B ORIS JOHNSON is well placed to become one of the most powerful prime ministers in modern times. Margaret Thatcher had to contend with a powerful internal opposition of moderate “wets”. Tony Blair had Gordon Brown to deal with. But Mr Johnson has purged the internal opposition and reduced his cabinet colleagues to a pack of poodles. If politics in 2019 was about calculating the strength of parliamentary factions, politics in 2020 and beyond will be about cataloguing the intrigues in the court of King Boris.

But what does Mr Johnson want to do with all this power, other than “get Brexit done”? The best clue lies in the phrase “one-nation Conservatism”. During the election campaign Mr Johnson repeatedly promised to lead a one-nation Conservative administration. Though it may sound like one of those feel-good phrases that politicians use to fill the void, the phrase is pregnant with meaning: you cannot understand the Johnson project without decoding it. Yet it does not mean what most Tories think it means.

Liberal Conservatives have seized on the phrase as a sign that the prime minister plans to dump the nasty Boris of the referendum and resurrect the cuddly Boris of the London-mayor years. They have even used it to put a positive gloss on his 87-seat working majority: freed from the parliamentary logic which gave such power to hardline Tory backbenchers, he will be able to bring about a soft Brexit and lots of progressive social policies.

It is easy to see why hopeful liberals might think like this. Since Thatcher’s early years, Tory wets have rallied behind the one-nation banner. Michael Heseltine used the phrase to mean support for economic intervention and European integration. David Cameron used it as code for causes such as environmentalism and gay marriage. In March 2019 dozens of moderate MP s such as Amber Rudd and Sir Nicholas Soames launched a One Nation Group aimed at counter-balancing the party’s Europhobes. But they are as wrong as it is possible to be. Mr Johnson didn’t expel 21 members of the One Nation Group from the party in order to start sucking up to them. And he didn’t capture a large swathe of working-class England in order to start courting the Notting Hill set.

One-nation Conservatism has in fact had many meanings over the decades. Benjamin Disraeli, who coined the phrase, used it to mean uniting the wealthy “classes” with the “masses” in a common national home. Lord Salisbury understood it to mean uniting the kingdom by defeating or co-opting the forces of Irish and Scottish nationalism (the party even changed its name to the Conservative and Unionist Party). Stanley Baldwin invoked it to champion the “real” (Conservative) England of civic patriotism against the “alien” (Labour) England of class divisions and mighty trade unions. Harold Macmillan used the term to mean mixing the welfare state with property-owning democracy. Mr Johnson is currently engaged in yet another reinvention of the phrase.

At its simplest, his version of one-nation Conservatism means an amalgam of left-wing policies on economics and right-wing policies on culture—the exact reverse of Mr Cameron’s approach. During the election campaign Mr Johnson praised the National Health Service as a “simple and beautiful idea that represents the best of our country”. In a recent cabinet meeting he described himself as “basically a Brexity Hezza”, referring to Lord Heseltine, who combined an enthusiasm for Europe with an equally powerful enthusiasm for government spending. Mr Johnson will combine big-government with a proud embrace of traditional values. He has already fired the first shots in the new culture wars by discouraging his ministers from appearing on the BBC ’s agenda-setting “Today” programme or on Channel 4 News, and by promising a review of the supposedly Remoanerish law courts.

This policy mix is driven by the political realignment which allowed the Conservative Party to capture working-class northern seats while causing it to struggle in the most cosmopolitan enclaves of the south. Rachel Wolf, one of the authors of the party’s manifesto, says it was directed in particular at people who subscribe to conservative values (“they want criminals to be punished”) but who also rely heavily on public services.

At a deeper level, Mr Johnson’s version of one-nation Conservatism is about preventing the country from being broken apart by the rival forces of globalisation and nationalist-populism. During the Blair-Cameron years, England was in danger of splitting into Disraeli’s two nations, “between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy”: a prosperous metropolitan nation that embraced globalisation and immigration, and a depressed provincial nation that regarded these phenomena as threats to both prosperity and social cohesion. Mr Johnson is hoping to close the regional gap that sees the state perversely subsidising the already prosperous south (spending on transport is twice as high per person in London as in the rest of the country). He has already announced that he will change a Treasury formula that makes it difficult to target government spending at poorer regions, and introduce an as-yet undefined “points system” for immigration. He is also hoping to use the power of the Downing Street bully pulpit to close the cultural gap which sees working-class northerners ignored by Londoners.

Our island Tory

Mr Johnson’s version of one-nation Conservatism is risky. Brexit is likely to do worse economic damage to the north (with its manufacturing industries) than to the south (with its service-oriented economy). It will also strain the biggest one-nation problem of all, the union with Scotland and Northern Ireland. Persuading the London elite to get to know their country a bit better could degenerate into a culture war that splits the nation in the name of uniting it. That said, Mr Johnson’s reworking of an ancient Conservative creed has already provided him with two things his party had not had, in combination, since the 1980s: a large parliamentary majority and a direction of travel. ■