The idea that Johnson is moving to the left could be Thatchers' final victory | Andy Beckett | Opinion

ESince Margaret Thatcher took over the leadership of the Conservatives 45 years ago, one of the few seemingly reliable facts in British politics is that the Conservatives are aggressively right on the economy. Sanctify the free market, give priority to the wealthy, promote competition throughout society, justify inequalities: in a subtle and not so subtle way, the Conservatives pursued a particular and muscular vision of economic life, even if it’s they softened periodically on social issues.

However, since Boris Johnson took office last summer, there has been increasing evidence that the Conservatives' economic overhaul is late underway more than a decade after the financial crisis. which has undermined much of their economic philosophy. There has been less talk of tax cuts and more of tax increases; an electoral manifesto that promised opportunities for all and social justice; an increase in the minimum wage far greater than the rate of inflation; the nationalization of Northern Rail; and the possibility of state aid for other companies in difficulty but strategically important.

This change in tone and, at times, in substance was widely viewed as a change to the left, a change that should be confirmed in the budget for the next few weeks. Some right-wing observers have been taken aback. The Institute of Economic Affairs, which provided much of the intellectual basis for Thatcherism, complained that the speech by Decembers Queens focused on state intervention rather than on plans to make people freer.

But for many commentators, on the left and on the right, the Conservatives are following a new intelligent path, which their recent capture of so many Labor seats has both validated and made inevitable. As political scientist Matthew Goodwin said, in a highly quoted tweet election night: it is easier for the right to move to the left on the economy. The Conservatives' reputation for their ruthlessness and their reinvention means that they can deploy economic tools such as nationalization which are much more controversial when used by Labor.

I am not sure that the economic outlook for the Conservatives is so rosy. As previous governments have seen, changing your economic thinking is one thing; changing the British economy, unbalanced and sluggish but stuck in its habits, is often another. And this task will be even more difficult during and after the greatest and most economically disruptive public health emergency in decades. The Conservatives will not be able to provide economic opportunities for everyone if millions of workers are unwilling or unable to leave home.

But even if the economic overhaul of the holiday ultimately disappointed, as Johnson's big ideas generally did when he was mayor of London, the fact that so many people took it seriously and considered it a move to the left is significant. Because in many ways, this is not a move to the left at all.

Conservatives have little to say about the marked and growing power imbalances in the modern economy: between employers and employees, digital giants like Uber and concert workers, business leaders and unions, the City of London and everywhere else. Reducing these imbalances would be the goal of any truly leftist economic policy.

Instead, the idea of ​​transforming the economy that has received the most enthusiastic support from Johnson is the creation of free ports with minimal regulations. Rather than leveling Britain, as the Conservatives promise, such enclaves would likely make the economy even more uneven, distancing businesses from elsewhere. And even the race to the top is not necessarily a center-left policy if it means taking resources from large parts of London, for example, crowded with poor tenants and working people and giving them to cities full of retired owners in the north.

The credulity with which the conservative movement was welcomed is revealing. This indicates a final, little-noticed victory for Thatcherism. It has shifted the way Britain thinks of the economy so far and so lastingly to the right that any softer conservative economic policy is mistaken for a radical change of heart. In fact, these are tradeoffs between disruptive capitalism and the social stability of the kind of pre-Thatcher conservative governments that frequently did when circumstances demanded.

From the early 1950s to the early 1970s, conservative chancellors supported full employment and income tax rates of 60% or more for the wealthy. But few took them for leftists. They were just clever right-wing politicians responding to the fact that many voters bitterly remembered unemployment and the inequalities of the interwar period and also responding to a Labor party which, even when he was not in power, had many egalitarian economic ideas that could potentially seduce in an anti-elitist age.

Something similar may happen now. The Labor Left has been thinking about the problems of modern capitalism a lot longer than the Conservatives. Many voters, including the Conservatives, are much less sure than before that the free market country that Thatcher and his party largely created will offer them a good life. The Johnson government is responding to these political dangers. But like all conservative governments, it will do no more to curb capitalism than it needs to. If the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, wanted to go further, he would be in another party.

In the final years of the Conservative manifesto, the vaguely egalitarian economic shifts did not last long. Like one of Johnsons' seemingly curvy, but in fact sneaky and versatile speeches, the text quickly moves on to other political messages. As conservatives, we want to give you freedom from low taxes, opportunities, declares the manifesto, like a Thatcher speech of the 1980s. We believe free markets can protect the planet. Conservatives want to stop looking at economic growth before social harmony. But in most conservative hearts, the economic craze persists.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist