Red Toryism, as I conceived it back in 2008, was always a mixture of social conservation (defending and securing the family, the community and the nation) and a new economic offer to working people. So what would a serious Red Tory commitment to working-class voters look like? What kind of policies can a Conservative party, committed to a radical re-enactment of globalisation, offer to those people who have already rejected, in the Brexit vote, its social and economic consequences? Firstly, if ordinary people are to benefit from globalisation, then we need a massive through-life retraining offer. Currently there is no way for those on an ordinary wage to finance retraining, without educational intervention technological change throws whole generations on the scrapheap. Italy has personal tax budgets that everyone pays into for financing retraining so why not the UK?
Secondly, we must lessen the cost for women of having children and wanting to look after them. Women return from childbirth to, on average, lower pay and part-time non-career based work. We need new duties of care from employers and the state to ensure that women can track a path back from childcare to rewarding work.
Similarly, stop the tax penalisation of the family. The UK tax burden is 20% greater than the OECD average on single parents with two children, and 26% greater on one-earner married couples with two children. Support single-earner families by making tax allowances transferable between partners.
UK competition law needs radical reform. The law needs to privilege not consumer welfare but total welfare and insist on a plurality of ownership opening up markets to the small businesses that are currently shut out. Again, level the playing field and change tax law to stop transnationals moving profits abroad, develop a national turnover or sales tax charge on those companies that avoid paying corporation tax.
Embrace ever more radical regional devolution and recognise the scale of the problem we face: 47% of the UK population live in areas as productive as the former East Germany. Outside the south-east, the UK has a massive infrastructure deficit: per head, its just 40% of the OECD average. We need to create new local land taxes and direct the benefits to these areas.
Finally, we must face the question of asset, not income, inequality. The wealthiest 10% of households own 45% of household wealth, whereas the least wealthy half own just 9%. There can be no popular capitalism if people do not have capital. If Theresa May, undistracted by Brexit, delivers on her Red Tory renewal of Conservatism, then she will be the Disraeli of the 21st century.
