Is the Right ready to take advantage of a fractious Left in the increasingly unlikely scenario that Andy Burnham will call a general election if he becomes Prime Minister? It is hard to see it is, given the showing of Kemi Badenoch at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London today. Where is the enthusiasm for the Tory leader?
Where is the enthusiasm for the Tory leader?
If there ever was a friendly audience for a Conservative leader, ARC ought to be it. The conference – which was co-founded by Sir Paul Marshall, proprietor of The Spectator – is nothing if not a staunch platform for social conservatism, and has attracted large audiences for the likes of Jordan Peterson. Yet the polite applause – lukewarm and sporadic might be better words – awarded to Badenoch contrasts somewhat awkwardly with the adulation which seems to greet Andy Burnham wherever he goes at the moment.
It is not that there was anything wrong with what Badenoch had to say. She touched on all the areas which ought to press the right buttons with conservatives.
On the issue of family, she went a little further than mainstream politicians have dared to go for many years, attacking a culture which promotes the joys of childlessness over those of raising a family – while also suggesting that we needn’t expect much in the way of tax breaks for parents should the Conservatives find their way back to power as these have never worked well.
Badenoch made the case for a ‘high growth, low immigration economy’ in which welfare reform – getting people off benefits when they don’t need to be on them – is used to expand the workforce rather than opening the doors to migrant workers. She suggested that a future Conservative government would produce £25 billion of revenue from reopening the North Sea to new licences, and that part of this would be used to reduce energy bills.
VAT – which is levied at 5 per cent on energy bills – would be removed from them for five years. Badenoch reiterated that she would abolish Net Zero targets, telling her audience that she was one of only two MPs who spoke up to oppose Net Zero when it was infamously debated in the Commons in the dying days of Theresa May’s government without even a vote. (Actually, what she said in the debate was: “Many of my constituents, especially schoolchildren, will be delighted by this announcement, but others are rightfully sceptical about the costs. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that the plan will be achievable and affordable?” She didn’t exactly denounce Net Zero).
But that aside, will any of this really gain traction if it cannot even rouse a paying audience of conservatives? There is a serious danger that Andy Burnham’s putsch against Keir Starmer will change the mood music of politics. He doesn’t seem to have to hold reasoned, consistent views on anything to be treated as the messiah. His flip-flops on fiscal policy, Waspi women and rejoining the EU seem to go unnoticed – and unpunished. Burnham already seems to be on a honeymoon during Starmer’s political funeral.
Meanwhile, there seems little momentum for anyone on the Right. Reform UK, for the moment at least, seems in a bit of a retreat following three disappointing by-elections in a row. Badenoch, who ought to be benefitting from Reform’s poor showing as well as from Labour’s civil war, seems to be reduced to a faint voice in the wilderness, unable to stir what should be a friendly crowd. It is as if conservatives, in common with the wider public, are still not ready to entertain the possibility of a Conservative government, so fresh do the failures of the last one still stick in the mind.
Admittedly, conservativism doesn’t tend to produce Martin Luther Kings. Rousing speeches and rallies are its antithesis. Nevertheless, I can’t help feeling from what we have seen in recent days, Burnham might be capable of winning a general election should be decide to go quickly, before he has given his ill-defined policies chance to fail. The voters that Labour has lost to the Greens might well return to the fold, as might some from Reform UK.
In another three years things might be very different. By then a fiscal crisis may well have turned political debate on its head, and the public be in the mood for electing steady pairs of hands. But for the moment the centre-right is not even generating smoke and dust. Conservatism seems hardly to be in the game at all.
Comments