May: It's time to put Government at service of working people

THERESA MAY will today claim the Conservatives are the party of the centre ground as she makes the case for Government action to help working people.
Theresa May putting final touches to the Conservative Party conference speech she will deliver todayTheresa May putting final touches to the Conservative Party conference speech she will deliver today
Theresa May putting final touches to the Conservative Party conference speech she will deliver today

In terms rarely used by senior Conservatives in recent times, the Prime Minister will describe Government as a “force for good” that can help unite the country.

Mrs May will position the Conservatives as pragmatic centrists and contrast the party with Labour which, she will claim, wants to “pursue vendettas and settle scores”.

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Her approach in her first Conservative Party closing speech as Prime Minister strikes a significant different tone to her predecessor David Cameron, who in his early days in Downing Street called for communities to be liberated from “wasteful, top down government” and the creation of the “Big Society”.

Mrs May will say: “It’s time to remember the good that government can do. Time for a new approach that says while government does not have all the answers, government can and should be a force for good; that the state exists to provide what individual people, communities and markets cannot; and that we should employ the power of government for the good of the people.”

The Prime Minister will argue the Government’s power should be directed at the concerns of “ordinary working-class people”.

She will say: ‘Too often that isn’t how it works today. Just listen to the way a lot of politicians and commentators talk about the public.

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“They find their patriotism distasteful, their concerns about immigration parochial, their views about crime illiberal, their attachment to their job security inconvenient. They find the fact that more than 17 million people voted to leave the European Union simply bewildering.”

Mrs May will say Labour has embraced the “politics of pointless protest that doesn’t unite people but pulls them apart”.