Will Cameron’s ‘blue-collar modernisation’ see the success of Thatcher or the ignominy of Hague, asks Wes Streeting

While David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative party conference last month should not be overstated as a dramatic lurch to the right, his ‘aspiration nation’ message reflects the ascendancy of what Anthony Painter termed ‘blue-collar populism’ in September’s Progress magazine. It signals the end of the Cameroonian modernisation project of skiing with huskies and hugging hoodies and an opportunity for Labour to retake and reshape the centre-ground of British politics.

In spite of continued efforts to detoxify the Conservative brand, focus groups and polling among target voters reveal that the Tories still struggle to overcome the perception that they are a party for the rich. Recent polling for the Sunday Express, conducted by Visioncritical, highlights that this is a problem for the prime minister as well as his party. Sixty per cent of voters believe that Ed Miliband is in touch with their concerns, as opposed to just 40 per cent who believe Cameron is.

A growing sense of frustration at the failure of the Tory leader’s ‘progressive conservatism’ agenda to build the popular support necessary to secure a Conservative majority has led to calls within the party to follow a more traditional appeal towards aspirational blue-collar workers. This month a  new group, Blue Collar Conservatism, will be launched. According to media reports, 40 Tory MPs, including Carlisle MP John Stevenson, have already signed up to support its three founding principles: ‘that the Conservative party is at its strongest when it reaches out to voters of all backgrounds; that the Conservative party needs the support of blue-collar voters to achieve an overall majority; and that the Conservative party must reward ordinary hard working voters who take responsibility for their own lives.’

But this approach is hardly new. Even at the height of industrial unrest against Thatcherism in the 1980s, the Iron Lady managed to retain the support of many working-class voters attracted by the promise of lower taxes and a stake in a new property-owning democracy through the ‘right to buy’ their council home.

Nor is the right’s attempt to reach out to the centre-left’s traditional supporters confined to Britain. Ronald Reagan famously won the backing of huge numbers of blue-collar workers, the so-called ‘Reagan Democrats’, with his promise of economic prosperity and tax cuts and tough talk on crime and ‘welfare queens’. In Australia, the ‘Howard battlers’ – working-class suburban voters who traditionally voted Labor – formed the backbone of John Howard’s four consecutive election wins.

Tim Montgomerie, editor of the grassroots website Conservative Home, calls this approach ‘a Conservative party for the little guy’: support for the ‘hard-working poor’, help for small business and consumers, and the replacement of the ‘big society’ with a more simple message of ‘family, jobs and schools’. Montgomerie’s approach, which aims to secure a Conservative majority for the first time since 1992, capitalises on voter concerns about immigration, the cost of the European Union and the impact of EU migration on jobs and pay for British workers. Echoing the notion of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, Montgomerie couches the austerity agenda in moral terms to resonate with the ‘hard-working poor’, arguing that ‘they tend to be most resentful of waste by the state because they are the least able to afford any waste in their own lives.’

Calls for the Tories to go after such voters are not confined to the traditional right of the Conservative party. Neil O’Brien, director of the thinktank Policy Exchange and an instinctive moderniser, has called for ‘blue-collar modernisation’, centred on the north and Midlands where the Tories failed to achieve a major breakthrough at the last general election. O’Brien advocates increasing working tax credits to help those on low incomes, cutting employers’ national insurance contributions for people on low wages and backing government job-creation in unemployment black spots, paid for by cutting universal benefits for those on higher incomes and wealthy pensioners. Before he was appointed planning minister this autumn fellow Cameroon and modernising MP Nick Boles made similar noises on targeting benefits.

These ideas appear to have gained serious currency with Cameron himself. His speech to the party faithful in Birmingham sounded some of these ‘conservatism for the little guy’ themes. His assertion that, contrary to being the party of the rich, the Tories are ‘the party of the “want to be better off”,’ could easily have been written by Montgomerie or O’Brien, or delivered by Thatcher or Reagan.

While this ‘blue-collar modernisation’ should not be read as Cameron’s surrender to the Tea party tendency of the Conservative right – his commitment to gay marriage and spending on international development are personal and remain on the agenda – this is a 21st century prime minister leading a 20th century Tory agenda that threatens Britain’s national interest. On immigration, where the Conservatives have maintained their populist commitment to an immigration cap, international student recruitment is down and harming one of Britain’s most successful export industries, higher education. On Europe, fears about the rise of the United Kingdom Independence party and the ideological zealotry of the Tory grassroots have left Britain on the margins and at the mercy of decisions being taken without us inside the eurozone. The failure to deliver on Cameron’s promise to make this the ‘greenest government ever’ threatens our planet and wastes opportunities to promote green jobs and new industries.

If Cameron has not abandoned the centre-ground entirely, he has opened up space for Ed Miliband to occupy it. His ‘One Nation’ speech to the Labour party conference in Manchester established a framework in which he can articulate a more pragmatic agenda: a focus on jobs and growth in place of austerity; managed migration and better training and conditions for British workers in place of an immigration cap; and a commitment to reform and engagement with Europe, in place of isolation.

Difficult questions remain, though, for Labour on public spending, welfare reform and on education – where Miliband’s announcement of a vocational baccalaureate won widespread plaudits. But it is hard to see how the ‘blue-collar modernisation’ being advocated by Montgomerie and O’Brien differs greatly from the populist campaign led by William Hague in 2001, which attempted to appeal to voters’ ‘common sense’ on tax, spending, immigration and Europe. Miliband has a chance to build a new coalition of voters. By abandoning the themes of the ‘progressive conservatism’ agenda, the blue-collar modernisers in the Conservative party have given Miliband valuable space upon which to build it.

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Wes Streeting is deputy leader of the Labour group in the London borough of Redbridge