It has become received wisdom that the new road to political success is to lean left on economics and right on culture. When the think tank Onward investigated voters’ economic and social preferences at the end of 2020, it found that a critical mass of the electorate want their government to be tough on traditional social issues, especially crime, and to be interventionist economically. They want investment in communities and public services, serious action to narrow geographical inequalities, and they believe we should expect more of businesses—particularly in their treatment of workers. They do not want a return to austerity and support tax rises to pay for public spending.
Boris Johnson and the Vote Leave contingent achieved victory in the EU referendum, and a stonking majority in the 2019 general election, by leaning into these preferences. Over the last 18 months, the government’s approach has largely appeared to follow the same playbook. The pandemic response has involved economic intervention on a scale unseen since the Second World War. At the same time, there has been a drumbeat of “anti-woke” moves on issues such Empire and the slave trade.
Now, however, there are signs that Johnson’s Conservatives are losing touch with the public, particularly in their approach to the recovery and the shape of our post-Covid economy. It may seem early to start predicting serious electoral trouble for the government. We are still at least two years out from an election; despite recently tightening, the Conservatives are consistently ahead of Labour in the polls; and Johnson’s personal approval ratings may have tumbled but he is the master of defying expectations and bouncing back. However, the foundations the government lays for the recovery over the next few months will set the country’s course for the rest of the parliament. By the time voters are asked to pass judgment, they will be able to see whether the heady promises of 2019 are being followed through, or whether they have been abandoned. This is likely to determine whether or not the government can hold their new electoral coalition together and forge red wall and southern English Conservatives into a stable base.
The rift may in part be due to a disjuncture between Conservative MPs and their voters on economics. Research by the think tank UK in a Changing Europe found that Labour voters and MPs had fairly similar economic values, but that Conservative MPs are much further to the right on economics than either their own voters or the average voter.
A conflict over whether to hold firm to the winning formula or to retreat to more traditional fiscal conservatism is playing out most obviously between the prime minister and his chancellor. Since he took over, Rishi Sunak’s image has hardly been that of a traditional fiscal conservative. For most of the last 18 months he has been Santa Sunak. However, the crisis response obscured the fact that his underlying beliefs and those of the PM are opposed, which as we move out of the emergency is becoming ever-more apparent. Sunak himself has joked about “taking away the prime minister’s credit card.” His 2020 Spending Review and March 2021 Budget started to make his intentions clear.
Despite continued high spending on the Covid response, his plans gave notice, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies commented, that “Santa Sunak” was about to be replaced by “Scrooge Sunak.” He set out plans to cut spending on public services by £16bn compared to pre-pandemic plans. We recently had “crime day,” with eye-catching rhetoric from the prime minister and a series of announcements on law and order. But the chancellor’s insistence on spending cuts which will hit areas such as justice and local government mean concrete results may be thin on the ground, especially since earlier cuts mean that police numbers are still below their 2010 levels, while the courts were suffering from crippling backlogs even before the pandemic.
Growing divergence between public expectations and government action is also looming over what is meant to be the government’s defining post-Brexit agenda—“levelling up.” Public concern about geographical inequalities remains high, but so far there is no sign of a plan to turn “levelling up” from a slogan into reality. The prime minister’s much-hyped big speech on the subject in July turned out to be the dampest of damp squibs. It offered no significant policy announcements—indeed, it gave little sign that Johnson himself knows what levelling up means.
The promised white paper in the Autumn will tell us whether the government has been able to hammer out a coherent agenda. However, significant change is unlikely unless Sunak can be persuaded to back it with real cash. The signs so far are not good. The Levelling Up Fund was announced in the last Spending Review, to show the government’s commitment to keeping its promises to voters who had “lent” it their votes in 2019. However, a closer look at the figures revealed that government was actually cutting funding for local growth. Added together, the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, Levelling Up Fund and Local Growth Fund represent a cut to local growth spending from £4.7bn per year to just £1.4bn in 2021/22 and £2.7bn after that.
There are similar signs of misalignment with voters in the government’s wider approach to jobs and the recovery. After the 2008 recession, the recovery was marked by rising employment, but low pay and insecurity were allowed to undermine its benefits while big cuts to social security support further eroded low-paid workers’ living standards. These policies led to significant increases in poverty among workers and children, poor productivity and sluggish growth. Economists have lined up in recent years to lay out the negative consequences of a labour market with such high levels of insecurity and persistent low pay, for the UK’s economy as well as for individuals and families. But the government seems determined to repeat past mistakes. It backed away from the promised Employment Bill, which would have increased job security and beefed-up enforcement of existing rules and protections. Then it abandoned plans to extend statutory sick pay to the two million low-earning workers currently excluded from it, despite overwhelming support for such a move.
Meanwhile the government is pressing ahead with the biggest overnight cut to social security since the Second World War, hitting six million of the UK’s poorest families—many of them working—with particularly severe impacts on those parts of the north and the midlands that the prime minister has promised to boost. The chancellor’s determination to drive this through puts him at odds with much of his own party and with the public, who are in favour of keeping the current level of Universal Credit.
When it comes to future working patterns, Johnson’s pronouncements about workers returning full time to offices, and his denial of longer-term trends towards greater remote working, seem far removed from the views of most workers. Only 15 per cent want to return to full-time office working, while most want to split their time between office and home working.
Even in relation to social conservatism, the Conservatives seem in danger of misreading the public mood. Picking a fight with the England football team was always a high-risk strategy, especially as the majority of the public support “taking the knee.” The government’s undignified scramble to walk back previous comments only reinforced the political misjudgement. Declaring a “war on woke” was supposed to appeal to the public’s socially conservative instincts. However, research suggests that the public are not actually very interested in “culture wars” or whether people are “woke” or not. They do tend to think that “political correctness has gone too far” and that free speech is important. But the vast majority feel that they can share their views openly. They agree with the aims of the Black Lives Matter movement, but not with people protesting during a pandemic. They believe that statues of slave traders should be removed, but not that of Winston Churchill. They believe schools should teach children about the history of the Empire and the slave trade.
All in all, a government that came to power through smart campaigning that connected with people's frustrations is now looking increasingly out of touch in its approach to the post-Covid world. This Autumn’s Comprehensive Spending Review is shaping up to be a chaotic and brutal battle between the party’s two leading figures. If Sunak emerges victorious, the strategy of leaning left economically will take a body blow, public services will face a bruising few years and the promises of levelling up are likely to remain just that. That puts the Tories’ new coalition in jeopardy; blunt and gimmicky social conservatism alone is unlikely to be enough to hold it together.
