Badenoch vs Starmer – at last a proper political battle

The new Tory leader is “small state, low tax”. Can she convince the voters?

Three years after she became Leader of the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher faced her first Prime Minister’s Questions to be broadcast to the nation. It was not a success. Bernard Donoughue, the head of Jim Callaghan’s Policy Unit, described her tone as “tense and harsh”.
“She looked very pale,” he wrote in his diaries. “This was in some ways a trial run for the election, and we came away feeling very confident.”
Thatcher was not a natural communicator and the new fangled “radio transmissions” of Commons proceedings meant that her lack of warmth would quickly become apparent to a wider and wider audience.
What Thatcher lacked in communication skills she more than made up for in her approach to problem solving – she was a scientist after all. Three people, Gordon Reece, Tim Bell and Alistair McAlpine, were tasked with remaking the Leader of the Opposition so that she understood “narrative” and spoke with confidence about the future she envisaged for the United Kingdom. Maurice and Charles Saatchi of the eponymous advertising agency were hired to sell the vision to the public. The “Labour Isn’t Working” campaign cemented their position as master vote whisperers.  
A year after that “tense and harsh” appearance, Thatcher won an election against a high-tax, high-borrowing and high-spending Labour Party. The public liked the insurgent’s message, and she delivered it well.
Mark Twain said that “history never repeats itself, but it often rhymes”. It would be stretching historical parallels too far to say that Kemi Badenoch is the next Margaret Thatcher. As the Conservative MP Alex Berghart put it, speaking to The Daily T podcast: “She’s the first Kemi Badenoch”.
But there are rhymes in abundance which the new leader of the Conservatives should note.
Badenoch is up against a Labour government that believes in tax, spend and borrow – as Thatcher was.
Some in Labour are already “feeling very confident” that their new opponent is easy to define and therefore easy to defeat, as James Callaghan did with Thatcher. Labour regularly under-estimates female opponents – particularly those that have something new to say.
The present government is insisting, as Labour did in the 1970s, that the only alternative to its programme is cuts to public services, which it predicts voters will not wear. Callaghan believed that the post-war consensus would survive a monetarist attack from the right. It didn’t. He under-estimated voters’ desire for the private businesses that employ 80 per cent of them to flourish. Starmer has the same blind spots.
There is one significant difference. Unlike Callaghan in 1978, Labour has time on its side. There will not be – barring unforeseen calamity – another election for at least four years.
That means Badenoch will need to play a long and thoughtful game in a media environment that is constantly demanding updates and soundbites.
She has allies. The Office for Budget Responsibility and the Institute for Fiscal Studies are both sceptical that Labour’s big state plan will do anything to boost growth. They warn it may do the opposite. The damage to public trust of saying one thing before an election and doing another runs deep. Badenoch knows she can exploit both. 
As I wrote here last week, Labour’s “jam tomorrow” approach was always going to be a high wire act full of risk. The entrepreneur Theo Paphitis – who supports Labour – has already made the rather obvious points that “taxing doesn’t create growth” and that Rachel Reeves “cannot come back for more”. The Chancellor has thrown her dice. Now she must wait and pray that the public sector – despite much evidence to the contrary – is up to the job.
This is Badenoch’s opportunity – and the rather smarter members of the Labour hierarchy know it.
For the first time since the 1970s, we are returning to a true dividing line in British politics. Hallelujah to that, whichever side you are on.
If Badenoch is true to her word, and being a politician voters will see that as a big if, the Conservative offer to the public is a smaller state, lower taxes and better public services. We have heard that before from the Tories, and the opposite has come to pass with higher taxes, a bigger state and worse public services. Even Liz Truss wanted the government to pay the public’s energy bills.
Badenoch will also demand more “personal responsibility” from individuals to provide for themselves. Is she ready for the fight that will entail?
The new Tory leader makes great play of her honesty. But it will be a Herculean task to re-imagine the state-public relationship after years of public sector growth and debts that have not shrunk since 2001. The UK’s population is ageing, what we demand of public services has increased significantly since the 1970s and global growth since the financial crisis has been anaemic. There is no better example of a failed political system than letting people out of prison early, a failure compounded over decades, not months. The public is, rightly, baffled. Is government capable of doing anything, at all, ever? 
Like Thatcher, Badenoch needs one clear message that can be repeated over and over again. Labour Isn’t Working is not a bad starting point.
Like Thatcher she and her team need to do the deep thinking necessary to offer a coherent plan for government. Voters are exhausted by political argument via twitter threads.
I would recommend Charles Moore’s magisterial three volume biography of Thatcher as a good starting point if Badenoch wants a reading list. Sir Keith Joseph was the architect of many of Thatcher’s reforms, and The Centre for Policy Studies was the crucible of new right thinking. Who and what are Badenoch’s equivalents?
She should also understand her opponents and what makes them at least partially attractive – the hardest thing for tribal politicians to do. People want better public services and see Labour as more trusted to deliver them. The evidence is on Labour’s side, with faith in public services at historic lows at the end of 14 years of Conservative government. Thatcher famously said that Socialists always “run out of other people’s money”. Conservatives always ultimately fail on public services, an argument powerfully deployed by Reeves who regularly reminds state-school educated voters (the vast majority) of the terrible condition of schools in the 1980s.
Badenoch will need a convincing story that unleashing entrepreneurialism and reforming how public services are delivered is the great mission of any new Conservative government. She needs to hunt out examples of how that will work.
Connecting with the aspirations of those who are not your natural supporters as well as motivating your base is the route to power. Thatcher appealed to the wealthy – fearful of left-wing money grabs – but also the median-earning worker who wanted to buy his or her council house and own a few shares. If taxes could fall a little, that would be very nice as well.
Such attempts at a “big tent” coalition may stick in Badenoch’s throat. She should clear it. Being Leader of the Opposition is different from fighting to be leader of the opposition. For the latter you have to appeal to your party. For the former you have to appeal to the public.