(8) To what extent have the Conservatives moved away from their Principles?

Deficit reduction
1. The Conservatives re-engaged more openly with economic Thatcherism, due to them alone propoing substantial spending cuts and the "structural" deficit should be entirely removed within the lifetime of the Parliament
2. There first emergency budget of June 2010, would increase VAT to 20%, pushing up capital gains tax and introducting a balance sheet levy on banks and building societies
3. There would be £81 Billion in cuts in Government spending in September of 2010
4. This was a return to the strident neoliberal rhetoric of the 1980s, about the benefits of "rugged" individualism and free market
  1. However seen as "necessary" rather than "desirable" to prevent fisgal inbalance of Greek and Portaguese economys
5. The coalitiom's approach to the deficit and its wider programme of polices bears the hallmark of Thatcherism
  1. Political choice
    1. The coaltions cuts are a political choice, in that they are more severe than those have been intoduced in many other European countries in a similar position.
    2. Also, economists and other commentators have been divided about the wisdom of swift and severe spending cuts, particularly because of their impact on growth
  2. Spending cuts rather than tax rises
    1. The deficit reduction programme places much greater emphasis on spending cuts than on tax rises £1 tax increase £4 spending cut
    2. This reflects both a willingness to reduce the size of the state and a Thatcherite desire to keep taxes low
  3. Growth straegy
    1. The coalition's strategy is largely based on the assumption that, as the public sector of the economy contract and private grows
    2. This is based on a faith in the natural vigour of a market economy
  4. Privatization
    1. Plans to cut spending often invole a shift from public provision to private provision, based on the assumption that private business are usally more effcient and responsive than public sector bodies
  5. Wealfare cuts
    1. The burden of spending cuts affects the wealfare state and benefits system.
    2. One of the key of Thatcherism is that welfare creates a "culture of dependency" and so hampers the economy
The "Big Society"
1. Conservatism under Cameron is defined by the distance it has placed between the contemporary party and its Thatcherite past
  1. Evident in the "Big Society"
2. The notion of the "Big Society" is often loose or ill-defined
  1. However, it is most clearly associated with the ideas of so-called "civic conservatism", which highlights the need of a sense of rootedness and belonging to the institutions of civil society, standing between the state and the individual
3. The idea of the "big society" therfore suggest that people at a local level should take more responsibility and do more to help themselves and their communities, rather than relying on action taken by state institution and public services
4. "Big society" thinking certianly differs from the atomistic individualsim of Thatcherism, in that it clearly places an emphasis on cooperation and community action rather than individual selfstriving
5. Similar to Thatcherism in the desire to "role back" the state
6. The Conservative-Lib Dem coaltion departer from Thatcherite Ideas and policies
  1. Health spending
    1. The coaltion has Promisted to increases health spending in "real" terms during every year of the 2010-15 Parliament
    2. The majority reorganiation of the hands that the NHS,which started in 2011 and places much more control in the hands of GP. it aims to create an "internal market" in health provisions
  2. Welfare reform
    1. The has a long-term commitment to creating a unified tax and wealfare system that has much in common with "third way". E.G Universal Credit to replace a complex range of work-related benefits
  3. Criminal justice
    1. Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary, has set about significantly reducing the UK's prison population and enphasis on non-custodial sentences
    2. Ending the assumption that prison "works". accepting the view that punishment should seek to rehabilitate wrong doers rather than just determing wrongdoing
  4. Civil liberty
    1. In opposition, the Conservatives showed greater interested in civil Liberties issues and constitutional reform, including supporting a larger elected second chamber, and these commitments have been enlarged under the coalition
In Light of the coalition
1. The coalition agreement means it has become difficult to identify where Conservatives polices start and Liberal Democrat policies finish
2. Conservative policy had a revived interest in certain Tharcherite ideas can be traced back to late sumer of 2007
  1. This shift was reflected in greater concern with traditionalist issues such as law and order, immigration and the family

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(8) To what extent have the Conservatives moved away from their Principles?

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