It really is time we got off the routine refrain that the Tories, if elected, would make huge cuts in public services while Labour will continue to protect people from the recession. It isn’t just that it’s simply not credited in that crude form, it deflects attention away from a range of Tory policy pronouncements which are now beginning to dribble out and which ought to be subjected to much more incisive scrutiny. And it’s not just what is being said by various Tory spokespersons; even more important is what is not yet being said which needs to be teased out. The best example of the latter is the Tories’ virtual silence on bank regulation, on preventing a recurrence (or deepening) of the present recession, on tax and tax havens, on City pay and bonuses, on the role of the State (provider, regulator, facilitator, or merely monitor?), and on control of markets (more de-regulation or less?). All of these go to the heart of Right-wing philosophy. Probing hard on any or all of them would expose whether Cameron is simply a front man for hard-line renewed Thatcherism or a cynical opportunist without a single ideological sinew in his body. But what little has already been said in other areas is even more revealing.

The Tories appear to regard their proposal to let money follow the pupil to the school of their parents’ choice, and then to add a pupil premium for the poorest children, as their trump card for their claims to be progressive. But this, a variation of the old Tory policy of vouchers for education and health, simply opens up again the well-known problems of competition in public services. Many people cannot have their first choice because availability of places in desired (i.e. popular) schools, or access to preferred consultants in selected hospitals, is inevitably limited. Also, how would the Tories solve the age-old problem that focusing resources on popular schools must then drain resources away from less popular schools and risk provoking a slide into the status of sink schools (or sink housing estates or sink hospitals, etc.)?
Cameron has also talked about ‘recapitalising’ the poor. Presumably this is about extending asset ownership into the lowest quartile of the population, but how exactly could that achieved? Right-to-buy after a quarter century of sell-offs now offers only diminishing returns. Providing cheap shares for the non-shareowning segment of the public will only generate rapid share-selling, as it did previously when tried in the 1980s. The Tories don’t seem to realise that the problem is not a yearning for a property-owning democracy, but a desperate need to escape the instability of uncertain employment, low income, unequal rights in the workplace, and perceived discrimination in access to services.
In the current furore over health services, the Tories have covered themselves with eulogies about the NHS. They have of course no alternative because the NHS is universally popular and it would be far too dangerous in a pre-election period to suggest any significant meddling. But it is reasonable to demand that they should be a lot clearer about whether they propose any further restructuring of the NHS, or to introduce any greater private sector involvement either in private provision or in access for private patients.
Then there’s Cameron’s ‘radical redistribution of power’ in favour of ‘localism’. What exactly does this mean? The last Conservative Government actually tightened the strings of Whitehall control over local authorities and took away options for local funding and local taxation. It seems highly unlikely this will be reversed, but if it were, how will all the downsides of a postcode lottery producing huge unwarranted variations in provision be avoided?
There are so many other questions. Are the Tories really serious about the environment and climate change, and if so, what would they do about air travel, coal-fired power stations, and household carbon allowances? What is their view on the balance between the City (bloated) and manufacturing (starved)? Would gthey take de-regulation, privatisation and the dominance of corporate power even further? Would social immobility and inequality harden yet more? Time for a real debate, not sterile mantras.

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