Politics: Tory fundamentals

By Richard North - August 19, 2024

Somewhere in the deep background there is a Tory leadership contest going on, so irrelevant to the current political discourse that hardly anyone has noticed it. Media-wise, but for the doggedly loyal Telegraph, which occasionally reports developments, it would probably be buried.

Popping out of the woodwork though is contender Robert Jenrick, who has come up with the stunning proposition that “Conservatives must have core principles around which we can unite”, then offering ten of his own ideas, framed as “foundational values” – a series of principles that will stop Conservatives from getting blown off course or failing to deliver.

In what he calls his “first attempt” to outline what the Tory’s common creed should be, he has not made too bad a fist of things, starting off with the precept that the nation-state is fundamental.

The nation-state, he says, is the most successful vehicle for peace and prosperity ever created. Nations, rather than supranational bodies, are what naturally command loyalty. Thus, he tells us, it is the duty of the government to advance the interests of the citizens that constitute this national community over those outside it.

One has to observe, somewhat ruefully (recognising that the UK is not a nation-state), that had the Tories adopted and then stuck to this precept back in 1960s and 70s, history might have been very different. Perhaps we would not have had to endure decades of membership of what became the EU.

Alongside that, the second principle fits rather neatly, with Jenrick telling us that “our people and Parliament are sovereign”. This would be admirable but for a certain confusion because he goes on to say that “sovereign authority is vested in our democratic parliament”.

Setting aside the view that parliament isn’t particularly democratic, the problem is that either the people can be sovereign, or parliament assumes that status. We can have one or the other, but not both.

As it stands, we have neither. Parliament is sovereign “in its own house” but in many respects can be overridden by the executive, which consistently exercises power without reference to the elected house. Arguably, we would be better off if sovereignty was vested in the people, with power delegated to the elected government which acted under the supervision of an independent parliament.
Jenrick then observes that the protections and freedoms British citizens have enjoyed for centuries do not derive from international human rights treaties, but from statute and the common law. Insofar as that is true, this points to one of the grave weaknesses of the British system of government.

In the US constitution, fundamental protections and freedoms are regarded as inalienable. For them to derive from statute and even common law means that they can be changed at the whim of any government with a strong enough majority to disregard the wishes of the people.

As we are seeing with freedom of speech, the protection afforded by the current system is no protection at all. We need our fundamental rights codified in a written constitution.

Nevertheless, Jenrick is right to say that contested interpretations of international law should never prevent us acting in the national interest. Government, he says, can and should deepen co-operation to tackle shared challenges via international agreements, but must never cede control.

He then adds that public agencies and quangos must be clearly responsible to Ministers, who themselves should be accountable to parliament. But largely, ministers are not accountable to parliament – in practice – and much of the agency and quango structure escapes proper (or any) scrutiny. Jenrick’s words are just words.

For his third item, Jenrick tells us that “market economics drive growth” and that prosperity is not the creation of the state, but of people acting freely in collaboration and competition with each other.

Government is there to create the conditions for entrepreneurs and investors to succeed, dismantle monopolies and crony capitalists, and promote property ownership as a moral good. Like many developed countries, he says, we are trapped in a low-growth cycle. Boosting our GDP per person is a moral imperative. Growth alleviates poverty, increases opportunity, and enables strong public services.

His recipe for improving productivity is to “densify our cities and build infrastructure faster”, but he also recognises that we need reliably cheap energy, which he argues must be built on nuclear power – not expensive, intermittent energy sources with no plan for when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow.

Apparently unwilling to go all the way though, he talks of “pragmatically” balancing net-zero against economic growth and energy security, generating enough energy at prices we can afford. Energy costs have trebled in the last 20 years and, he says, we will reindustrialise only if they fall.

Nodding his head to education and training, he then tells us that we need to equip the next generation with real skills, not low value qualifications. One in five graduates, he says, now end up earning less than they would if they had never gone to university. This, Jenrick says, “must change”.

Item four brings us to the NHS which, as a public service, must be made to deliver. Government should ensure that all, regardless of means, have support in sickness, infirmity and old age.

In a somewhat simplistic overview, though, Jenrick tells us that the failure to deliver is not because of lack of resources but poor productivity: the NHS has a fifth more money, doctors and nurses than it did in 2019, but hospitals are barely treating any more patients. And do, he says, we must advance “bold solutions”.

Now we come to the issue which has raced up to reach top of the list of public concerns. “Mass migration must end”, says Jenrick. Illegal migration is a national security emergency and, over the last 25 years, legal migration has been nearly 100 times higher than the quarter-century preceding it – fuelling the housing crisis, suppressing wages, causing public service waiting lists and destroying trust in politics.

Thus, says Jenrick, the only test for immigration policies is whether they benefit the British people. Britain must become the Grammar school of the Western world, admitting those who contribute more than they receive in benefits and services.

But nothing is said about reducing the level of migrants already in the country – which must be part of any rational immigration policy – and nothing is said about promoting integration and abandoning the failed policy of multiculturalism.

Instead, Jenrick moves straight on to argue that “we need a small state that works, not a big state that fails”. This is something of a dog-whistle issue for the Tories – every Tory politician talks of it, but none ever achieve it.

But, if we are going to dwell in the realms of fantasy, we can go with the man’s view that: “We need an entrepreneurial state that employs the brightest, harnesses technology, obsesses over performance, and can take advantage of the regulatory opportunities afforded by Brexit”.

This would be a state that has the self-awareness to recognise some decisions are best taken at a local level, closer to local people – notwithstanding that many local authorities are so corrupt and incompetent that the more they are detached from decision-making the better. Jenrick would be better off arguing for a fundamental reform of local government.

For his seventh item, Jenrick wants the Tories to become a national party again, which means standing for forgotten Britain: the 30-somethings stuck in their childhood bedroom; the deprived towns Westminster neglects; the parents struggling with bills; the white working-class boys falling behind; the communities across the four nations whose patriotic unionism isn’t reciprocated. In short, he says, we must become the trade union for the entire country.

That leaves three more items. One of those is devoted just to prisons. Yet they are but one part of a dysfunctional police and justice system. We need more than just a focus on this narrow segment.

Item nine talks of promoting national unity, which includes nourishing civil society, and robustly defending our values against those who despise us. This could be interesting, not least if Jenrick defines those who despise us.

Finally, we get to “peace comes through strength”, a call to “defend our beliefs in the marketplace of ideas and the arena of geopolitical reality”. This is achieved “by investing substantially more in our defences and protecting our critical industrial capabilities”. I would have hoped for better, such as a cool appraisal of our defence priorities before committing to further spending.

Overall, though, we mustn’t complain. Taking the cue from Samuel Johnson who famously described a woman’s preaching as like a dog’s walking on his hind legs: “It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.

Actually to have a Tory politician thinking about the fundamentals is surprising enough. It is too much to expect that it should be done well.