‘Sit back, keep quiet, let the government unravel and you will be in Number 10.’ If I had a pound for every time these words of advice have been uttered to me over the last year or so, I’d be able to make a sizeable contribution towards easing the pain of Labour’s debt crisis.
But the advice — however well meaning — is plain wrong.
The election is far from won and I still hold to the belief that governments don’t just lose elections; oppositions must deserve to win them with a positive mandate for change. And there is one central idea which shows clearly that we are not sitting back waiting for Labour to lose, nor backing off the changes that have been instrumental in the Conservative revival of recent years.
It’s an idea so radical and ambitious that it could, if we are not clear and passionate in our advocacy of it, be distorted by a cynical Labour party desperate to cling to the power they have so comprehensively squandered and abused.
What is this idea so big, so bold and so wide in its scope? Well, I can describe it in the terms we’ve been using for several years and explain that we want to usher in a new post-bureaucratic age, where we bring together the opportunities of the information revolution and the deepest values of Conservatism to create a massive transfer of power from central government and its agencies to individuals and local communities. Or I can sum it up in terms that our new party chairman Eric Pickles might prefer: we want to give folks power over their lives.
Either way, the point is this: our masterplan for fixing both our broken economy and our broken society is quite simple — the people of this country.
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