Policy: grasping the thistle

Writing a party manifesto is no small undertaking. The process has already revealed to me that I know less than I thought I did on a range of subjects. There is a great deal of invisible governance that doesn't generally feature in policy discourse. There are also complex problems to which there are no easy answers, and the solutions are likely to be wildly unpopular even if the public supports the general policy aims.

When it comes to governance of culture, there is a temptation to employ Javier Milei methods and go at the Department of Media, Culture and Sport with a chainsaw. While cuts are necessary, there are certain policy outcomes we would wish to see in protecting British culture from far left and blob influence. As such, we cannot simply abandon whole areas of governance.

This underscores to me why parties should develop their own in-house policy expertise and capable subject spokesmen rather than making things up on the fly. The real business of government is careful, deliberative work, for which populists have no answers.

The war on motorists is one such example. LTNs are wildly unpopular, not least because they are wholly counter-productive, but we still have problems with congestion, anti-social parking, inconsiderate driving, and problems arising from cars becoming bigger and heavier. Drivers increasingly believe they have a god given right to drive anything they choose, for any reason, without regard to the common good.

We are often told that if public transport were better then people wouldn't use their cars as much, but in reality, even when given viable alternatives, drivers are remarkably lazy and prefer to endure congestion than mildly inconvenience themselves.

This is a problem for British cities which simply were not designed for modern day levels of traffic and increasingly bloated SUV hatchbacks. Governing effectively means striking a balance between all parties concerned, and that sometimes means telling drivers what they do not want to hear - and in a democracy, that can cost you votes, which is why you end up with policy neglect. Often it's politically expedient to simply ignore a problem.

This applies to nearly all public policy. I recall well the public backlash against Theresa May's so-called Dementia tax, which almost handed power to Labour in 2017. Her ill-advised and unpopular solution may have been cack-handed, but she was still drawing attention to an intractable problem in that the nation simply cannot sustain the financial burden of elderly care. Mrs May might have called it wrong, but eventually some tough decisions will have to be made. It's not an issue we can kick into the long grass forever.

But this illustrates much of the problem with our politics. Everyone complains about dishonest politics, but we can't expect politicians to be honest when the public themselves maintain the deceit that we can afford comprehensive public services even for the well-off without corresponding tax increases. As the old saying goes, politicians know what needs to be done. They just don't expect to be re-elected if they do it.

This perhaps explains why Reform has such an aversion to policy, in that taking anything other than a populist line is politically risky. But if you'll surrender on anything when the going gets tough, you'll sell out on virtually anything to win power. This is a pattern we have seen in populist parties in Europe where the closer they get to power, the more they begin to resemble that which they seek to replace. The real skill is getting your ducks in a row from the outset and selling your supporters on your unpopular ideas. The trick is to be clear about intent.

As regards to the manifesto I'm writing, when I put out ideas for feedback, often the replies are overly simplistic. The contemporary obsession on the right is reforming a "woke" civil service, but this is far easier said than done.

Wokery infects all arms of public and private governance from heritage organisations to sports and standards bodies, and much if it is a consequence of elite overproduction - necessitating extensive higher education reform. There is no single effective measure. Much of the problem with the civil service stems from our cultural adherence to intentional law and a political class unwilling to step back from it. It's going to take extensive surgery based on a decent working knowledge of what is going wrong, where, and how.

From the same crowd we also hear calls for mass deregulation. The knee-jerk response is born from the ultra libertarian ideals of slashing government to the bone. But libertarianism is not conservatism, and I'm not writing a libertarian manifesto.

There are perennial calls to cut bureaucracy, but the truth is that bureaucracy is the means by which humans organise their administrative affairs, and it is no better in large private sector organisations. To delete the bureaucracy is to abdicate from governing a policy area.

For sure there are areas of policy where government meddles where it should not, and there is excessive regulation, but when it comes to things like planning, excessive regulation is better than no regulation.

Farmers, for instance, complain about rules on deposits of mud on the road. They are potentially liable for a range of offences and may face prosecution and a fine. But when country roads are now also commuter roads, mud deposits amount to corporate negligence/manslaughter should they cause a road accident. Much can the same can be said of site preparation rules for housing developers. We no longer allow developers to dump the externalities of sloppiness on the public.

Modern, complex societies turn on rules. Observance and enforcement of rules is what sets us apart from the third world. The British approach is precautionary because the alternative is an Americanised culture of ambulance chasing lawyers where virtually any citizen can be sued for virtually any reason. A society based on legal predation.

As such, deregulation is not as simple as striking out laws with a red pen. You really have to decide from the outset what the specific objectives are and work backwards. This is difficult on matters of technical regulation, but even more tricky when you're attempting to change the culture of government.

As such, were I to produce a populist manifesto, amounting to a right wing wishlist for maximum approval, I wouldn't actually vote for it, and wouldn't have any confidence in a party that adopted it.

As much as anything, a populist manifesto based on Thatcherite libertarian ideals is not one that would win an election in the here and now. Thatcherism was of its time. Our policies must address an increasingly complex world in which all the norms of the previous century are rapidly disintegrating. As conservatives, we must be clear on what we are seeking to conserve, and that will require an active, interventionist state.