Subtle it wasn’t.
When Theresa May set out, in her end-of-conference speech, to establish (rather than earn) her mandate, she quickly dispelled any thoughts that her soothing words on the steps of Downing Street some 80-odd days ago were a flight of fancy.
Instead, she doubled down on her mission to occupy the centre-ground. In terms of parking tanks, there was no lawn left.
We were told this not through a set of well thought-through policies or by a clever dog-whistle, but by her saying she wanted to ‘embrace a new centre-ground in which government steps up – and not back – to act on behalf of the people’.
In our post-fact politics, saying she is going to do this is as good actually moving her party away from doctrinaire libertarianism – unless, of course, Labour shows up the reality of the new prime minister’s rhetoric.
Her embrace of the power of the state to do good may be clever positioning, but positioning it still is. After all, this was as clear a denunciation of the Cameroonian ‘big society’, where charities and volunteers would step into gaps vacated by government, as it was a rejection of the ‘libertarian right’. The danger of her Tory triangulation is that this vicar’s daughter speaks with a greater authenticity and sincerity than her predecessor ever could.
Yet May wants the Tories to be a party which not only rejects metropolitan liberalism, but also one that sides with public servants (how is that public sector pay freeze going?) and which embraces Clement Attlee and his wonderful creation, the National Health Service. Once the applause has died down, is everyone really signed up to both parts of this project?
Many Tories will be much more comfortable with the prime minister they had heard from at the start of the week, who was leaning towards hard – rock hard – Brexit.
Brexit loomed over the prime minister as she set out her vision. Despite trying to shift the label of the nasty party on to Labour, she failed to dispel the noxious sentiments set out by her new ministerial team, in describing European Union nationals working here as a trump card in negotiations, or calling on firms to list their foreign workers, a move roundly condemned by the CBI and Institute of Directors. And how do you protect the health service by denuding it of foreign-born doctors and nurses?
Labour has been right to call out her centrist speech as a smokescreen for divisive and damaging policies. We have also been right to point that May has no mandate for a programme which at times is barely recognisable to that which people voted for just 18 months ago – from grammars to reviews of the ‘gig economy’ to wholesale appropriation of Ed Balls’ ‘borrow to invest’ economic policy.
But we cannot rest on our laurels. As May audaciously implied, we have to daily earn our right to be seen as the guardians of the NHS, the supporters of public services and those who deliver them, the party who will deliver for the working class.
Which means being ruthless not only in exposing her rhetoric, but also sending clear signals that we practice what we want to preach. We may not be able to do this in Westminster, but in town halls across the country, in City Hall and the Welsh assembly, in city-regions where we are electing new mayors, we can show we are equal to the task – and debunk the Tories’ new myth of being a party for workers.
It is Labour councillors and activists who, day in, day out, across the country are talking to the working-class communities May claims she now represents. As much as she might wish it through her rhetoric, the support she coverts is still coping with the impact of austerity and welfare reform which she now abandons with an embarrassing haste. We cannot – in any sense – afford to forsake them.
Our new prime minister is walking a tightrope – trying to combine Labour’s analysis of our broken economy with the United Kingdom Independence party’s perspective on Brexit and immigration. As with her predecessor, she will find that her version of the centre cannot hold.
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Mike Katz is national vice-chair of the Jewish Labour movement and a former list candidate for the London assembly. He tweets at @mikekatz
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Photo: BBC