Keir Starmer can’t blame the Tories for his tin ear for the public mood. Who but Starmer could have taken a rose garden in the ebbing glories of late summer and used it to hector his audience about the grim times they have coming under Labour rule?
That sobering prospect was solidified this week when it emerged that the Government wants to ban smoking outside pubs, and is open to imposing minimum prices on alcohol. So much for Starmer’s promise outside 10 Downing Street to ‘tread more lightly on your lives’. These policies have nothing to do with the state of the public finances, and everything to do with the new administration’s gusto for imposing its vision on a wayward public. The Puritans are in power, and they mean to use it for your own good.
The British people may be depressingly fond of nannying policies, but they don’t appreciate politicians who major on joyless self-righteousness, especially if they feel like you are handing jobs to your mates and generous pay settlements to your union paymasters at the same time. A new poll found that nearly two thirds of the public thought Labour put ‘helping themselves and their allies’ ahead of ordinary people. The same poll also revealed Keir Starmer’s personal approval score has plummeted well into negative territory since the election and now stands at its lowest-ever level. Is this really the way to secure ten years in power?
It might seem absurd to say so, as Labour return to Westminster after the summer recess armed with a huge majority and begin enacting their agenda in earnest, but Starmer’s misery-forward style has already created an opening that, if pried wider, could eventually offer the Tories a path back to power.
To do so, the Conservatives would have to rediscover their own upbeat instincts. Against Starmer’s grim, officious and puritanical brand, the Tories have a chance to present themselves as spirited, hopeful and, in the best sense, permissive.
It might not always have seemed so in recent years, but this is natural territory for conservatism, which appreciates the limits of politics and the importance of preserving space into which it does not intrude. But to pull this off will also mean strengthening those parts of conservative thought that have been allowed to atrophy. In particular, its capacity for optimism and imagining a future that feels like home.
This kind of conservatism moves beyond left-wing and right-wing stereotypes into territory that the American conservative thinker James Pethoukoukis has described as up-wing. Up-wingers assert that ‘a vibrant and resilient society is one with a firm belief that tomorrow can be better than today’. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, both staunch optimists in the face of narratives of national decline, would have recognised the up-wing message. For those on the Right, as Reagan and Thatcher showed, it comes with a further conviction: that the way to get there is not through state management of the economy, as Starmer and Rachel Reeves believe, but through unlocking the potential and ingenuity of individual enterprise.
As the electorate begins its long journey of disappointment and disillusion with Starmer, and his efforts to to save the country through central control, the Conservative Party needs to develop a clear alternative, rooted in giving agency and hope back to the people.
To bring this contrast home, the Conservatives will need fresh policies that embody the clear blue water between their inclusive, up-wing vision and Labour’s sour brand of favouritism. One example of what that might look like, with potential across many policy domains, is performance-based regulation.
Our dominant model of regulation today is prescriptive: it sets out, often in excruciating detail, the standards that must be met. A depressing recent example is new housing rules that set strict limits on the size of windows and demand second staircases in all properties over 18 metres tall.
Performance-based regulation, by contrast, sets goals that must be met and lets entrepreneurs come up with different ways to achieve them. Sweden regulates its housing this way, and a recent New York Times article highlights the opportunity for innovation this creates:
‘Before Sweden adopted its performance-based code in 1995, wood buildings had been limited to two stories; almost overnight, wooden buildings could be as tall as engineers could prove safe.’
This is an up-wing way to approach the housing crisis, leveraging individual enterprise rather than deciding everything from Whitehall. And performance codes have wider applications as well. In the 1980s, Australia replaced its prescriptive rules for nursing homes with 31 general principles, such as the need to provide a ‘homelike environment’. Nursing homes improved quickly in the aftermath. What might a more performance-based approach do, for example, to improve Britain’s hopelessly expensive childcare?
If the Tories want to win, they need to focus on being everything Starmer isn’t. Among the leadership hopefuls, is anyone bold enough – and optimistic enough – to embrace an up-wing agenda?
Click here to subscribe to our daily briefing – the best pieces from CapX and across the web.
CapX depends on the generosity of its readers. If you value what we do, please consider making a donation.
