growth that underpins every successful political enterprise; and
• more serious about creating a 21st century political machine.

Continue reading "There is a compassionate and ambitious alternative to Cameronism and Tory members prefer it" »

The economic policy we have and the economic policy we need

By Tim Montgomerie
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So far, in launching MajorityConservatism, we've looked at the continuing weakness of the Conservative Party's electoral position; a weakness that has been disguised by the greater weakness of our principal political competitors. I've then summarised a plan to change this. Thirdly I've argued that we won't become a party winning more than 40% of the vote - and won't deserve to do so - until we do what every successful conservative party of the modern era has done and become a party for the 'little guy'. Today I want to briefly examine MajorityConservatism's next big theme - forging an economic policy that is as big as our challenges.

George will need a bigger weapon if he is to slay Britain's economic dragons

Right from the beginning of this Coalition ConservativeHome has supported the deficit plan but regretted the lack of radical action on growth. This is a theme we have explored on many occasions, notably here.

The three economic dragons: Britain faces much more than a debt challenge. Through no fault of their own Cameron and Osborne have inherited three historic economic challenges: massive levels of personal and government debt; the Eurozone crisis; and the long-term rise of China, India and other emerging economies. Taken together these challenges threaten to make the British economy dangerously uncompetitive in the years ahead.

Continue reading "The economic policy we have and the economic policy we need" »

A Conservative Party for the little guy

By Tim Montgomerie
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On Monday I listed ten weaknesses in the Conservative Party's electoral position. At the heart of these weaknesses was number 10; Lord Ashcroft's finding that among target voters there is a sense that we are a party of the rich and not on the side of ordinary voters. We have to change this and David Cameron has been attempting to do so since he first became Tory leader. He follows in the footsteps of George W Bush's less thorough attempts to do so from 2000 onwards in the US context.

Two factors are currently disguising the extent of the Conservative Party's weakness in this whole area. One is the greater strategic weakness of Ed Miliband and Labour. Mark Ferguson and Olly Parker helpfully summarised our principal opponent's challenges on LabourList. The second thing disguising the scale of our problem is the global political environment. All over the world right-of-centre parties are prospering. Centre right parties are in office across Europe and are in the ascendancy across the Anglosphere because voters cannot afford left-wing policies when they are struggling to make ends meet. Right-of-centre parties may mismanage these times and be rejected but they are also likely to be rejected when better times eventually return if they don't have a vision for those times.

Continue reading "A Conservative Party for the little guy" »

A summary of the differences between the Conservative Party we have and the Conservative Party we need

By Tim Montgomerie
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Yesterday, in introducing MajorityConservatism.com, I set out the persistent political facts that make it hard for the Conservative Party to score more than 40% in opinion polls.

Today I want to summarise the differences between the Conservative Party we have and the Conservative Party we need. The graphic below sets the differences that I argue are necessary in terms of strategy, policy and party. The three strategic differences are the most important:

• A shift towards a turbo-charged growth strategy that will allow us to compete in a world where the eurozone crisis and the BRIC nations both threaten our prosperity;
• A popular compassionate conservatism that addresses the dangerous sense that we don't understand ordinary people;
• A rention of the deficit strategy but a shift in focus towards job creation.

Next week I'll start to get into the policy issues but over each of the next three days I'll look at those three strategic shifts.

I should also state that an exercise like this will inevitably focus on the differences between Cameron's liberal Conservatism and what I call Majority Conservatism. There is, of course, huge overlap. On welfare and schools policies, support for marriage, localism, planning reform and elected police chiefs - just to take a few flagship policies - there is much in common.

The Conservative Party we have and the Conservative Party we need

By Tim Montgomerie
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Today sees the launch of MajorityConservatism.com*. It's my thinking on how the Tories might win the next election. Over time, however, I hope it will be much more than my thinking. I hope others will critique my thoughts and others will offer alternative ideas as to how we achieve a majority at the next election.

As I explain in today's Times (£) the Tory electoral position is not as good as it might seem. Our current opinion poll rating is flattered by the weakness of Labour. Ed Miliband is both too odd and too red. Labour has failed to detoxify their economic reputation. On welfare, immigration and borrowing Ed Miliband's party is badly out of touch with public opinion. But as Stephan Shakespeare and I argued in a recent edition of The Sunday Telegraph, the Tory leadership should not think itself strong because Labour is weak.

Let's look at some arresting facts:

1. The Conservatives haven't won a general election outright since 1992.
2. Against a discredited, disunited and badly-led Labour government we added just 4% to our support at the last election and 2005 was one of our worst ever defeats.
3. Only 27% of voters in the most marginal seats think we are on the side of ordinary people.
4. We have lost our advantage among women voters. Favourability towards the coalition is 12% lower among female voters according to internal Tory polling (£).
5. Most voters think the spending cuts are "unfair".
6. We were 10% behind Labour in the north of England in 1979. We are now 13% behind. In Scotland, of course, the situation is even worse.
7. After the NHS reform debacle only 20% think the health service is safe in David Cameron's hands.
8. Asked to say who the Conservative Party and David Cameron most understands, voters say the rich and big business. The group the Conservative Party understands least according to a YouGov survey for ConHome of 2,333 voters are families struggling to make ends meet. 
9. The Tories are still fishing in a smaller pool than Labour. While 70% would consider voting for Ed Miliband's party and 64% would consider voting Liberal Democrat, the ceiling for the Tories is just 58%. In order to win an election we need to convert a good three quarters of our potential voters while Labour only needs to capture a much smaller proportion.
10. Lord Ashcroft's 'Project Blueprint' survey of 10,000 voters found that (in his words): "For those who considered voting Tory in 2010 but thought better of it, the biggest barrier (which Tories are sick of hearing about but is real nonetheless) was the continuing impression that the party is for the rich, not people like them."

The Cameroons concluded that the process of reassuring voters that the Conservatives didn't have two heads could only be completed in government. Only by actually sitting in the nursery and not eating babies would we prove that our intentions were honest. Early experience of government, however, is suggesting we might be recontaminating our brand as much as continuing the decontamination. Her's a snippet from my Times piece:

"Voters, for example, are most anxious about jobs and incomes but the coalition spends too much time talking about the deficit. The shambolic health reforms erased the lead on the NHS that he spent five painstaking years building. His flagship project to define his compassionate conservatism, the Big Society, may be intellectually potent but has confused the public. Rather than arguing that poverty is beaten by strong families, good schools and work, the Government has often reinforced the left-wing idea that compassion is measured by how much taxpayers’ money it spends."

This problem isn't helped by Liberal Democrats taking every opportunity to paint the Conservatives in the worst possible light. There is worrying evidence that voters are giving the Liberal Democrats the credit for the 'kind and gentle' things that the Coalition is doing.

Over the next ten days I'll be setting out ways of getting to the top of the steep climb that is pictured at the top of this post. Replacing the Big Society with a streetwise description of compassionate conservatism. Putting the hard-working poor at the front of the queue when it comes to tax cuts. Taxing wealth more and income less. Emphasising job creation, not debt reduction in the party's economic narrative. Taking a tough approach to crime and sentencing. Pursuing achievable rather than change-the-world environmentalism. Turning St George's Day into a public holiday and holding a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. Replacing state funding of voluntary organisations with voucher funding. Ending the Barnett formula. Worrying more about the local roots of candidates than about their gender or skin colour. Changing the Conservative Party into an Alliance of networked campaigners. Spending more Tory funds on targeted campaigning rather than motorway billboards.

Most of all we need a compelling economic narrative. Households are living under the shadow of two great challenges - massive debts and the fast-growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. People are nervous. The Tory leadership is wrong to think they can be reassured by half measures. Tested individually the components of a bold economic rescue strategy will be controversial and unpopular but that's the wrong way of thinking about things. The most worrying thing for a sick economy isn't controversial medicines but a sense that the doctor has no cure.

* I have to apologise for renaming this site MajorityConservatism. ConHome readers had voted for FutureConservatism but I couldn't get used to it. MajorityConservatism captures what this part of the site is all about. It's about winning a Conservative majority at the next election and it's about listening to the majority of the British people's views on the great issues of our time.

Turbo-charge free schools, bold regulation reform, and a cap on national debt - leading Tories suggest five ideas for David Cameron...

By Matthew Barrett
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The current edition of the FT's Weekend Magazine has a special feature, in which leading Tories - big beasts like Lord Tebbit, John Redwood, and David Davis, new intake MPs like Jo Johnson, Sajid Javid and Nick Boles, and perhaps less conventional Conservative figures like the artist, Tracey Emin - give their "Five Ideas For David". 

Continue reading "Turbo-charge free schools, bold regulation reform, and a cap on national debt - leading Tories suggest five ideas for David Cameron..." »