The Tories are giving up on austerity – at a time when we need it most

The great British public are dancing round the Magic Money Tree in some kind of Glastonbury inspired pagan ritual, willing it to bear fruit, dissolve the mortgage and get them a new Honda

People are tired of austerity – even if they don't understand the benefits of a competitive market economy (AFP/Getty)

One of the joys of watching politics is that sometimes you can feel the tectonic plates shifting beneath your very feet. Usually they're just twitches and faint tremors. That's how the political pundits make so much of their living – catching changes in tone, shifts in language, small gestures and fragments of gossip pieced together to make bits of a picture and some sense of small trends.

Not now. The shift to the left is profound and real. Lately the swing in politics has become so violent it is difficult to believe. When there is talk of the Tories ditching university tuition fees then that does seem seismic. It should be no surprise that Tory MPs and ministers are responding to this different national mood. Even the likes of Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg, John Redwood and Grant Shapps are calling for an end to austerity and a boost in public servants’ pay. Or that Justine Greening and Jeremy Hunt are going for a scrap at the Treasury for a pay rise for teachers and nurses.

The Conservative Party is nothing if not a vehicle for political survival. It is the most successful political grouping in global democratic system. To do that, when it has been successful, it has responded to public opinion, or at least recognised when that opinion has shifted. Sometimes – rarely – it has led and shifted opinion. During the dismal time of the Blair ascendancy the Tories stuck to the old certainties and the “nasty” agenda. They paid the price.

George Osborne and David Cameron took their party on a different path and succeeded. It seems almost an aberration now, that era. The Conservatives for a change stopped banging on about Europe and compromised with the electorate and their coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, who bequeathed them their best lines and humane policies, from taking the poor out of income tax to the pupil premium. It is ironic that Cameron expected the Lib Dems to shield him again from his own promise on the European referendum, his strategy ruined when he accidentally won a modest overall majority in 2015.

When Theresa May got in it seemed she wanted to take her party fully to the centre, completing the post Thatcher journey started by John Major, stalled by William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, and then resumed with compassion by the Cameron-Osborne partnership. Theresa May made her famous speech on the steps of Downing Street when she talked about race equality, the families just about managing, the poor. But her deeds have not lived up to the words: and now it is too late for her to pretend she is leading the march to compassionate conservatism or doing it out of choice. Everything now seems forced on a minority Government that has lost control of events.

May is being nicer to the pensioners just because some Ulster MPs have forced her to. So with so much changing in public opinion and in the Tory Party itself, and despite resistance from the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, austerity will soon pass. That will be an imprudent, no actually a stupid thing to do with a hard Brexit round the corner, but it doesn't seem to have registered with the public, bless them. The only question seems to be timing: they did not wish to be seen to be giving in to a Corbyn amendment on the Queen’s Speech. Number 10 briefed as much soon after, which probably defeated the point of the exercise. Soon the nurses and teachers will get their pay rise.

All of which may do something more to shore up the Tories’ dwindling support. But the times seem unexpectedly against them now, and they are ill placed to adapt quickly under their discredited leader. The country is tired of austerity, food banks, inequalities, unaffordable – and dangerous – housing, poor rail services, rip-off utilities, joblessness in ‘left behind’ communities, overstretched hospitals and all the rest. They may be wrong and fail to appreciate the imperatives of a competitive market economy, but they seem not to care much now about all that Thatcherite, or even Blairite, stuff about not paying ourselves more than we earn or competing in world markets or incentives for investment.

The public have stopped listening to that. It’s why so many turned to Ukip and now turn to Corbyn. They want a messiah who will give them what they want, and Theresa May was not it (something which could one day redound to her credit). The great British public are dancing round the Magic Money Tree in some kind of Glastonbury inspired pagan ritual, willing it to bear fruit, dissolve the mortgage and get them a new Honda.

As in 1945, or the early 1960s or 1997 when there was an unmistakable shift to the left or in 1979 and the move to the right under Thatcher, today the electoral shift is more than tangible, and the pundits and experts are scrambling to keep up and make sense of it. Probably no Tory leader can stem this tide. Once again the people are ahead of them. These are dizzying, a little frightening – because there are great risks with Corbyn's policies – but exhilarating times.

You can listen to Sean read and discuss his piece here