Anthony Trollope once remarked about the 19th-century Conservative Party: “No revolution stinks so foully in the nostrils of an English Tory as to be absolutely irreconcilable to him. When taken in the refreshing waters of office any such pill can be swallowed.” Trollope’s point seems prescient. Today’s Tories are revolutionaries – true modernising radicals possessed by faith in technology and intent on governing by permanent insurgency.
Led by a vanguard in No 10, they have declared war on Whitehall, seeking to revolutionise the state machine and turn Britain into a fortress of science parks and tech start-ups. They will boost the fortunes of investors and innovators, while the masses are bought off with a few more Boris buses and police on the beat. And Keynesian state capitalism is the means by which the Tories hope to accelerate their version of modernity.
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