Polly Toynbee on Ilkley Literature Festival, the 'walking dead' Tories and why Labour should be more confident

“Neither party seems to have quite reckoned with the results of the last election, in that Labour doesn't seem to have realised how thoroughly it's won, and that it could do an awful lot of things in a hurry if it wanted, but it seems nervous, as if it was still fighting a campaign against a Tory party that, for the time being, has been totally vanquished,” says Toynbee.

The Guardian columnist is speaking to The Yorkshire Post after visiting both Labour and Tory conferences and ahead of an appearance at the Ilkley Literature Festival tomorrow where, with David Walker, she will discuss their latest, ninth co-authored book The Only Way Is Up: How to Take Britain from Austerity to Prosperity.

Released this summer after the election – publishing was a bit of a rush as they, like many, expected that to be happening in the coming weeks rather than last July – it charts 14 years of Conservative rule and how Labour might now transform the country. The most comparable of their works is The Verdict, which assessed Labour’s last 13 years in power, up to 2010.

"The purpose of this is for it to act as the baseline,” says Toynbee, 77. “Anyone who buys this book can keep hold of it, and if in a few times they're thinking, oh, this or that isn't very good, they can look back and see how much better or worse it is than what Labour inherited. It's a record of Labour's inheritance and what they've got to do to improve it.”

As well as the facts and figures to back up their case, the authors also went around the country to assess the state of the nation, meeting people such as those hoping to sign up for a new dental surgery where there were “queues for two days”.

She says that “most things are in a much, much worse state than they were in 2010,” when the Conservatives, initially with the support of the Liberal Democrats, last took power from Labour.

After attending their conferences, what impression does she have of the Opposition and those in Government?

"The Tories have never had such a dire result and are kind of the walking dead,” she says.

“They all seem quite chipper and don't seem to notice that they're running about with no heads anymore. So they carry on as if nothing much has happened, and yes, (they think) the same old issues are still what's going to win them reelection – smaller state. But there was John Curtice, the great pollster, telling them in no uncertain terms that smaller state is not going to win because these days, people want more of everything. They want more NHS, better schools, they want councils that aren't going bankrupt, they want more police, and the Tories just don't seem to have got that. And all the candidates were still going on with the same old themes, and they're not going to win again until they find something new to say, some new theme, some new point. So it’s all very up in the air.

"Obviously Labour had quite a few stumbles in the beginning. We don’t know how it's going to pan out because you don't really know what a Government is like until they have their first budget, and then you see where their priorities are.”

For Toynbee, child poverty should be right up there. She is imploring the Government to abolish the two child benefit cap – introduced by the Conservatives in 2017, it stops families receiving Child Tax Credit or Universal Credit for third or subsequent children born after April 5, 2017 – and she references a new Institute for Fiscal Studies report showing that, in her words, “it would take out of poverty all the extra children that the Tories, the last 14 years, put into poverty, at one stroke, for a cost of £2.5 billion” a year.

In a recent column for The Guardian, she also argued that “people have rumbled that tax is the necessary price for good services”, and the “pivot towards social democratic thinking came from the deep shock of the pandemic”.

She says now: “I think it's a mistake for Labour to talk about (tax) as a burden. I think they need to start talking about it by saying that is the price you have to pay because people do kind of know that. Given that Jeremy Hunt offered such huge bribes in two great rafts of cuts in National Insurance, and it didn't move the dial at all, people realised that cuts in tax mean cuts in services and they weren't willing to tolerate that when faced with that choice.

"Obviously, nobody likes taxes, but they're grown up enough to know what the consequences would be (without them) and I think Labour should talk much more about that. The price of civilisation is taxes.”

Although she has been at pains to acknowledge her privileged background, Toynbee’s early reporting included her book A Working Life, from the early 1970s, for which she investigated Britain's low-paid jobs. As well as writing for The Guardian, she was previously BBC social affairs editor between 1988 and 1995, and spent time at The Independent.

Ilkley Lit Fest, along with others of its ilk, she believes, provide a good place to discuss politics outside of the usual environments.

"We go around lots of book festivals and we have great conversations. They’re always jam-packed with people who want to talk about politics,” she says, “but they won’t really go to political meetings. That's different. Few people get involved in politics, only a number are actually members of a political party, but it seems to be the place now where people will come and air their thoughts. So that’s partly what makes it fun.”

The Conservative Party did not respond to a comment request.

Polly Toynbee and David Walker: The Only Way is Up is on at King's Hall tomorrow at 7.30pm. To book, visit www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk