Walking back to the Palace of Westminster the other day, I bumped into a new Tory MP. He was eager to tell me what the Chancellor should do in the Budget: abolish the 50p rate, scrap labour market protections for young workers and announce the building of another airport. But by the time we had reached the entrance to the Commons, this enthusiasm had given way to melancholy.
It wasn’t the Liberal Democrats, though, who were spoiling his mood. It was the leadership of his own party. As we arrived at the entrance to the Commons, his voice dropped as he recalled a presentation from the Prime Minister and his political team to all Tory MPs last month. ‘It was all this modernising stuff,’ he said, disdainfully.
This MP was right about one thing: modernisation is what drives the Tory leadership’s approach to government. As one influential figure put it to me this week, ‘modernisation means one thing — winning a majority’.
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