George Osborne’s remarks earlier this week, in which he suggested reforms to employment legislation to curb the recent spate of strikes, raised some eyebrows.  The TUC (predictably) called them a “gaffe”.  Others were surprised at the note he struck, given the conciliatory approach that David Cameron has taken – for example,  his recent appointment of Richard Balfe as an envoy to the union movement.

But the remarks might best be taken as a timely reminder to the electorate that the Tories are on the side of the consumer – whether of petrol, of schools, of local government services or of anything else.

Margaret Thatcher effectively positioned the Conservatives as the party of the consumer – standing up against the producer interests from which the Labour Party couldn’t escape by virtue of its continued union links.  At her first ever Party Conference as leader, she told delegates that “we are all consumers and as consumers we all want a choice”.  She knew that however often we are producers and however much we may wish to defend our interests with that hat on, we are more often consumers. 

That realisation remained alien to Labour throughout the 80s and the early part of the 90s.  But the genius of New Labour was to break from that mould, and to embrace the consumer even more closely than the Tories had done  Blair and co were hugely successful.  They managed to paint the Conservatives as the party of the “fat cats”, and claimed the consumer mantle for themselves. 

Some of this was mere rhetoric.  In the hands of Stephen Byers, the pursuit of the consumer interest became the much-ridiculed “rip-off Britain” narrative.  But in the hands of others, not least Gordon Brown, it was a policy position that had some substance. The  Labour reforms of consumer and competition law (not least the hugely expanded powers and budget of the Office of Fair Trading), which were driven by the Treasury, are a good example. 

So it is welcome to see that the Conservatives haven’t forgotten about this key part of their narrative, and that they are thinking about the substance that needs to stand behind it.  In an age when we increasingly understand ourselves as the consumers of public services (as well as consumers of the outputs of private business), that angle has never been more important.  Whether through employment legislation, consumer policy, competition law, or otherwise, the Party needs to keep working to ensure that it is seen as the consumer’s friend.