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During the recent election campaign, eligibility to govern became reduced in Tory political rhetoric to “having a plan”.    But isn’t central planning a feature of the big, interventionist

State, anathema to true blue Conservatives?  And what “the plan” was to achieve varied from stopping the boats, to defeating Putin, to growing the economy, all requiring well-planned

government action.   The accusation of not having a plan was mainly directed at Sir Keir Starmer, bearer of the “Ming vase”, full of policy positions vulnerable to ambush.  He had good

reason not to, as the French say, _ vider son sac _ (speak his mind), confide in the public detailed policy priorities and how they would be implemented.   Not an ideal exercise of

democracy, but one necessary for any party wishing to win a general election.  Faced with a right-wing press and predatory social media, much of it supporting a collapsing ruling party

reduced to false claims and misrepresentation, hardly blameworthy.  And perhaps there was an unrevealed plan behind the reticence. We are now half-way through a political dance of the seven

veils.  We’ve had the debates and interviews, a substantial manifesto and King’s Speech, some elaboration of the new PM’s headline priorities, Rachel Reeves’ first speech to business leaders

as Chancellor of the Exchequer with, shortly, her first speech in office to Parliament.  The new Government is determined — and has been so for some time — to establish its credibility both

nationally and internationally.  Something more than pragmatism, the makings of a plan, is appearing.  But the big picture and the economic and political philosophy that shapes it, what we

arrive at when the 40 pieces of legislation in the King’s Speech are put together and implemented, remains still out of focus. When I turned over Will Hutton’s _ This Time No Mistakes: How

to Remake Britain _ (Bloomsbury, £9.99) to find Sir Keir Starmer’s bonanza of a blurb on the back cover, “a brilliant book…. read it if you haven’t already”, it seemed to promise a sharper

focus.  And indeed Hutton — former Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, journalist and political economist, former editor-in-chief of _ The Observer, _ for which he writes a column —

provides both a big picture and a detailed policy analysis.  The book gives a coherent intellectual and historical account of the mess we are in, how we got here, and how we might emerge. It

looked like a strong contender for what New Labour Mark 2 is all about. The headline formula Hutton applies is “an ethic of socialism with the best of progressive liberalism”.  By this he

means “blending” the dynamism of the market and the restless energy of capitalism with the values of “fellowship, solidarity, fairness and mutuality”, informing a social contract to protect

citizens from the risks of uncontrolled capitalism.  Not a bad definition of social democracy or, come to that, much of Catholic Social Teaching — though _ This Time No Mistakes _ never

refers to this body of social thinking.  Probably wise in these secular times. Not surprisingly, Lloyd George, as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1908-1915) in the Liberal “great reforming

government” that fought the Tory-dominated House of Lords to create national insurance and an old-age pension prior to the First World War, is an early example of what Hutton calls the

politics of balancing the We with the I.   Then comes the Christian socialist, RH Tawney, who influenced much more than Anglican social thinking after the War.  Tawney’s friend from Toynbee

Hall days (1903) and Liberal hero, was William Beveridge, whose expertise in social insurance was taken up by Atlee’s 1945 Labour government.  The other big name amongst the founding fathers

of Hutton’s political economy is John Maynard Keynes, who bequeathed Keynesian economics and the core belief that government intervention can stabilise economies.   Franklin D. Roosevelt’s

New Deal (1933-1938) which sought to remedy the Great Depression, economic recovery, reform of the financial system and help for the unemployed and impoverished, was profoundly influenced by

Keynesian thinking. Hutton describes how Harold Macmillan’s one-nation conservatism, support for the welfare state, his Keynesian approach, mixed economy with some nationalised industries

and strong trades unions, represented a retention of a post-war consensus dominated by the thinking of his three heroes.  The Conservative belief that the free market, individual freedom and

a minimal state is the correct formula for growth stands out in stark contrast to Macmillan’s approach. It was finally dropped by Margaret Thatcher, who wished to counter a “culture of

dependency”, denounced the idea that people should turn to Government to solve their problems, and for whom there was no such thing as society.  “There are individual men and women and there

are families, and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first”.  Take away Thatcher’s pragmatism, add the last 14 years of government, and we end

up with an extreme right-wing version of Toryism and its discontents that almost destroyed the Conservative Party. The second half of _This Time No Mistakes, _detailing policy prescriptions

for reform and how we might escape from the present economic and social crisis, shows an extraordinarily deep grasp of our multiple problems, both financial and social, and the policy work

of different ministries.  The wide sweep of Hutton’s proposed reforms and institutional innovations, from restructuring pension funds to incentivising socially purposeful businesses

committed to more than benefiting shareholders, makes them impossible to cover within a brief review like this.  Just read them. They may well have influenced the thinking of the Chancellor

and the Prime Minister and should be the subject of a national conversation. The rub is that most of Hutton’s proposals require funding, either from government or private investors, perhaps

with the former leveraging the latter.  The UK’s current debts are eating up too much government revenue and Starmer is self-limited by tight fiscal restraints to funding small-scale

initiatives with maximum impact.  Rachel Reeves is already having to find some wriggle-room. Credibility and stability are the necessary first aims in the Labour plan.  Hutton’s

comprehensive analysis and prescriptions possibly foreshadow much of what is to come.  It looks like being a long haul.  A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s

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