A constant criticism of the New Labour government, right from the very start, and one that came exclusively from the Left, was that Blair represented a continuation of Thatcherism, just with deeper pockets. “We didn’t pound the streets for a government that is ‘Labour’ in name only,” was a regular refrain (usually from people who had never pounded a street in their lives).
Blair’s success was founded on that perception: deliberately seeking to govern for the whole country and not just those who happened to have voted for his party, he governed conservatively in some areas, and did so more competently than his predecessor. This endlessly frustrated his Conservative opponents who found it difficult to come up with a persuasive reason for their former voters to return to them.
But he also did some radical, explicitly Left-wing things: the national minimum wage and a trebling of the NHS budget were among the red meat policies that ministers offered to keep any Left-wing rebels muted, and just as frustrated as the Conservatives.
I suspect that if Boris Johnson had not chosen to take a leaf out of Blair’s book, had he rejected the notion that levelling up and government intervention, not to mention high levels of spending, should be key to his programme of government, he might not be in the same levels of difficulty he now finds himself. There are some on his party’s Right-wing who might feel more enthusiastic about defending him over Partygate had he not rejected the Thatcherite orthodoxy that brought them into politics. His removal as prime minister might give them hope that a return to a low tax, low borrowing, small state Britain is yet possible, even in this parliament.
The charge sheet was impressive even before the pandemic forced the chancellor to loosen the purse strings to fund eye-watering levels of cash for furlough and other job-protection schemes in the last two years. Last autumn Rishi Sunak announced an extra £23 billion of spending, aimed at traditional Labour targets such as the NHS, encouraging growth in poorer regions of the UK, education for children with special needs and various transport projects.
Today, in response to higher energy prices, the chancellor has announced another spending spree: a £9bn help package, including a £200 energy rebate for every British household, funded by £5.5bn of loans and repaid by higher bills over the next five years.
It reeks of New Labour interventionist populism, but it also has its critics. Did we really campaign for Boris Johnson in order to institute Blairite economic policies, ask a growing number of his angry backbenchers. The answer to that is no, you campaigned for him because he was your party’s best chance of delivering Brexit. And he’s delivered on that.
Both Johnson and Sunak are sensitive, however, to the charge made against them, and have sought to depict themselves as instinctive tax-cutters, despite the National Insurance and Corporation Tax increases in the pipeline. But as Johnson’s supporters rightly point out, Thatcher herself, having promised not to double VAT during the 1979 general election, then raised it by a mere 87.5 per cent, from eight to 15 per cent. Thatcher was a more ideological prime minister than Johnson but, like him, she was also a pragmatist who learned to do things she didn’t want to do in order to remain in the job long enough to do the stuff she actually enjoyed.
Given that most governments are given their majorities in the Commons through a minority of the electorate, it is remarkable that the importance of governing on behalf of everyone – including those whose preferred parties lost out on the chance to govern – remains a priority for them. This is a good thing; it is the principle on which tolerance of first-past-the-post as an electoral system is maintained. Citizens who didn’t vote for the party of government last time round cannot be ignored and side-lined for the length of a parliament. Johnson should be given credit – as Blair was before him – for seeking to take along with him as many Britons as possible, whatever their individual politics.
None of this helps us, however, reach a sensible conclusion as to whether Johnson and Sunak’s expensive interventions are good policy or if they will result in sluggish growth or high inflation in the future. Certainly Labour will continue to find it difficult to criticise high levels of public spending, and the resistance of Johnson’s own Right-wing will make Keir Starmer’s criticisms of alleged penny pinching even less credible.
Some in the Conservative Party have forgotten just how tarnished their reputation became under John Major and his successors in opposition. That Johnson won an 80-seat majority in 2019 says more about his personal appeal than about his party’s. As Thatcherites sit and grind their teeth during the chancellor’s statement today, they would do well to remind themselves of that. Otherwise, when presented with the statement, “The Conservative Party”, the correct question could turn out to be “Which political party lost office in 2024 after 14 years in government?”
Jeopardy indeed.
