Jeremy Corbyn means the Tories must argue for trickle-down from the ground up

Parliamentary Business: Senior Tories feel intellectual battles seemingly won in the 1980s will have to be re-fought given the shock rise of veteran left-wingers to the top of the Labour Party

John Redwood is still hanging around the House of Commons two decades after launching an ill-fated leadership challenge to then prime minister John Major and he has barely aged in that time.

Unaffectionately nicknamed “The Vulcan” by his enemies, Mr Redwood still appears a little other-worldly: I did not notice even a rueful smile when, at a Conservative conference fringe event in Manchester this week, Fraser Nelson, the editor of The Spectator, jokingly mentioned how the 64-year-old infamously mumbled, badly, the Welsh national anthem when he was the country’s Secretary of State.

Still, that was 22 years ago and Mr Redwood doubtlessly thinks that it’s time everyone moves on from what is hardly the worst blunder a politician has made in the years hence.

What is certainly still in evidence is a fierce intellect, coupled with a respect for the City that was built up in his pre-political career with senior roles at Robert Fleming and NM Rothschild.

This fringe event was hosted by the Institute of Economic Affairs and the topic up for discussion was “Does caring about the poor require caring about inequality?” The debate took place in a marquee, so the whistles and chants of anti-austerity, Conservative-hating campaigners were audible through the tent’s canvass, providing an appropriate musical backdrop.

There was a lot of talk of the meaning and history of equality, and a blinding array of statistics allegedly showing that die-hard Corbynistas have got it wrong. Essentially, the arguments went that pay disparity is not that bad and how on earth can people moan when – I kid ye not – Downton Abbey shows how far society has moved on from the social and economic inequality of the era of servants and masters.

Mr Redwood concentrated far more on another part of the question, admitting that there is poverty and that it is the duty of government of whatever hue to alleviate that problem.

On the subject of inequality, his argument was intriguing. Mr Redwood took a perfectly equal small country of nine people, each of whom earn £20,000 a year.

Then, a chief executive of a multinational, which pays him or her £820,000, asks to join that community. Corbynistas, claimed Mr Redwood, would reject the chief executive, arguing that it would create and extraordinarily unequal society, as he or she would be on 41 times everyone else’s pay.

But that would be to the detriment of the country, which, with the chief executive, would have a national income of £1m rather than £180,000. The tax take from the chief executive, even at a modest percentage, would be considerable, improving their infrastructure, while he or she would purchase goods and services from the other nine, lifting their income.

OK, this is an effective analogy in a conference talk, but is nothing revelatory in a business column. There is also the psychological impact of status. On the same panel, former universities minister David Willetts cited Matt Ridley, the evolutionary scientist, who once said to him that the person who owns two cows in a tribe where everyone else has one is “the big cheese”.

The person with two cows in a tribe where everyone else has three feels left behind, even though there is no difference in his or her absolute situation.

But Mr Redwood and other senior Tories were really making the point that intellectual battles seemingly won in the 1980s will have to be re-fought given the shock rise of veteran left-wingers Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell to the top of the Labour Party. One new MP sighed when he considered whether the Conservatives are as prepared to make the argument for neo-liberal ideas, which have dominated British politics, economics and business for 35 years, as they are to defend and promote specific policies.

What I took from all this is that inequality really is the main battlefield for this Parliament, and is already manifesting in arguments over benefit caps and housing shortages.

The Conservatives have always cast themselves as the party of business, but I now expect them to start producing much more of the intellectual argument underpinning their belief that wealth at the top of society helps those with less, rather than just stating this as an unimpeachable truth.

It certainly appears that Mr Redwood realises this argument will need to be made if Mr Corbyn’s beliefs are to be resisted and are not to become a new, accepted orthodoxy.

Fun times ahead.

Pro-Europe lobby must get its business done early

Mr Redwood is, of course, a Eurosceptic, which is the issue over which he took on John Major all those years ago.

A pro-European fringe took place on Sunday night and organisers were delighted by the turnout, the room sweltering from the body heat of an oversubscribed event.

But a reception co-hosted by Business for Britain, the leading Out group, later that evening filled the aforementioned marquee. There were at least double the number of delegates swigging wine and beer here than the Europhiles’ less swanky event.

That contrast, I think, just about summed up this Conservative conference’s divide over the UK’s membership of the EU. If the City really does want Britain to stay in, it needs to convince the grassroots of the party of business – and soon.

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