Britain | The new government

David Cameron’s big embrace

Emboldened and strengthened by his electoral triumph, the prime minister sets out to finish what he began a decade ago

AT THE general election on May 7th David Cameron led his party to its first majority in the House of Commons for 23 years. The next day he did something almost as important and surprising: he drew the right lessons from his win.

The prime minister had run a solid, unspectacular campaign focused on stability and competence. Worried by the opposition Labour Party’s economic instincts and its possible reliance on Scottish nationalists to govern, voters dutifully turned out for the Conservative Party. True to the modest mandate they had given him, Mr Cameron talked about giving Britons “a good life”, promised apprenticeships and house-building and hailed his party’s unifying, “one nation” tradition.

He was also reviving the original mission of his leadership. The Tories were in despair when he took over in 2005, three election defeats and three previous changes of leader since the party had last won an election. In the eyes of voters it was still too curmudgeonly, exclusive and right-wing to be put in charge of Britain. Mr Cameron set about trying to change that. He spoke earnestly of protecting the environment and boosting national happiness. Yet his upbeat, quality-of-life politics began to seem eccentric after the financial crisis, when joblessness and debt soared. Many Tories blamed Mr Cameron’s airy, garbled message for their failure to win a majority at the 2010 election. In the coalition that ensued, the centrist Liberal Democrats, with their greenery and social liberalism, made the Conservatives look like dull accountants at best, bad guys at worst. The Tory modernisation programme was put in the freezer.

Freed from the complexities of coalition, Mr Cameron now seems to be defrosting that programme—and adding the cost-of-living dimension that its first iteration naively lacked. The new focus has been evident in senior Tories’ language. All are now crow-barring “one nation” into their comments. At the first meeting of his cabinet, Mr Cameron said his priority would be to find “bread-and-butter” ways to improve people’s lives. His guiding principles, he added, would be “true social justice and genuine compassion”.

Some of the prime minister’s appointments point in a similar direction. On May 8th he made George Osborne, the liberal chancellor of the exchequer and co-author of his political project, the first secretary of state—deputy prime minister in all but name. He then promoted Mr Osborne’s reformist allies, including Sajid Javid, who became business secretary. Robert Halfon, a champion of blue-collar “white-van Conservatism”, was rewarded with his first ministerial job.

One of Mr Cameron’s first priorities is to double parents’ free child-care allowance from 15 to 30 hours a week. In his speech on May 8th he hailed Mr Osborne’s “northern powerhouse” scheme to integrate and empower the northern English cities (still electoral no-go zones for the Tories) and bolstered this by making Greg Clark, a fervent decentraliser, local-government secretary. He promises to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom by giving it “the strongest devolved government anywhere in the world”.

It remains to be seen whether Mr Cameron can lead his party down this sunny, temperate road. The Tories have a working majority of just 15—smaller than the number of MPs who want to concentrate on traditional right-wing priorities like crime, immigration and the European Union. Already some are muttering about the last of these (see article). An impending battle over unpopular rulings by the European Court of Human Rights will only inflame the decades-old Tory obsession with Europe, even though it is separate from the EU. At a time when MPs in general are becoming more independent and ornery (the last parliament saw more rebellions than any since 1945) that bodes ill for Mr Cameron’s plan to convince voters that his party has changed.

For now, though, the prime minister is in a delightfully strong position. With the Lib Dems gone, he has more patronage to bestow. He can pull the levers of government without having to negotiate with his coalition partners. And if, despite the efforts of his party’s cantankerous wing, he succeeds, he could open up to his party new segments of the electorate beyond its southern, middle-class strongholds. Labour is downtrodden, faces months of internal debate and may tilt left (see Bagehot). The Lib Dems have been reduced to a tiny, traumatised rump. The centre ground is there for the taking. A decade after he first set his sights on it, Mr Cameron has a chance to seize it.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "David Cameron’s big embrace"

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