Chris Hopkins is the Political Research Director at Savanta.
Rishi Sunak began last week by giving a speech at the think tank Policy Exchange. It was full of conflicting signals. It was both laden with the language of doom at the geopolitical risks facing the UK and full of hyper-optimistic messaging about the opportunities of technology.
But he wasn’t the only party leader attempting to thread a delicate needle on a major policy area last week. Keir Starmer spent his Tuesday having a ‘crunch meeting’ with major trade unions, amid concerns of a watering down of the ‘New Deal for Working People’ that he plans to introduce in government with Angela Rayner.
Clearly, if we go by their campaigning activity, the Conservatives want both national security and workers’ rights to be major ‘dividing lines’ at the next general election.
The idea of dividing lines is to put yourself on the most popular side of any given debate in contrast to your opponents. The Conservatives used to be the masters of this. On the economy, the dividing line was that the Tories would manage the budget, while Labour would splurge. On crime, Labour would be soft while the Tories would keep you safe.
But I think their position on workers’ rights is another example of today’s Conservative Party speaking to their members rather than their voters, and particularly their new electoral coalition.
Simply put, if their aim is to win an election,they have chosen the wrong dividing line in workers’ rights.
But more than this, Conservative framing of the New Deal as “French-style employment laws that would make our efforts in revoking excessive EU red-tape since Brexit redundant”, speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of how the public views the economy and work since the 2008 financial crash.
Even when we asked 2019 Conservative voters their views of those ‘French-style employment laws’, their response was emphatic. They liked them a lot.
Three quarters (73 per cent) support the introduction of a ‘right to switch off’ for employees – where employers can’t contact employees outside of office hours. Seven in ten (68 per cent) back the end of ‘firing and rehiring’ workers on worse terms. Two-thirds (65 per cent) support banning exploitative zero-hours contracts.
Again, these are people who voted for the Conservative Party and Boris Johnson in 2019. The support levels for the wider public are even higher.
Why is this the case?
Firstly, Conservative voters, just like anyone else, like stuff being given to them. This is usually most effective in the form of monetary value, but also includes increased rights and protections. It’s the same reason why when you ask the public their response to spring budget measures, they are usually pretty positive – they like giveaways.
But there are two broader points here. One is based on the Conservative’s electoral coalition and the other on wider public trends.
The Conservative Party, under Boris Johnson, won a historic majority in 2019. They did so by winning over their ‘heartlands’ in the suburbs of South England, alongside a series of constituencies in the so-called ‘red wall’ in the Midlands and North of England.
The Conservatives have never really got over the challenges posed by their new electoral coalition. Their new voters were more likely to be economically interventionist. They liked increased public spending. Consequently, I think it’s fair to say they were more likely to support stronger workers’ rights and protections that a Labour Party might offer them.
The trouble was that these ‘red wall’ voters didn’t trust Labour to be the vehicle to deliver those rights anymore. This is how and why we had the Conservatives becoming the ‘true party of hard work and working people’. They have since lost that mantle.
But there is a bigger question here for the Conservatives in my opinion. The post-Blair Conservative argument used to be that we will deliver a dynamic economy, partially by a flexible and lightly regulated workforce. This arrangement would help us ensure robust economic growth, which we can use to pay for all the things we know voters like, such as the NHS.
But like much else, the old political rules no longer apply.
Voters have wised up to the deal of growth vs rights. The other end isn’t being held up. Where the public may once have conceded workers’ rights for a perceived higher standard of living via growth and jobs, they have lost trust in the Conservatives as effective stewards of the UK economy.
Think of it like this. If your main job is now more precarious, your mortgage has significantly increased and you are working a second gig to make up for it, I’d imagine stopping ‘fire and rehire’ and having the ‘ability to switch off’ would look like a pretty good offer. And it would look good to Conservative supporters as much as anyone else.
All of this combined leads to a fascinating situation, totally disconnected from the current political debate.
If you ask Conservative voters, more say they prefer better worker protections even if it slows down the economy (48 per cent), than would say they prefer stronger economic growth, even if fewer worker protections (39 per cent).
Hence why I think that the Conservatives have chosen the wrong dividing line in workers’ rights – because the public, including Conservative voters, agree with Labour.
The post Chris Hopkins: Workers’ rights are the wrong dividing line for the Conservatives. Voters agree with Labour. appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Chris Hopkins
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