Conservative manifesto: Mayism has arrived, but where are the Mayites? | Martin Kettle

The prime minister offers a new kind of conservatism, promoting good government over free markets. But she lacks a broad base of support across her party

At the end of her election manifesto launch press conference in Halifax, Theresa May was asked whether the document she had just launched embodied something we could now describe as “Mayism”. Her reply was emphatic. “There is no Mayism,” she intoned, “there is good solid conservatism which puts the interests of the country and the interests of ordinary working people at the heart of everything we do in government.”

In her signed manifesto foreword, May writes: “It is the responsibility of leaders to be straight with people.” In that final press conference answer, however, May was not being straight. For there is emphatically something that is worth calling, and understanding as, Mayism. It is embodied throughout the 2017 Conservative manifesto. It was expounded very clearly in her press conference speech. If she wins this election, over the next five years Britain will be the test bed for whether it works. Most important of all, however, Mayism is a very different form of Toryism from the one that most of us have spent our lives with.

Related: May signals break with Thatcherism in manifesto for 'country and community'

Related: The Conservative manifesto: our writers on how the party’s pledges stack up | Hugh Muir and others

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