THE CONSERVATIVE Party has been at its most successful when it has understood people’s aspirations. As Margaret Thatcher memorably wrote in the opening line of the 1979 Conservative Manifesto: “For me the heart of politics is not political theory, it is people and how they want to live their lives.” The centre ground of politics is where the central concerns of the British people lie.

In the 1970s Keith Joseph talked of the common ground, meaning the shared values of the British people. He understood that a free market economy had to operate in a strong society: that is why he observed that “monetarism is not enough”. Then that was far from the centre of British politics. But now Keith Joseph’s common ground is at the centre of our political debate too. That is precisely how he and Mrs Thatcher changed the political landscape — and what Tony Blair forced the Labour Party to recognise.

To renew Conservatism we have to recognise that British politics is now a debate about how to combine a flexible economy and a strong society. That is what Mr Blair claimed to be able to achieve with his Third Way. He set a trap for the Conservative Party — forcing us either to become a libertarian party or a bunch of cultural conservatives trying to return to the 1950s. It is time we stopped falling into this trap. We have to show that we understand people’s desire for both personal freedom and a strong society and can bring them together far better than Labour. Indeed, this is the Conservative political tradition.

I believe that there are two key aspirations of the British people today. We want freedom and opportunity. It is the Conservatism of our historic liberties and of a flexible economy. But we want something else too — roots and identity. This is the Conservatism of cohesiveness and community. And yes, the nation state and good government must be part of that.

The marketing experts say that you can sell a shampoo by promising that it will tackle your dandruff, or by promising that it will make your hair more lustrous, but not both. For far too long the Conservative Party has operated on this pessimistic assumption. Now we should break free of it. That means developing policies both for a more flexible economy and a stronger society.

Gordon Brown has indeed managed to sustain the macroeconomic stability that he inherited from us. But he has failed to take the extraordinary opportunity of eight years of growth and low inflation to tackle the long-term problems which would really raise our economic performance.

The Conservative Party must think much more rigorously than the Government has done about the market framework that you need in order to reward savings or get investment in energy. As well as a stronger, more flexible economy we also need to commit ourselves to a better, more cohesive society. If the problem with our economic debate is that there is now too much easy optimism that things must always get better, the problem with the social debate is the opposite — a deep-seated pessimism. Twenty-five years ago we thought we were Europe’s sick economy. When I first worked in the Treasury the task was thought to be managing Britain’s economic decline with as much decency as you could muster. But there was no law that economic decline was irreversible.

Now I detect a similar pessimism about British society. Again people think that we just have to settle for being the sick society of Europe, the country with the most fragile families, with some of the toughest estates, the most drunken tourists, and some of the worst problems of crime and drug abuse. But there is no law of social decay that says all these things need to get worse. We can draw on the deepest insights of Conservatism about how to create order in society by protecting and repairing public space. The decent law-abiding majority should feel that the public realm belongs to them, not to marauders.

I do not believe that Britain’s toughest estates are hopeless. We can unpick that dreadful interaction of traditional school catchment areas, poorly managed social housing, ineffective policing and the disappearance of small businesses, which together add up to urban decay. This might well require opening up, for example, school choice. But it is not just a matter of rolling back the State. Government cannot do everything, but that does not mean that it must do nothing.

Many of us discover these two principles of personal freedom and social justice as we go through our lives. It is the economically liberal bit which brings many people to Conservatism. Then you have children and you start thinking about the environment in which they will grow up. You worry about how to transmit your values to the next generation. You begin to discover that there are deep ties and obligations across the generations. Many of these connections are as strong as ever.

The 1980s were an exciting, breathless time, with dragons to slay and the world at our feet. In the 1990s we realised that we did not have all the answers, but that became self-doubt and uncertainty about what the Tories stood for. Now I see the opportunity for a new Conservatism that has grown up over the past 20 years as our country has changed. We have to stop travelling down the political cul-de-sac of opposing things simply because we think Mr Blair might be in favour of them. We need to define ourselves in terms of what we are for, not what we are against. We should take as our starting point what it is that we as Conservatives believe in, not what a Labour Government may or may not believe in from one moment to the next.

We should combine energy and humanity. We need to understand our traditions better and use that knowledge to look forward to make our country a better place. The Conservative Party needs to be confident of what it stands for, so that it can then serve the country confidently.

David Willetts MP is a member of the Shadow Cabinet. This article is based on a speech he is giving to the Social Market Foundation. You can read the full text from midday at www.timesonline.co.uk/comment

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