Capitalism: a humanitarian mission, but can Tories spread the wealth?
written for The Telegraph, 1 May 2014
Last night, on Channel 4 News, I used the phrase “profit is not a dirty word”. I was talking in that instance about arts funding (as I point out for The Spectator, the arts have been hit hard by the recession – why shouldn’t theatres take BP’s money if it means we all get to see more Shakespeare?). But private enterprise, large and small, plays a central role in powering Britain’s prosperity. And not just Britain: thanks to the opening up of trade barriers, and the rise of enterprise in the developing world, global poverty halved between the early 1980s and 2005. And since 2005, despite the global slowdown, world poverty has halved again. Capitalism is a humanitarian mission.
But lifting people out of the most entrenched forms of poverty isn’t as simple as opening markets and waving a magic wand. That’s true in the developing world, and it’s true in Britain. Private enterprise needs defenders more than ever. But it needs defenders who understand the scale of the inequality that still exists in Britain: the inequality of access to education, jobs, and capital that are all prerequisites for Tory visions of unfettered self-improvement. The natural defenders of enterprise – the Conservative Party – haven’t yet convinced the electorate they’re committed to enabling the aspirations of ordinary people, not just those who have already been born lucky. Or as Maggie put it, “People think that at the top there isn’t much room. My message is that there’s tons of room at the top.”
Being optimistic about Britain’s potential means believing that everyone in Britain can achieve. That means accepting modern Britain as it is. Or as Michael Gove noted on Monday, celebrating the fact that “we are stronger together as a United Kingdom, as a multi-cultural nation than we could ever be if we looked back to the past”, while conserving the shared principles – liberty, democracy, freedom of expression – that should bind us together. As Gove wrote in 2001, along with Nick Boles and Ed Vaizey, “Toryism, at its best, has always been about respecting human nature in all its diversity and dealing with the world as it is not as dogmatists might wish it to be”. At the next election, the Tory Party must make clear that it offers inclusion and a shot at prosperity to everyone – regardless of race, class and postcode.
That’s why I’m proud that today, Bright Blue launches The Modernisers’ Manifesto, which I’ve co-edited with James Brenton and Bright Blue’s director Ryan Shorthouse. It is, incidentally, the last major project I’ll work on for Bright Blue (though I’ll stay involved), as I focus on completing my PhD, and on my own writing here at The Telegraph, at The Spectator and elsewhere. The Modernisers’ Manifesto is a collection of essays from leading Conservative thinkers, each proposing the types of policies the Conservative Party will need to consider to make an inclusive offer to the people of Britain in 2015. Not all contributors will agree with each other’s proposals – Bright Blue won’t endorse every policy suggestion, and I certainly don’t agree with the detail of each myself. As an organisation, we’re not, for example, endorsing Ian Birrell’s call for radical legalisation and regulation of all drugs, just inviting some discussion of decriminalisation: and if it gives anyone the impression that we modernisers are a bunch of druggies, I’m afraid I’ve never even smoked a tobacco cigarette. But what unites all our contributors, from Andrew Mitchell and Paul Goodman to Nick Hurd and Anne Jenkin, is a sense that the Conservative Party needs to think afresh about our relationship with modern Britain. Even after the disastrous leadership of Gordon Brown, the middle classes in this country continue to vote Labour – the Conservative Party needs to ask itself why.
Ours is a broad church of modernisation, but it remains underpinned by a Tory commitment to Britain’s core institutions: the Army, the family, our traditional alliances. That’s why I was particularly proud to have Liam Fox contributing, and alongside us at our launch this morning, who apart from sharing my love of most things American, is one our staunchest advocates of maintaining Britain’s capacity to intervene in the world around us. Fox told us he’d like to “throw out the old labels of wets and drys” when it comes to modernisation, and he’s right: there’s nothing “wet” about radical reform of public services, or a defence of entrepreneurship. But for the Conservative Party to respond to modern Britain it must represent modern Britain: multi-ethnic, gender-inclusive, across the breadth of our four nations. As Fox warned the party at our launch: “you must evolve or die; that is as true in politics as it is in medicine”.
