Theresa May. Image, FCO, public domain.
Another Conservative prime minister, another Downing Street speech drenched in one nation mythology. Many will doubt Theresa May’s sincerity when she talks about equality and inclusion, but to conclude that she is being duplicitous would be to miss the point. It is more a question of conceptual hierarchies: there will be plenty of time for progressive politics, but only once the economy has been ‘stabilised’.
The problem is that while politicians of the right borrow the language of the left, their real priorities go largely unsaid, or are at least obscured. When May praises her predecessor’s commitment to ‘social justice’, we are attuned to focusing on the word ‘justice’, insofar as it conjures up egalitarian politics. But her focus, like David Cameron’s, will probably be on the ‘social’ bit. Individuals must make themselves more morally worthy, if they wish to be rewarded by the inherently just market order.
