The Conservative vision for our society is driven by an ideology that is outdated, philosophically unsound, and lacks basic human compassion.
I wasn’t in Britain during the Thatcher years, and even if I had been, I would have been too young to really understand and remember the political landscape. I came to this country in 1999, when New Labour had been in power for two years but was still shiny and new, when things still “could only get better”. My political consciousness when it comes to Britain therefore was shaped by a landscape where for a long time the Conservative party was beyond the pale, where they and their ideas were hardly even taken seriously. A procession of failed Tory leaders filed past, consigned to history, with me hardly noticing. The most remarkable thing about Michael Howard was that there was “something of the (k)night about him”, and in my memory Iain Duncan Smith’s leadership has no distinguishing features whatsoever.
And then along came David. I remember the Davis/Cameron leadership contest, and I remember finding it distinctly disturbing that the latter was – occasionally – making points I could agree with. This was clearly the man who was going to make the Tories electable again, and that gave me a vague sense of unease, though beyond pointing at specific policies I disagreed with I couldn’t have told you why. It has taken the Tories getting into power for me to realise where my real fundamental disagreements with them are, and I think it’s worth writing about – to make it crystal clear for all those of us who, for one reason or another, don’t remember the Thatcher years.
It is very rare in politics these days to speak of visions. The end of Communism, the fall of the Iron Curtain, heralded an end of ideology, and it is a lot more fashionable these days to discuss specific policies than grand visions. And yet, the vision is still there behind all the the detail, shaping that detail all the time, even if we can’t see the wood for the trees. Once the Conservatives were in power – and let’s face it, coalition or not, these are mostly Conservative policies that are being pushed through Parliament right now – their actions began to reveal the vision that drives them.
One of the first things to note is the Tory obsession with cuts. Ostensibly, this is to do with reducing the deficit. And yet, both the extent of the cuts and how they are being implemented goes well beyond that. Take, for instance, education and schools where the previous government’s Building Schools for the Future programme has now been thoroughly dismantled by Michael Gove, while parents, teachers and private companies are urged to apply for government funding to build new “free schools”. There is no argument on earth that can convince me that this is being done simply to reduce the budget deficit. Rather, it is driven by entrenched Tory ideology – the ideology of the small state, where the public sector must be dismantled and handed over to private enterprise. There is a blind belief here that “the market” does everything better and more efficiently than the state and that therefore as much as possible should be taken out of state control and handed over to the private sector.
The vision of the small state at any cost is highlighted further by calls from the Tory backbench and well-known Tory commentators like Tim Montgomerie for even the ring-fenced parts of public spending (foreign aid and the NHS) or the BBC to “feel the pain”. Such language makes me think not so much of reducing the deficit in order to ensure economic stability (and whether that works remains to be seen anyway) but of an almost childish, vindictive and willful destruction of the state.
Along with the small state, another key pillar of the Tory vision for our future is the family. David Cameron declared back in January that he wanted to lead the most family-friendly government in UK history. And yet, his government’s actions betray a sadly and shockingly narrow definition of family. The emergency budget hits women disproportionately harder than men, and single mothers even more so. Child benefit, housing benefit and a number of other benefits, allowances and services suffering the most severe cuts are disproportionately used by women. The proposed tax breaks for marriage – and I have no doubt that they will be back on the agenda soon enough – would only have applied to married couples where one partner didn’t work. This sends one message loud and clear: If you are a woman, get yourself married and preferably stay at home. No matter how many times David Cameron declares that when he says marriage he also means civil partnership, his vision of families is narrow, restrictive, and in the 21st century unrealistic. We are unlikely to return to the 1950s, regardless of the punishing cuts burdening single mothers or the “carrot” of a tax break for marriage.
And thus the twin visions of the small state and the nuclear family as the core unit of society are being rammed down our throats at any cost and by any means available. Learned-sounding men are telling us how it’s all about numbers and the deficit, how if we don’t do this we will end up like Greece, how it’s all about economics and there is only one way. What is important to realise is that there is more than one way.
Economics barely qualifies as a science. I can say this – I have a degree in it. Economics tells us that certain monetary and fiscal policies are likely – but by no means guaranteed – to produce particular outcomes. Economics does not tell us which of these outcomes are preferable. It can’t – it has no way of making that judgement. We as people make that judgement based on our values; our leaders make that judgement for us based on their values. It is very important to realise that any political debate at its core is not about outcomes – those are secondary. It is about values.
I am not going to try to second-guess Conservative values at this point. I can make some educated guesses on the subject, but ultimately those values are alien to me if they lead us to the small state and the nuclear family at any cost – which they clearly do. My values are different. Like many Conservatives I do value individualism and achievement – but only to an extent. Unlike most Conservatives, I realise that no one ever achieves anything entirely by themselves: There is a whole structure and society around us, a whole lot of factors like who our parents are or whether we were born black or white, male or female, straight or gay, that either limit or enhance our opportunities and choices in life. I believe that we as a society should counter-act those accidents of birth and should strive to create structures where their influence on choices and opportunities is minimised. I also believe that the more fortunate among us have a duty to support the less well-off. I firmly believe that the welfare state and progressive taxation are good things (and I say this as a higher-rate tax payer). I believe that while the market can create efficient outcomes in some situations, it is worth sacrificing some efficiency in order to gain social justice. Additionally, as an economist I recognise that in most real-life circumstances the market isn’t as efficient as economic theory would have it, and that there is a very good case for public provision of a significant number of goods and services.
And this is where any flirtation I might have ever considered with David Cameron’s Conservative party must end. Their vision, their fundamental values, are irreconcilable with mine. Their economic ideology is based on flawed assumptions as well as lacking the basic human quality of compassion; their social vision, too, is flawed and outdated.