Penny Mordaunt is the Leader of the House and Member of Parliament for Portsmouth North.
Christmastide will shortly be upon us. A time when we gather round the hearth, and sing carols – and watch old movies.
Perhaps the greatest Christmas film is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey played by Jimmy Stewart gets to a final point of despair – an emotion I and fellow Conservatives have become familiar with on several occasions this year.
Bailey wonders what difference it made that he was even around at all. His guardian angel, Clarence, grants him this wish and allows him to see what the world would’ve been like without him.
So, as my Christmas present to you all, I wish to be your guardian angel, and whisk you off to another reality for a moment – one where a Conservative government did not exist… lets us reflect on what might have been if Labour had returned to power in 2015, and continued on their fateful trajectory between 1997 and 2010.
For instead of a Cameron majority it was the Labour landslide. The one where the two Eds – Miliband and Balls – lead the Labour Party to a crushing landslide victory over Conservative Party.
The conservative 2015 intake never was. Oliver Dowden has simply moved from behind the scenes at Number 10 to behind the scenes at CCHQ. Boris Johnson never returned to parliament – instead running for a third term as London mayor; as a result, water cannons are now an integral part of the Metropolitan Police’s arsenal.
Michael Gove, shaken by his shock defeat, has left politics and the media altogether and can be found running ‘Level Up’, not a think tank, but a nightclub in Camberley.
All that the Conservative governments of 2015, 2017, and 2019 to the present day have done, never was.
In this alternative reality, the ‘Ed stone’ is on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square. The near four million people the Conservatives saw joining the workforce – half being women, a quarter being disabled – don’t have the dignity of a pay packet.
Instead of today’s unemployment rate of 3.5 per cent, in our new Labour-led reality it still lingers at eight per cent. The same is true of crime rates, which remain stubbornly high under Labour. The halving of crime that took place under Conservatives never happened. The defence budget black hole persists. Our Armed Forces are weakened by a lack of investment.
The creation of Universal Credit was never progressed and, as a result, during the pandemic legacy benefits systems collapsed and we had no delivery mechanism to support to families at speed.
In this new, grim, reality, the average household pays a thousand pounds more in council tax – mirroring the trajectory Labour followed between 1997 and 2010 when it rose by a staggering 110 per cent. It costs £40 more to fill up your car, because in this new Labour-governed reality fuel duty is now 81p per litre after they increased duty by the same 42 per cent they had done previously, instead of cutting it as we did.
The personal tax allowance isn’t the highest of any G7 nation. The huge increase in number good or outstanding schools never happened and the 24,000 more teachers were not brought in to shape young minds and improve standards.
On the plus side, the state pension has increased – after all, Labour said they’d keep the triple lock we introduced. But the 10.7 million auto enrolled, and the nine million more in an occupational pension schemes under Conservative administration, were abandoned.
Over 800,000 households were not helped by Right to Buy. Over 600,000 were not able to benefit from affordable new builds.
Homelessness didn’t drop by nearly 50 per cent in the last five years, and we didn’t help half a million households in to secure accommodation.
I wonder, would the new Labour Government have broken with their past record and invested in more council housing? Would they have matched our unparalleled investment? Would they have brought down social housing lists by half a million? Judging by their record: no.
Would they have made the biggest rail investment since Queen Victoria sat on the throne? Probably not, considering they only electrified 63 miles of track in their 13 years in power.
Would they have initiated a 25-year environment plan focused on the restoration of wildlife rich habitats, planting forests and expanding marine protected areas? Would they be on course to halt species decline by 2030?
Are they still only monitoring five per cent of storm overflows, compared to the near 100 per cent monitored by this government? Did they increase investment in flood defences?
In this new Labour-led reality we would not have left the EU. There is no department for International Trade. Thousands of tariffs lines would still be in place. And billions of new global trade opportunities would still be out of reach. We wouldn’t be on the way to joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, worth nearly £9 trillion. And as a result, the creation of thousands of high wage jobs would be just a pipe dream.
We would still be paying into the EU, and liable for its Covid recovery programme. We would still have free movement of people and unrestricted immigration. Kate Bingham isn’t a household name or a Dame and our vaccine programme took twice as long. We were not one of the first nations out of lockdown.
You might think I am being unfair to labour; that I’m not factoring in any positives they may have brought. Judge by their performance in Wales, where teacher numbers are down ten per cent and waiting lists five times longer than England.
Would they have matched our 500 per cent increase in renewable energy connected to the grid? Our massive increases to research and development? Would they have cutting the Cost of offshore wind down 70 per cent?
We will never know.
Perhaps Miliband lasted only six weeks in office, making him the shortest serving prime minister of all time. His rules changes to abolish the electoral college in the previous year may resulted in a swift leadership contest and Jeremy Corbyn taking power. In which case the nuclear deterrent was rendered useless, and Huw Edwards now anchors Russia Today.
The point I am making is that every time the Conservatives have come to power our nation is improved. Every time Labour come to power the nation declines. There may have been other things we could have done, but our record is solid. We should remember that. We should remember Labours record too.
I am proud that my party has been where the vigorous debate and new ideas have been. Labour have and are still stuck in an Islington cul-de-sac of irrelevance. The prawn cocktail initiative may have been reactivated, but the innovation and vision has not been.
I never want my city or my country to relive the MRSA infections, pensioner poverty, poor education standards, soaring council tax, sky high truancy and crime rates, nanny state and EU capitulation which Labour gifted them.
It is because I remember their record I am going to fight them every step of the way, alongside my colleagues and our Prime Minister.
So, get some rest, sharpen your pens, hold on to your hats. Because we are not done.
This article is based on the author’s speech to the ConservativeHome Christmas reception earlier this month.
Penny Mordaunt is the Leader of the House and Member of Parliament for Portsmouth North.
Christmastide will shortly be upon us. A time when we gather round the hearth, and sing carols – and watch old movies.
Perhaps the greatest Christmas film is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey played by Jimmy Stewart gets to a final point of despair – an emotion I and fellow Conservatives have become familiar with on several occasions this year.
Bailey wonders what difference it made that he was even around at all. His guardian angel, Clarence, grants him this wish and allows him to see what the world would’ve been like without him.
So, as my Christmas present to you all, I wish to be your guardian angel, and whisk you off to another reality for a moment – one where a Conservative government did not exist… lets us reflect on what might have been if Labour had returned to power in 2015, and continued on their fateful trajectory between 1997 and 2010.
For instead of a Cameron majority it was the Labour landslide. The one where the two Eds – Miliband and Balls – lead the Labour Party to a crushing landslide victory over Conservative Party.
The conservative 2015 intake never was. Oliver Dowden has simply moved from behind the scenes at Number 10 to behind the scenes at CCHQ. Boris Johnson never returned to parliament – instead running for a third term as London mayor; as a result, water cannons are now an integral part of the Metropolitan Police’s arsenal.
Michael Gove, shaken by his shock defeat, has left politics and the media altogether and can be found running ‘Level Up’, not a think tank, but a nightclub in Camberley.
All that the Conservative governments of 2015, 2017, and 2019 to the present day have done, never was.
In this alternative reality, the ‘Ed stone’ is on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square. The near four million people the Conservatives saw joining the workforce – half being women, a quarter being disabled – don’t have the dignity of a pay packet.
Instead of today’s unemployment rate of 3.5 per cent, in our new Labour-led reality it still lingers at eight per cent. The same is true of crime rates, which remain stubbornly high under Labour. The halving of crime that took place under Conservatives never happened. The defence budget black hole persists. Our Armed Forces are weakened by a lack of investment.
The creation of Universal Credit was never progressed and, as a result, during the pandemic legacy benefits systems collapsed and we had no delivery mechanism to support to families at speed.
In this new, grim, reality, the average household pays a thousand pounds more in council tax – mirroring the trajectory Labour followed between 1997 and 2010 when it rose by a staggering 110 per cent. It costs £40 more to fill up your car, because in this new Labour-governed reality fuel duty is now 81p per litre after they increased duty by the same 42 per cent they had done previously, instead of cutting it as we did.
The personal tax allowance isn’t the highest of any G7 nation. The huge increase in number good or outstanding schools never happened and the 24,000 more teachers were not brought in to shape young minds and improve standards.
On the plus side, the state pension has increased – after all, Labour said they’d keep the triple lock we introduced. But the 10.7 million auto enrolled, and the nine million more in an occupational pension schemes under Conservative administration, were abandoned.
Over 800,000 households were not helped by Right to Buy. Over 600,000 were not able to benefit from affordable new builds.
Homelessness didn’t drop by nearly 50 per cent in the last five years, and we didn’t help half a million households in to secure accommodation.
I wonder, would the new Labour Government have broken with their past record and invested in more council housing? Would they have matched our unparalleled investment? Would they have brought down social housing lists by half a million? Judging by their record: no.
Would they have made the biggest rail investment since Queen Victoria sat on the throne? Probably not, considering they only electrified 63 miles of track in their 13 years in power.
Would they have initiated a 25-year environment plan focused on the restoration of wildlife rich habitats, planting forests and expanding marine protected areas? Would they be on course to halt species decline by 2030?
Are they still only monitoring five per cent of storm overflows, compared to the near 100 per cent monitored by this government? Did they increase investment in flood defences?
In this new Labour-led reality we would not have left the EU. There is no department for International Trade. Thousands of tariffs lines would still be in place. And billions of new global trade opportunities would still be out of reach. We wouldn’t be on the way to joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, worth nearly £9 trillion. And as a result, the creation of thousands of high wage jobs would be just a pipe dream.
We would still be paying into the EU, and liable for its Covid recovery programme. We would still have free movement of people and unrestricted immigration. Kate Bingham isn’t a household name or a Dame and our vaccine programme took twice as long. We were not one of the first nations out of lockdown.
You might think I am being unfair to labour; that I’m not factoring in any positives they may have brought. Judge by their performance in Wales, where teacher numbers are down ten per cent and waiting lists five times longer than England.
Would they have matched our 500 per cent increase in renewable energy connected to the grid? Our massive increases to research and development? Would they have cutting the Cost of offshore wind down 70 per cent?
We will never know.
Perhaps Miliband lasted only six weeks in office, making him the shortest serving prime minister of all time. His rules changes to abolish the electoral college in the previous year may resulted in a swift leadership contest and Jeremy Corbyn taking power. In which case the nuclear deterrent was rendered useless, and Huw Edwards now anchors Russia Today.
The point I am making is that every time the Conservatives have come to power our nation is improved. Every time Labour come to power the nation declines. There may have been other things we could have done, but our record is solid. We should remember that. We should remember Labours record too.
I am proud that my party has been where the vigorous debate and new ideas have been. Labour have and are still stuck in an Islington cul-de-sac of irrelevance. The prawn cocktail initiative may have been reactivated, but the innovation and vision has not been.
I never want my city or my country to relive the MRSA infections, pensioner poverty, poor education standards, soaring council tax, sky high truancy and crime rates, nanny state and EU capitulation which Labour gifted them.
It is because I remember their record I am going to fight them every step of the way, alongside my colleagues and our Prime Minister.
So, get some rest, sharpen your pens, hold on to your hats. Because we are not done.
This article is based on the author’s speech to the ConservativeHome Christmas reception earlier this month.