Damian Green embraces right-wing policies for left-wing aims

"We need to sweep away the old divisions between left and right in the Conservative party, and the application of what were previously regarded as right-wing Conservative policies adapted to help the poor and disadvantaged is the way to do it. Through the fog of the current debate on the party’s future I can discern the outline of a new consensus. Free market, liberal Toryism used to promote One Nation goals.”

With these words Damian Green announced his support for David Davis. Mr Green, traditionally of the Tory left, has endorsed Mr Davis, traditionally seen as a man of the Tory right. The Green and Davis alliance – and the reasons for it, as cited by Mr Green – provide further illustrations of the ‘And theory of conservatism’.

In the quote above Mr Green twins what have traditionally been seen as left-wing aspirations with right-wing means. He believes that “free market, liberal” measures like targeted tax relief for the poor and inner city school choice provide better routes to the socially just Britain that he came into politics to build.

Mr Green's words are an echo of an inspirational speech that George W Bush made some years ago. In that speech he said that "The methods of the past may have been flawed, but the idealism of the past was not an illusion". A whole range of more controversial Conservative policies - on school choice, tax relief, family support and abstinence education - are most likely to help Britain's poorest people.

Honest policies on family and drugs do not need to be authoritarian. They, too, can be entirely consistent with liberal themes of diversity and localism. The problem of current government policy is not primarily its liberalism but its centralised authoritarianism. Welfare programmes owned or funded by this government invariably share the same biases against the family, against abstinence-based drug rehabilitation and against real school choice. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that Mr Green, in the TRG Macmillan Lecture of two weeks ago, said:

"The most important community is the family, and the family is the most important support network for children. So One Nation Conservatives should be entirely happy to support policies which help children grow up with two parents in a stable relationship, and using the tax system to help married couples with children is one obvious way to achieve that."

Comments

[Adrian Owens]

Damian Green has always been one of our most thoughtful and convincing senior MPs; especially in his role as environment spokesman under William Hague.

It was one of MH's many mistakes to sack him from the front bench - but then Damian would never have been comfortable with the way the party's policies developed in the run-up to the election.

[Edward]

I like this.

Green has been positioning himself, If Davis follows this agenda then I would be happy for him to win.