Theresa May in Birmingham to set out her Conservative & Unionist agenda

Theresa May is setting out her agenda at the Conservative Party Conference at The ICC in Birmingham, city where her Unionist hero Joseph Chamberlain made his name. Image: ICC Birmingham by Bob Hall (License) (Cropped)

This weekend's Conservative Party conference in Birmingham became Theresa May's first attempt to set out a distinct policy platform. A chance to define her own approach to being head of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, separate from that of the Cameron Government that she inherited.

At the conference some major policies positions were announcement, including setting of a date for the triggering of Article 50, that begins the two-year long process of the UK exiting the EU - for which the government's negotiating position was leaked - and the prioritising, by the Chancellor Phillip Hammond, of spending on housing over the budget deficit.

These policies together produce an image of Britain as the new Prime Minister wishes to see it. But before the larger picture can be assembled, let's look at the pieces themselves.

First, there is the Government's position on Article 50 negotiations. The main thrust of the official announcement was only to establish that the two-year Brexit process will be triggered by the end of March 2017 and that the government was set upon the course to make the UK no longer be part of a supranational institution (BBC, 2016).

From the Prime Minister's own statements, it was clear that she intended to pursue particular priorities, getting UK out of European Court of Justice jurisdiction and establishing new migration controls, that made Britain's continued membership of the Single Market no longer a red line in negotiations (Kuenssberg, 2016) - a huge deviation from the position of the Cameron Ministry and the Conservative Manifesto.

Second, but by no means of less importance, is the decision by the Chancellor to give priority to infrastructure spending over paying down the deficit (BBC, 2016{2}). Few shifts could more dramatically demonstrate that the Cameron-Osborne era is over than to decrease the priority of tackling the deficit, which has been held over all government spending decisions for six years.

Compared to the leanness of Chancellor Osborne's approach, the dropping of the 2019-2020 target for eliminating the deficit and now a plan to invest in the UK's housing and transport, and even new borrowing to do so, is a big leap. Chancellor Hammond has called the shift a pragmatic response to new circumstances (BBC, 2016{3}) - part of the more mundane, pragmatic attitude that has replaced the 'flash' of the Cameron-Osborne era (Kuenssberg, 2016).

Yet despite what the Chancellor says, expert opinion has for years now (Elliott, 2016) called on Osborne to change tack and reject austerity as damaging to economic prospects in the UK. For Labour, who have spent six years being crucified for its pro-spending attitude its hard to say whether they will feel vindicated or bitter at the change of direction in the Conservative Party.

So what kind of picture do these pieces make when assembled? What do these key policies add up to?

Earlier speeches from Theresa May's leadership mentioned her admiration for Joseph Chamberlain and expressed an intention to restore the place of Unionism in the Conservative & Unionist Party. Chamberlain's two most famous projects were to lead, as Mayor, the rebuilding and reordering of Birmingham and, as an MP, to lead the opposition to free trade and champion trade tariffs between the British Empire and the rest of the world.

Chamberlain's attitude made an us and them of the English-speaking British Empire and the rest of the world, putting 'British' priorities first. While the barriers he put up around Britain served to subsidise and protect domestic business, they did so mainly by hurting the poorest - as the Liberals of the day pointed out with cold facts (Marr, 2009). In its day Chamberlain's aggressively nationalist & imperial vision was ultimately defeated by the Liberal Party of Asquith, Lloyd George and Churchill.

That sense of national unity, in distinction between a British way and everyone else, seems present in May's vision - less individual and competitive than Cameron's, more social and corporate. So inspired by Chamberlain does Theresa May's own platform seem, that announcing her positions at a party conference in Birmingham seems not to be a coincidence but rather a purposeful statement. A symbol of the increased prominence of Unionism within the Conservative brand.

In her pursuing her independently British path, some sort of Chamberlain-esque increase in the will to use the proceeds to fund pragmatic interventions that improve the state in which workers live would be appreciated - especially compared to the austere whittling of front line services and civic spaces of her predecessors.

Yet May's own scepticism of 'supranational' institutions risks putting Britain behind a new set of barriers, with many of the same problems as those erected by her hero. Whatever her Government's slogan proclaims - "A Country That Works For Everyone" - Unionism, by its very nature, buys into the idea of exclusivity. The new Prime Minister will have to go a long way to convince progressives that those outside of the highest echelons will ultimately benefit from, and share in, the spoils of this British corporation.

References

'Brexit: Theresa May to trigger Article 50 by end of March'; on the BBC; 3 October 2016.

Laura Kuenssberg's 'Filling in the Brexit blanks'; on the BBC; 2 October 2016.

'Chancellor Philip Hammond on UK deficit and investment'; on the BBC; 3 October 2016{2}.

'Hammond to put house-building before deficit reduction'; on the BBC; 3 October 2016{3}.

Laura Kuenssberg's 'Tory economic policy: Out with the hawks'; on the BBC; 3 October 2016{2}.

Larry Elliott's 'OECD calls for less austerity and more public investment: One-time deficit reduction supporter slashes growth forecasts and urges richer countries to exploit cheap borrowing to spend more on infrastructure'; in The Guardian; 18 February 2016.

Lewis Goodall's 'Who was Theresa May's political hero Joseph Chamberlain?'; on the BBC; 15 August 2016.

Andrew Marr's 'The Making of Modern Britain'; Macmillan 2009.