The Tories need a plan for government
Regardless of whether Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch emerges victorious from the Conservative leadership race, the task facing them will be the same: making the party electable again, and preparing to govern Britain.
While it is natural for politicians to focus on the first of these, the second is no less important. As Sir Keir Starmer is currently demonstrating, a party that arrives in Downing Street unprepared will rapidly find itself bogged down, lacking a clear vision and floundering for policies to distract from the headlines which come with the responsibility for the performance of the British state.
It is a notable contrast with his most successful predecessors. When Tony Blair took office in 1997, it was the culmination of intensive efforts to develop an agenda for government. The result was a policy blitz that reshaped the country, beginning almost immediately with independence for the Bank of England.
Similarly, Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street in 1979 after years of work to redefine Conservative policies. The foundation of the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974 provided some of the intellectual firepower necessary for this work; the co-founder of that institution, Sir Keith Joseph, in his role as Mrs Thatcher’s chief policy adviser, also provided a great deal of impetus.
As with Blair, Mrs Thatcher arrived in office prepared to govern, and proceeded to set about the task of undoing years of catastrophic economic policy errors.
The lesson the Conservatives must learn from Sir Keir’s current travails is a simple one: effective governments begin in Opposition. The coming years are an opportunity to develop an agenda for governing without the pressures of day-to-day survival, to do the deep thinking that the necessary reform of Britain’s crumbling public sector requires and to set out an agenda for meaningful deregulation of our economy.
It is a formidable challenge. It is difficult not to suspect that the evident dissatisfaction of the electorate is in part from the sense that governments have allowed problems to mount up, deferring to the future solutions that were seen as too difficult to implement.
The bill for these delays is now due. Both Ms Badenoch and Mr Jenrick have shown early signs that they are aware of the scale of the task facing the next Conservative government. They must now show that they are able to tackle it.