Competence is nice, too

It was once enough for the Conservative party to be seen as ‘cruel but competent’

It was once enough for the Conservative party to be seen, in Maurice Saatchi’s phrase, as ‘cruel but competent’. Lord Saatchi was among the first to warn, however, that this formula has had its day. Black Wednesday robbed the Tories of their reputation for competence, while Gordon Brown’s decision to make the Bank of England independent showed that Labour had every intention of stealing that mantle.

At the same time, voters expect more now from their politicians. It was George W. Bush’s great insight — long-forgotten as his administration flounders — that the public needed reassurance that a vote for a right-of-centre party was ‘good for them, good for their neighbour’: that self-interest and the common good marched together. Iain Duncan Smith grasped this, and so — with rather more success — does David Cameron.

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Mr Cameron’s speech last week on ‘GWB — General Wellbeing’ lent itself to satire and to outraged criticism, as the Tory leader knew it would. There is a risk in a well-heeled politician telling the rest of us to stop worrying about money so much; if only we could, most people respond, as they worry about clothing their children, paying their taxes and providing for the future.

Mr Cameron also exaggerates the extent to which government can change behaviour by exhortation. He raises questions that will now, quite rightly, chase him as the general election approaches: how, exactly, is our ‘work-life balance’ to be adjusted without damaging Britain’s competitive advantage and the flexibility of its labour market? Is his call ‘to move beyond a belief in the Protestant work ethic alone to a modern vision of ethical work’ more than a slogan? And is it truly compatible with the spirit of enterprise that made possible Britain’s economic recovery?

That said, Mr Cameron’s speech was a reassertion of Tory tradition as much as an act of intellectual provocation by a young moderniser.