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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, traditionally the Conservative party has stood for small state, low taxes in exchange for minimal government intervention, free trade perhaps over protectionism but the Conservatism Theresa May presented at the Conservative party conference last week seemed a bit different, a bit of a mix, oversight of business with employees for instance on boards, prioritising British workers over workers from other countries.  So has what it is to be Conservative changed?  Joining me now to discuss that is the former Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, he’s in his constituency in North Shropshire and here in the studio with me is Philip Blond, author of the book Red Tory, a very good morning to you both.  

So Owen Paterson, you presumably like what you hear from Theresa May on the issue of Brexit but her interpretation also seems to be that it’s not going to be truly free free-trade and that the state has to get bigger perhaps and intervene.

OWEN PATERSON: Well I wouldn’t agree with Philip, I think free trade and free markets have brought the human race to the highest level of prosperity and health and longer life than at any stage in our history.  If you compare states, if you look at somewhere like Hong Kong which came out of the Second World War as a barren rock, thanks to the brilliant determination of a UK civil servant who was called Cowperthwaite, he insisted on low tax, low regulation and Hong Kong has prospered quite extraordinarily.  That does not apply to countries like Somalia, Cuba, the Soviet Union, Mao’s China or nightmares like Venezuela which are praised by some Labour politicians.  So I’m absolutely clear that I do not want to go back to the 1970s with civil servants telling the car industry to produce something like the Austin Allegro with its famous square steering wheel but there is a role for the state in ensuring that companies can prosper.  Round here our mobile phone system is deteriorating on a daily basis, it is extremely hard to make calls driving from here to Shrewsbury, that means interference by the state in ensuring that the next spectrum auction has real competition. Broadband round here is absolutely dire despite significant sums of money spent under the coalition government, that means the government interfering, not repeating the history of British Gas, splitting the infrastructure from BT and Openreach, allowing BT to go on its way and sell its wonderful products, a big company round here that employs a lot of people but allowing Openreach to get out there and offer competition and get investment in.  Now that’s where the state can really help.  

DM: So Philip Blond accepts your analysis but it hasn’t helped people in the developed world like our own country.

OWEN PATERSON: Well it has and living standards have risen across the world, the trick is to ensure they continue to rise and Philip mentioned Google, I don’t remember any state agency in the United States or Europe saying Google would appear, I don’t remember any state agency saying we’re going to sit down and we’re going to come up with a wonderful product called the iPhone, I don’t remember any state agency predicting there was going to be Twitter or Facebook.  These all emerged but the critical thing is that the state that provided them had the universities and the … Let me finish, I think we agree on this, it’s really important that the state provides the right conditions of low tax and low regulation to allow brilliant entrepreneurs to prosper and have access to a pool of really skilled, well educated people who will bring people from every walk of life so that they will have every possible opportunity to use their talents and develop exciting new products which people haven’t thought of.  Somewhere this morning someone sitting down has a brilliant idea, sitting in a bedsit, we know nothing about it, that person will be a multi-millionaire in five or ten years’ time and neither Philip nor I can tell you who the hell it is, in what country but that is happening now.  The trick is that the country that can provide that and will be benefit is the one that provides the education and the circumstances in which they can prosper.


Take one area of energy policy where there has been a consensus across parties.  We are in a disastrous position here where our energy is significantly more expensive than our competitors so you take a company making aluminium up in Northumberland, Lynemouth, that company was driven abroad, the plant has been closed down, several hundred highly skilled people not employed there anymore, the company has gone back to Canada, that is an absolutely classic case where the government can interfere in a benign manner to ensure there is cheap energy and there is plenty of competition between energy providers, so Philip is absolutely right on that but the key thing is for the government to provide the conditions and let the entrepreneurs get on with it and ensure the entrepreneurs have access to plenty of skilled bright talent to grow their businesses without regulation and without taxation burying them.

DM: We are out of time, I am very sorry gentlemen, thank you very much indeed.