David Willetts

In a speech to the Carlton Club Political Committee, David Willetts set out the case for a broader modern Conservatism and reflected on how being a party of Government for 18 years caused the Conservative Party problems in adjusting to Opposition.

“It is now more than 5 years since we lost so badly in 1997. We left our country in 1997 in far better shape than we found it in 1979, despite the mistakes we made in office – and some of them were serious – we successfully carried out the main purpose which we set ourselves in 1979. We had to turn round one of Europe’s sickest economies and make it one of Europe’s most dynamic and successful ones. We achieved that, and we can feel proud of that achievement. But that very success is the source of the political weakness which has led to our two landslide defeats. Let me explain why.

First, because our agenda was above all an economic one, we came to be seen as just the economics Party. We were like Oscar Wilde’s cynic who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. There must be more to Conservatism than economics.

Secondly, we did many things which were right but unpopular. And eventually we drew the extremely dangerous – and fallacious conclusion – that unless something was unpopular it couldn’t possibly be right. There is no special virtue in a modern democracy in being disliked. It is not a badge of honour somehow confirming that what you are saying must be true if uncomfortable. That’s why it is right to change the way we talk to the electorate so that we don’t confirm their fears about what Conservatives are like.

Thirdly, we all became policy wonks, lovingly analysing the details of our policies but failing to communicate what they were for. We became preoccupied with means rather than ends. We would endlessly debate education vouchers, for example, whilst failing to communicate that we did actually want children to have a better education, and that was the point of the whole exercise. That’s why we don’t need to rush into a host of detailed policies. No matter how good a policy we came up with it would be pointless unless first of all people had registered that the purpose of the whole exercise was to make their lives better, and if they don’t think that, then, no matter how good the policy it won’t get a fair hearing.

Fourth and finally, we failed to grasp that economic change means social change as well. You can’t have one without the other. A dynamic, enterprising and mobile economy is incompatible with a society stuck in aspic. Our economic changes unleashed a whole set of social changes too. Some of them were good and some of them weren’t. We failed to celebrate the good things and to show we recognised the downside. Let me give you some examples.

If there is one single group that benefited more from the transformation of Britain after 1979 it was women aged 20-40. Their opportunities in life have been transformed as education and employment opportunities were opened up to them on a far greater scale than ever before. That would not have happened in an old-style corporatist Britain dominated by heavy industry and even heavier unions. We should have been proud of that but for some reason the message never got through.

Let me given you a second example – London. London has been transformed in the last 15 years. It is quite simply, once more, one of the world’s great cities. It is dynamic, enterprising and cosmopolitan and diverse. Without the big bang in the City or the transformation of docklands or even the cut in the top rate of income tax London would not have been such a magnet for people from around the world. But the Conservative Party fell to being the third Party in London because Londoners did not associate us with this at all and one of the most encouraging features of the local elections last month was that at last we saw the beginnings of a Conservative recovery in London.

But just as our economic changes brought these social benefits they also had their downside. There were people left behind by the modern mobile economy. There were others whose lives were governed by more than commercial values who felt Conservatives didn’t understand or appreciate the decision of someone with a good degree who went into teaching when he or she could have earned ten times as much in the City. And of course there were people who found the sheer creative destruction of the marketplace all too threatening and wanted order, community and security.

At the heart of the Conservative tradition is a recognition that we need both the economic dynamism of the marketplace and also wider values that give life roots and shape and meaning. I am proud to be a Conservative because over the past two centuries Conservatives have more successfully reconciled these two often conflicting principles than any other western political party.

And this is where our campaign to help the vulnerable fits in. It is a renewal of Conservatism, drawing on these lessons from what went wrong after 1997. But the old caricatures live on in people’s minds and that’s why they will always be on the look-out for recidivism for the old caricature of what Conservatives are supposed to be like. That’s why IDS has been right to emphasise that the help the vulnerable campaign is central to the direction in which he wants to take the Party. “