There is every reason to fear what Britain under David Cameron would look like, says Marjorie Smith
If the Tories win the next general election, how would they go about governing Britain and what would be the consequences of four or five years or more of Tory rule? Although David Cameron and George Osborne have been deliberately vague in setting out their agenda, we can predict where their priorities lie and where their prejudices will impact most.
Cameron and his cohorts may control the electoral destiny of the party, but the Conservative Party remains far more reactionary than its leadership. Where Margaret Thatcher reflected the prejudices of her core supporters, Cameron’s apparent embrace of personal liberty in the private sphere is at odds with the petit-bourgeois insularity of many Tories – although it does resonate with the smaller libertarian wing of the party.
Further, a great deal of Cameron’s support within the Tory Party is based on the mute acceptance that his apparent electoral popularity can deliver a Conservative government for the first time in 13 years.
As with Labour in the mid-1990s, most Tories will accept a leadership clique that is weak on ideology if it promises electoral success and is prepared to deliver on a modicum of core Conservative values.
However, that acceptance is predicated precisely on election victory and the subsequent translation into policy of traditional Tory beliefs as far as the likes of health and education are concerned. For the Conservatives, this means sticking with the principle that the market will nearly always be the most efficient method of delivering goods and services. They regard the state as incapable of delivering services through the public sector without attendant gross inefficiencies. And grassroots Tories will expect to see tax cuts, both on earned and non-earned income.
Finally, the party’s aggressive Euroscepticism aims to make the United Kingdom a semi-detached member of the European Union, happy to benefit from the advantages it delivers for capital, such as the free movement of goods, but hostile to any benefits it might have for labour, in the form of the Social Chapter, for instance.
To deliver on these core Tory values in the current economic climate will necessitate savage cuts in public expenditure. Public sector workers will bear the brunt of a Tory government bent on reducing the size of the state.
As a consequence, there will be massive job cuts, as the privatisation of selected services, especially local government ones, will be back in vogue. This will have profound consequences for education and social services budgets and lead to mass redundancies and outsourcing in those areas. Local education authorities will be the first in line for emasculation.
Central government expenditure will also face swingeing cuts. Sure Start and other current responsibilities of the Department for Children, Schools and Families are likely to be at risk. We should expect the school building programme to be scaled back drastically.
The Tories’ promises about the National Health Service will eventually be exposed as a sham. They may have pledged to keep to the level of current expenditure in the short term, but in the long term we should prepare for cuts in real terms. The same will apply to international development, with an initial ring-fencing commitment designed to disguise a diminution in the amount committed to aid in the future.
We should expect a gradual but perceptible expansion of private healthcare providers into the NHS, creaming off the more lucrative options in an increasing number of areas. Tory MEP Daniel Hannan is not alone in his party when he calls the NHS a “60-year-old mistake”.
The Tories have already signalled that only the rich and the affluent middle classes will be insured against the rising cost of care in old age. The Shadow Chancellor’s figures do not add up and decent care will be out of the reach of many, with a couple having to find £32,000 when they retire in order to opt in to the Tories’ scheme. Labour’s proposal for a national care service will be cast aside.
Public sector pay is certain to suffer, with below-inflation pay-rises, year on year, leading to damagingly lower wage levels
and a growing lack of esteem among those employees who manage to keep their jobs. The prejudice against the public sector was a central tenet of Thatcherism and it took a long time for public services to recover from 18 years of Tory misrule.
Many Tories still have an almost religious faith in tax cuts. They cling to the belief that the lower the tax take, the more efficient the country will be. It as if they regard the period 1979-97 as some sort of a Shangri-La with a highly efficient economy producing unparalleled levels of service efficiently delivered by the private sector. The reality is that public services were moribund, infrastructure was crumbling, and there were historically low levels of pay and continual cuts in resources, as everything and everyone was viewed as a profit centre.
The current Tory enthusiasm is for inheritance tax, with the richest 20,000 families benefitting disproportionately compared with the middle class and the working class getting nothing out of it. Among the biggest beneficiaries will be David Cameron and George Osborne. Cameron is worth in excess of £30 million. Osborne can boast a more modest £4 million, but he stands to inherit a great deal more.
A Tory government will also strive to cut income tax, particularly for the well-off, initially perhaps by increasing the levels at which the higher rates of tax kick in. Only the current economic crisis has forced the Tories to agree to keep Labour’s higher rates of tax for 12 months if they win power.
One of the biggest dangers for Labour is the Tory plan for constitutional reform. Some Conservatives think they have found a way to stay in office forever and they intend to use the MPs’ expenses scandal as their Trojan horse. Cameron’s proposals to reduce the number of MPs from 636 to 500 is a blatant bid to redraw constituency boundaries in Labour strongholds and cut the number of MPs in those areas.
London, the north-west and north-east of England, the Midlands, Scotland and Wales would see a significant reduction in the number of representatives they send to the Commons.
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that as many as 50-75 Labour seats could disappear. The SNP and Plaid Cymru could lose 20-30 seats and the Conservatives 10-20. This would lead to an inbuilt Tory majority in England and the likelihood of the Tories having a semi-permanent veto over who could form a government at Westminster.
This would only encourage separatist nationalism in Scotland and Wales, where the traditional political cultures would be in continual confrontation with a Tory government. House of Lords reform would be halted and proportional representation placed on the back-burner. Alex Salmond and David Cameron might find they have a common interest in the form of an independent Scotland.
Finally, the isolationist foreign policy that the Tories are prepared to adopt would be at odds with historical British interests for the for the first time in centuries. The decision to opt-out of the European People’s Party, the main centre-right grouping in the European Parliament, puts Euroscepticism above co-operation with the likes of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. We can expect a bellicose nationalism to erupt from the Tory backbenches as the EU is treated more like a hostile foreign power.
The Tory aim will be to enhance the one-way “special relationship” with the United States, even in the face of Barack Obama’s preference for Britain to play a leading role in a stable EU as a strategic partner, rather than snipe from the sidelines.
In short, the return of a Tory government would be a disaster for the Britain, with the likelihood of an independent Scotland and the real possibility of a permanent right-wing majority in what remains of the UK.
