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Talking Point: What’s the story from the Blair Lite Tory?
Insider North West | October 2010

The one word that could be used to describe the Tory Party conference pretty accurately is underwhelming!

Considering that this was the first time the party faithful had come together as the government for the first time in 13 years, the Conservative clan was ‘not for cheering’ – not too much anyway.

Perhaps their mood was somewhat muted because of their disappointment in having to share power with another political party which, to most delegates in the conference hall, would not, in normal circumstances, be the type of organisation that they would pass the time of day, let alone form a government, with.

Maybe they felt that it would be inappropriate to be overly buoyant given the downbeat messages their ministers were pronouncing from the conference stage, particularly in relation to the state of the economy.

Alternatively, their difficulty in getting their heads around the ‘Big Society’ may have been the cause of their consternation; and for the healthily represented ‘blue rinse’ brigade among the delegates, I think it is clear that they would much prefer a blue blooded Thatcherite Tory PM than the Blair-lite Mr Cameron

Nevertheless, my disagreements with what appears to me to be an ideologically driven agenda for fast and deep public expenditure cuts aside, there were some gems to come out of Birmingham that we should wish the government the best of luck with.

Scrapping child benefit for people earning over £40,000 per year is a no brainer. Indeed, I think they could have actually gone further and taken the limit down to £30,000. There may be some short term bleating, and unwelcome headlines in the tabloids, but such a reduction is credible and defensible. Cameron’s wobble on this issue may have concerned some of his MP’s. He will have much tougher decisions to take in the months and years ahead.

Similarly, the blueprint to change what is now a chaotic, monolithic and very expensive welfare system should be applauded. Ian Duncan Smith was right when he posed the question ‘how is it that we are importing millions of people to do jobs, when we have millions of our own people registered as unemployed?’

As someone whose first job was a Welfare Rights Advisor back in the 1980s I know first-hand how complex and complicated the system was back then – it is worse now. Not just in terms of the bureaucracy and double-speak that you need a Philadelphia lawyer to translate, but in terms of those who use and abuse it. Indeed, it is a shame that New Labour ducked this issue when the MP for Birkenhead Frank Field proposed a similar shake up in 1998.

Overall though, observers can only have got the sense that we have elected a government of people that was desperate for power; they are just not absolutely sure what they want to do with it. That, no doubt, was the overriding reason for the underwhelming response.