If even former Conservative PMs accept we lost our way in office, then Badenoch should be able say so too | Conservative Home

The Prime Minister is fond of making two points in response to almost any question he is asked. First that the Labour Government has introduced “free” breakfast clubs in primary schools. Secondly, that Liz Truss “crashed the economy.” Doubtless, the Chancellor will also raise these subjects during her Budget speech next week. The Conservatives could respond by saying that parents, rather than the state, should have responsibility for providing children with breakfast. Or note that many schools had pulled out of the scheme, as there was not enough funding to cover it. So far as Truss is concerned, they could observe that it is simply untrue that the economy “crashed”; it grew by 0.1 per cent during the third quarter of 2022, which covered her time in Downing Street.

But the Conservatives tend not to get drawn into a discussion of the minutiae of the administrative challenges of breakfast clubs or a statistical analysis of the Truss premiership. Instead, they groan. That is the correct response. The public is also groaning. They want a Government that will face up to the considerable difficulties the country faces and offer a genuine way forward. Not boasting about breakfast clubs or endlessly blaming its predecessors. There is a widespread sense that though the Conservative Government did a bad job, Labour is proving even worse.

Does that mean we have been forgiven yet? We have not. Under conventional political circumstances, in a two-party system, being less bad than the other lot is sufficient. The electorate has long held a healthy scepticism towards politicians, while accepting the democratic duty to make a choice. The Heath Government was pretty disastrous. Nationalisation, subsidies, corporatism, increases in money supply pushing up inflation, U-turns, the three-day week…a supposedly Conservative Government adopted socialist policies.

Then, in 1975 Margaret Thatcher was elected leader. At first, she was a bit nervous at the dispatch box and faced a lot of patronising comments. But by 1976, the Conservatives moved ahead in the opinion polls. The local elections that year were the first test for Jim Callaghan, the new Prime Minister. Labour made huge losses. The Conservatives gained control of Birmingham City Council with a pledge to sell council houses.

By the time of the 1979 General Election, the argument that the Conservatives “made a mess of it last time” just didn’t cut it. There was a warning about a “confrontation with the trade unions.” But given that there had just been a “winter of discontent” of strikes under Labour, that objection lacked credibility. The 1979 election was fought on Labour’s record and the Conservative alternative. If Labour had banged on about the three-day week back in 1973, the voters would have groaned at them. Just as they will if Labour decides to focus on Kwasi Kwarteng’s 2022 mini Budget in the 2029 election campaign.

All well and good. Except the snag is that we are no longer in a two-party system, and so a rerun of the scenario from half a century ago is less likely. Voters who think the Conservatives were bad, but that Labour are completely dire, do not have to sullenly return to the Tory fold. They can plump for Reform UK and its leader, Nigel Farage, with his remarkable talent of sounding grumpy and cheerful at the same time.

So forgiveness, defined as former Conservative voters deciding to vote Conservative again, will be harder to obtain. Thus the Conservatives will have to work harder to achieve it. That certainly includes adopting proper Conservative policies, which has started to happen. But also a stronger repudiation of the Conservatives’ record in Government. Kemi Badenoch has done this to a limited extent but has been constrained from being too emphatic. Partly that is because if taunted by Labour the natural reaction is to defend the Conservative record – highlighting the successes and extenuating circumstances for the failings. But also out of concern for Party unity. If she starts dissing her predecessors, then they might be provoked into returning fire.

All very tricky. Still, there is some good news via an excellent new book. Prosperity Through Growth: Boosting Living Standards in an Age of Autocracy and AI, co-authored by Arthur B. Laffer, Matthew Elliott, Michael Hintze, and Douglas McWilliams.  It has been reviewed on this site by Andrew Gimson. (Also by me for the Foundation for Economic Education, a United States think tank.) It makes a powerful case for free enterprise policies, as you would expect. Also that in the UK we have lost our way in that respect, under Conservative as well as Labour Governments. Quite so. But what really leaps out of the volume and punches you on the nose are the mea culpas from the former Conservative Prime Ministers and Chancellors that agreed to be interviewed.

Boris Johnson told the authors:

“There needs to be some way of doing more to restrain public spending in this country. It’s terrible.”

To give emphasis to the message, the book has a graph next to his quote showing how much faster public spending rose, as a share of GDP, in the UK compared to other countries between 2019 and 2024.

David Cameron said:

“We need to provide the big picture that growth isn’t working because there is too much regulation, there’s too much control. No one can invest, no one can build anything. The system’s broken.”

Cameron added:

“I’m a fiscal conservative, because ultimately you’ve got to grow the economy faster than you’re growing public spending. You’ve got to hold back public spending, and you’ve got to have a balance, and that will help you cut taxes.”

Rishi Sunak told them:

“It’s not complicated, right? Win an election with a majority and have a party that agrees. Yes, we do need to deregulate and not have legislative targets for the environment and net zero, etc, etc. And we should scrap the Habitats Directive, and we should not have the Equal Pay Act work like this. It’s clearly mad if that’s how it’s affecting companies. And you just need your party to agree with that, and pass the bill in Parliament, then crack on with it, right? The Conservative Party disagrees on all these things. And obviously, I wasn’t in a position that won an election with a majority, but if you had you could do all that…”

I would argue that Sunak could and should have implemented free enterprise policies. The Conservative overall majority would probably have been big enough to cope with any rebellions. However, the relevant point is that he acknowledges he would like to have adopted that approach and that he accepts he did not succeed in doing so.

Philip Hammond says:

“Our hole is deep, both in terms of taxation and in terms of incentives not to work. And it isn’t obvious how you can reverse that within the democratic consensus. Political realism: You don’t get elected by telling people hard truths.”

Well, he always was rather gloomy, wasn’t he? But whatever you think of the political excuses there is no denial from him that the high tax legacy from the Conservatives, which he among others left us, was damaging and unjustified in terms of the economics.

There is quite a bit of passing the buck. Johnson says that when Sunak was Chancellor:

“I kept on waiting for Rishi to pupate into this Lawsonian figure that I thought he was going to be.”

Plenty more in this vein. Boris even rolls back a bit on net zero. My contention is that it is not merely of historical interest. Badenoch should feel emboldened by all this to say that the last Conservative Government lost its way. That it applied socialist rather than Conservative policies. That we have learnt the lessons and are now back on the free enterprise path of rolling back the state. Rather than this message causing a split in Conservative ranks, it appears to be broadly accepted even by the culprits. It’s time to fess up to the people.