Cameron: He’s not tough or pro-business

In advance of David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party conference today, there has been a trailing of themes and arguments in the media. Two of the main things that look likely to feature are discussions of how only the Conservative Party is willing to make the tough choices that Britain needs to get on the road to recovery and how, in contrast to Labour, the Conservatives are the party of business and aspiration (apparently the two are largely the same thing).

Miliband’s One Nation speech may seem like a long time ago now but it is worth looking back at it to debunk the claims that Cameron will make today.

Firstly, this notion of Labour as being anti-business is one that has to be challenged with some force. The free-market neo-liberal economics ‘wisdom’ that Cameron and Osborne point to in their supposedly pro-business stance is just the kind of logic that brought the Conservative party to call for less regulation of the banks before the financial crisis. I don’t think it is radical to suggest that the financial crisis was not exactly good for business.

Conservative economics also features the kind of thinking that brought George Osborne to declare Ireland as the vision for where he wanted to take the UK economy. Conservative economics is the economics of vested interests and a removal of employee rights. It says nothing to the small businesses struggling to secure finance; nothing to the energy sector desperate for some stability and certainty in regards to decarbonising our energy networks. It also says nothing to the one million unemployed youth.

In both this and last year’s speeches to the Labour Party conference, Ed Miliband has explored what a post-coalition economy could look like. Predators and producers, initially mocked is now a distinction defining much of the debate around the future of our economy. That’s why last week Miliband was right to say

We must be the party of the private sector just as much as the party of the public sector

Cameron may say there is no basis for this assertion, but Miliband displayed an understanding of many of the things undermining the health of our economy. For example, short-termism

Businesses tell me that the pressure for the fast buck from City investors means they just can’t take the long view. They want to plan one year, two years, ten years ahead but they have to publish their accounts in Britain every 3 months… we will end that rule so companies in Britain can take the long term productive view for our country.

This is something companies as mainstream as Unilever have started to talk about and implement.

Furthermore, Osborne failure to take the green agenda seriously is actually incredibly anti-business. That is why companies are writing to him asking for certainty and commitment to a green agenda for Britain.

The second point is about tough choices. David Cameron will pose as the only leader ready to make tough choices. This is disingenuous for two reasons. Firstly, Cameron narrowly defines tough choices as making public spending cuts. Whilst there is a need to get public spending under control, it is untrue to say that Miliband has not addressed this. As well as making clear in his speech that some cuts will not be reversed under the Labour government in 2015, both Ed Miliband and Balls have gone into detail about this before – Balls most famously to the Fabian New Year Conference in January 2012. But far tougher than embracing spending cuts is to use your conference speech a year into being leader of the opposition to set out a critique of the way that capitalism functions. In so much of what he has said as leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband has made the political weather. On Murdoch, on LIBOR and on the economy, Miliband has set the terms of the debate.

Secondly, Cameron is dishonest to define spending cuts as tough choices because for him and the Conservative Party, cutting public spending and shrinking the responsibilities of the public sector are one of the main reasons they entered politics. That’s why Poly Toynbee is absolutely right to say that a ‘shrunken state is the prize’ for this one-term Tory government.

And here is the main point. All of these attempts to grasp the mantle of tough choices are examples of a Conservative Party growing more and more desperate to make some kind of headway in the polls. In the bar at Labour conference after the one nation speech, Labour strategists wondered if the Tories would respond to Miliband’s speech by trying to ignore it. But even those at the top of the Conservative Party can see the writing on the wall. That’s why the language is of ‘sink or swim’. It is desperation. David Cameron increasingly understands that far from being a one nation Prime Minister, he will be a one term Prime Minister.