Winning over Workington Man will be tough for the Tories

The major parties competing in Britain’s Christmas election are playing for high stakes, but it is the Tories who are taking the biggest gamble. Boris Johnson and his strategist Dominic Cummings are attempting a fundamental re-positioning of the Conservative party aimed at winning over traditional Labour voters in those seats in the Midlands and the North that have tended historically to reject the Tories. The Conservatives are hoping to present a new brand of “blue collar conservatism”, one designed to attract those in more working class constituencies who overwhelmingly voted for Leave in the 2016 referendum.

So far, this effort has amounted to a few big policy announcements. There was an extra £1.8 billion investment in the NHS and the recruitment of 20,000 police officers. This will be accompanied by a host of tougher penal measures, such as the extension of sentences for serious offenders and improvements to the UK’s prisons. Another macro-scale project is a new Towns Fund set to provide “innovative regeneration plans” by investing a total of £3.6 billion into 100 places across England.

Here is the problem. These are certainly broad policies which will garner much support in the country, but there might not be enough voters willing to reward Johnson for them – unless they are backed up with policies designed to tackle the specific problems of the less affluent who struggle to keep their heads above water. The Towns Fund is a positive development, but it might also be criticised as amounting to little more than a re-hashing of already well-worn policies begun under the coalition government, most notably George Osborne’s “Northern Powerhouse” scheme.

If the Conservatives are to go toe to toe with Labour, their commitment to answering the “condition of England” question will have to be more than a cynical and tokenistic ploy – it must be sincere and reflected in concrete manifesto commitments which work on a more personal and human level. Simply re-heating a version of Osbornism with a few more Keynesian treats thrown on top of it will not cut it. A token approach might, very fairly, be seen as a Brexit bribe rather than a compelling argument for a Conservative government.

Beyond the big pitches, more detail needs to emerge in the course of the Conservatives’ campaign. James Kirkup, the Director of the Social Market Foundation think tank, said in The Times on Wednesday that if Johnson is serious about re-orientating the party towards working class voters, he needs to think more deeply about the sorts of micro-scale policies which would help those on a full-time wage of £24,697 in a seat such as Bolsover or Workington. Kirkup is right.

Instead of prioritising cuts to National Insurance Contributions, Johnson could instead reverse restrictions to universal and tax credits introduced under the coalition government. He might also focus on tackling alarming rises in child poverty, champion the cause of tenants in the private rented sector, and promise to build more social housing.

The worst result for Johnson would be, as James Blagden explained in Reaction yesterday, that he ends up stranded in electoral no man’s land – too focused on Brexit to win over England’s more affluent middle classes but too weak on social policy to convince sufficient blue collar voters accustomed to voting for Labour.

Many commentators and politicians, most notably Tony Blair, have claimed that it is foolish to confuse Brexit with other issues facing the country in a general election. This observation is rather trite and misleading – it is patently clear that they are connected. How Brexit is delivered (if it is delivered) and by whom will be inseparable in the minds of many voters from the wider question of national renewal. Whether Blair likes it or not, “taking back control” from the European Union is intimately connected with a desire to take control of defining new social and economic priorities.

For the Conservatives, this means that the promise to deliver Brexit must now be attached to answering the question of what will be done if Johnson is eventually given a mandate to execute his withdrawal deal after December. Parts of the country which voted to leave and support Johnson’s plan to facilitate the UK’s exit deserve to know how redistributing sovereign power back from Brussels to Westminster will help fight the decay of their communities. The question of how we leave the European Union is irrevocably tied up with the challenge of how Britain will redefine itself politically after the Brexit crisis.

The voters the Tories need to reach will legitimately ask if Johnson and his Chancellor Sajid Javid are credible when they say they are about to disrupt the status quo. Will a government and a party committed – most of the time – to fiscal restraint and budgetary discipline since 1979 really now become the party of high investment and budget deficits?

The dominant Tory credo of recent decades – running through the Thatcher, Major, and Cameron administrations – usually prioritised  the power of private enterprise, over and above the capacities of the state, to generate improvements for individuals and power innovation and growth. It emphasised the utility of cutting taxes where possible above increasing state spending in creating wealth. Will Johnson and Chancellor Sajid Javid, both of whom have in the past positioned themselves as economic Thatcherites, really attempt to steer a different course in order to meet the demands of new voters?

If Johnson’s blue collar courtship is to be a success, he will need to convince new target voters that the Conservative party is no longer the handmaiden of elite finance and vested interests.

It is a difficult balance. If blue collar conservatism is to be about more than a repackaging of dated Osbornism, so the Tories cannot hope to out-spend Corbyn, and nor should they attempt to do so. Instead, the Conservatives should exploit their reputation for relative economic competence to argue that their promises are ambitious, but deliverable. They should still stress economic responsibility while being more relaxed about looking for opportunities for smart, targeted, and sustainable redistribution to tackle child poverty and disadvantage.

If they can get the balance right then there may be a longer-term opening for a populist British conservatism of fairness, one combining a common sense temperament with carefully considered radicalism on policy, and a commitment to concerns beyond SW1. Redistributing power and besieging privilege – where it is unearned and complacent – should be the agenda.

This is quite a task, and one which may in the end prove far too difficult to complete in the frenetic next six weeks.

But it would be one of those great ironies of political history if the inheritors of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy – the Tory Eurosceptics – were to be the ones who, by following the Eurosceptic thread of her legacy to its logical conclusion, ended up advocating policies markedly different to those Thatcher pursued. All of this may come to pass in an effort to reach England’s leave heartlands.