Lord Hannan of Kingsclere was a Conservative MEP from 1999 to 2020, and is now President of the Institute for Free Trade.
The Conservative Party is lagging in the polls for the most elementary of reasons. Not that it has the wrong leaders, or that it has been in office for too long, or that it can’t seem to get anything done. No, the fundamental problem is more basic. Its – our – philosophy is out of fashion.
Most voters don’t want tax cuts. They don’t want personal responsibility. They don’t want limited government. Britain was already in a dirigiste mood going into the lockdown. But, since coming out of it, it has been downright authoritarian.
A major poll by Global Counsel in December found that people want any spare government money to go on spending increases rather than tax cuts. By 64 to 26 per cent, they preferred the statement “The government should prioritise spending on schools and hospitals” to “The government should prioritise cutting income tax.”
A Survation poll last year found that 65 per cent of us want to nationalise buses, 67 per cent trains, and 69 per cent water companies. Half of our heart is in Havana.
Look at those numbers. Fix them in your mind. Notice when the next poll shows the same thing – which, you may be sure, it will. Don’t be tempted to scroll onto the next story, or to Google until you find the one outlying survey that supports your prejudices.
I say this because we are all prone to cognitive biases. Human beings tend to assume that their opinions are more widely shared than they truly are. Psychologists call it “the false consensus effect”.
Many ConHome readers will take it as read that Britain is taxing, spending, and borrowing too much. You might think this so incontrovertibly obvious that no one could seriously dispute it. But assuming that everyone agrees with you is bad politics.
“We’d win if only we started acting like proper Conservatives!” I hear it at every branch event I go to. I read it in every comment thread. “Why should anyone vote for us if we don’t cut taxes? Why are we starving the Armed Forces of resources? Why are we letting the Blob push us around?”
I share all these concerns, as I’m sure every Cabinet minister does. They are basic entry-level Tory beliefs. But it doesn’t follow that the electorate also shares them. Indeed, the closest we got to implementing this kind of agenda (albeit with the error of including a huge energy subsidy) was the Truss/Kwarteng budget. Remember how that went down?
To avoid doubt, I am not arguing that we should give up on reducing the size of government, controlling our borders, freer trade, or any other Conservative precepts. Regular readers will know that this column is forever urging MPs to judge policies, not by their popularity when polled in isolation, but by the popularity of their likely effect. Every Thatcher-era deregulation and privatisation polled badly. But their net effect was to produce a level of growth that gave her three great election victories.
All I am asking for is some acknowledgment of the constraints within which ministers are operating. It is not as simple as saying “Do X, which I happen to favour, and you’ll win a landslide”.
For example, the Autumn Statement, which took two pence off National Insurance, was popular: the Conservatives gained a four-point bump in the polls. But, when you drilled down, it was not the NI cut that won support, but the increase in the state pension (backed by 78 per cent) and the hike in the minimum wage (backed by 85 per cent).
Both these policies were, in economic terms, indefensible. We can’t keep whacking up the state pension at a time when the country is suffering from the effects of the lockdown – a lockdown that was disproportionately painful for young people. The rise in the minimum wage to £11.44 an hour makes it impossible for firms to take on interns – something that used to be their main recruitment tool. I’m pretty sure the Chancellor knows all this and saw those gestures as the best way to make the NI cut palatable.
“Well, why don’t the Tories make the case for a smaller state?” Because that misunderstands what political parties can and can’t do. Voters will never view a politician as disinterested. It is too much to expect a party simultaneously to create demand for a new policy and to position itself as the beneficiary of that demand.
No, the task of changing public opinion falls to the wider conservative movement – to pressure groups, think-tanks, columnists, and associated auxiliaries. The trouble is that, at the moment, most of the people in those categories are training their fire on the Conservative Party.
I fear that it will take a full-scale economic collapse under Labour before people realise how urgent it is to reform and reduce the state. By the time that happens, party politics will be the least of our problems.