The two types of Tory modernisation — and which one’s on the rise

There have always been two types of Tory modernisers. Both wanted to talk about issues that the party had neglected — public services, the environment and the like. But the soft modernisers were more prepared to compromise ideologically, to go with the flow of the age. The hard modernisers’ interest, by contrast, was in applying Tory thinking to these areas.

Michael Gove’s education reforms are, perhaps, the best example of hard modernisation in action. As Charles Moore puts it in the Telegraph today, ‘Mr Gove offers an attractive combination — complete loyalty to the Cameron modernisation, but a Thatcher-era conviction politics as well’.

Encouragingly, the balance within the Tory party is moving distinctly in favour of hard — rather than soft — modernisation. If you look at the Free Enterprise Group, perhaps the most influential group of Tory MPs in ideological as opposed to campaigning terms, you see them trying to do what Gove is doing in a whole host of other areas.