Conservatism That Cares

Ed West writes:

Britain certainly needs more jobs, but are we happy to pay the social cost from having more temporary, unprotected, deskilled and de-unionised labour? We already have among the highest inequality levels in Europe, the biggest gap between management and workers, and in many areas a workforce that is short-term, demotivated and unproductive, and with wages sunk by cheap foreign imports.

I’m all in favour of the Tories thinking the unthinkable, but it doesn’t mean they have to do the undoable. And I would far prefer that they started to look at the sort of German mutual models advocated by Phillip Blond and Maurice Glasman. It’s taken the combined economic deadweight of southern Europe to drag Germany down to our level – shouldn’t we have a look at how they’ve done things for the past six decades?

Of course, there are areas where government could help business, such as reducing National Insurance, or perhaps tearing up the vast labyrinth of employment laws dealing with discrimination, diversity, equality and various other areas of social engineering. But this is not one of them.

What is it with the Conservatives? They seem to be Right-wing only where no one wants them to be Right-wing. Theirs is a conservatism that cares nothing about British sovereignty, marriage, natural justice, defending the borders, law and order or the armed forces, but that cares deeply about reducing the rights of British workers. Contrary to the idea banded about in the less thoughtful areas of political discourse, conservatism is not about protecting the rich: it is about creating an environment that is safe, sober, crime-free, respectful, educated, gentle and high in social capital and trust. In other words, about protecting the poor and weak. Until the Conservative Party realises this, they will continue to haemorrhage support.

It is astonishing, and yet somehow not, that in 13 years, New Labour never legislated for John Smith's signature policy, namely that employment rights should begin on Day One of employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked.

Ed Miliband should signal once and for all that, unlike his brother, he intends to give us the government that we would have had in those 13 years if Smith had lived, by legislating to create that fitting monument to the Great Man.

Places like that consistently out-perform us. Have you ever been to Germany? We have had 30 years of the other way of doing things. Look where it has ended up.