Steve Richards: While Tories talk the language of the right on immigration, their policies are to the left

The logical position of the right would be wholeheartedly to welcome the free market in labour

Even after 10 years of a Labour government, the broader political mood and the language used to define it is rooted on the right. Taxes are a burden and never an investment. Public spending is a threat to economic efficiency. Government intervention is regarded as a stifling interference in people's lives.

Yet when it comes to the two biggest issues of our times, the culture moves leftwards. The challenges and opportunities that arise from immigration and climate change do not fit neatly with the familiar right-wing template. Suddenly, prominent figures who flourish in Britain's right-wing culture start to contradict the values they normally espouse with such confident conviction.

The logical position for the right to take in relation to immigration would be to welcome wholeheartedly the free market in labour. In theory, the right would be relaxed also about the prospects of a big increase in the population, confident that the market would address the consequences. Some would flourish in a heaving population. Some would not. We would all get by. Thank you and good night.

The argument about the purity of markets and the stifling threat posed by the state is heard in the abstract and yet rarely in relation to immigration. Some on the right, including newspapers that scream about this issue, take the position adopted by David Cameron in a speech yesterday. Mr Cameron argued that the net increase in population, and in particular the projections for the next few years, is too great. He pointed out that public services in particular would be placed under intolerable strain and therefore new controls were required.

Was Mr Cameron playing the populists' card, returning to one of Michael Howard's so-called "dog whistle" issues, which dominated the Conservatives' last election campaign? No doubt there is a connection between Mr Cameron's approach and the polls that suggest immigration tops voters' concerns. In advance of delivering his speech he was given considerable space in The Sun and the Daily Mail.

But whatever Mr Cameron's political calculations, his basic analysis is beyond dispute. As matters stand, Britain's creaking public services and the even weaker infrastructure that underpins them cannot sustain big leaps in the population. Anyone seeking to travel around London at the weekends knows even a supposedly thriving capital city cannot provide public transport for the current population levels. I dread to imagine what it would be like facing even higher demands.

Mr Cameron's solution is to intervene and place further restrictions on the numbers coming in. I disagree with this particular solution but I note that the Conservative leader and right-wing papers are in this instance against market solutions and a smaller state. They want a very active state to regulate the market. In their own parochial way, they move leftwards in their support for intervention.

There are some on the centre right who have a different view, but it is one that still takes them on an interesting political journey. Michael Portillo told the BBC last week that he was entirely relaxed about immigration and the projected increases in population. On The Spectator website the magazine's political editor, Fraser Nelson, argued that the projected increases in population should be a source of national pride.

But Mr Portillo expressed concerns about the infrastructure in Britain, arguing that he wanted to see more signs of planning for immigration. By implication, he was calling for much greater investment in public services and infrastructure to meet the increased demand. From his altar at The Spectator, Mr Nelson made more or less the same point. He said we should welcome what is happening, but it was necessary to plan for an increase in population.

Only the Government can plan for the levels of investment required. Mr Portillo and Mr Nelson were marching leftwards as they called for investment and long-term planning.

I agree with them. Mr Cameron's more pessimistic view of public services ignores the fact that many of the immigrants are best qualified to help renew Britain's infrastructure and contribute taxes as they do so. But no government can sit and wait to see what happens. It must plan and invest now. Until it is confident that an infrastructure is in place in terms of housing, transport, schools and hospitals it would be reckless to offer tax cuts and to stand back from the development of public services. Yet in the broader abstract debate, that is where the consensus lies, that the Government should keep out of the way and let us get on with it all ourselves.

The same divide between the abstract and the specific applies to climate change. Yesterday morning on BBC's Today programme the Conservative MP, Tim Yeo, called for tougher controls over carbon emissions. He wants a new department, almost as grand as the Treasury, to have powers of intervention to ensure carbon targets are met. Mr Yeo wants the Government to plan ahead on our behalf. I agree with him and his other argument that action now will be regarded as an investment later. Mr Yeo pointed out that it will cost much more to act in 10 years' time.

I also cheered him on as he put the case for high-speed train services as an alternative to flights and car journeys. Battling climate change must be fun rather than some humourless hair-shirted series of sacrifices, and there is nothing more enjoyable than travelling in comfort on a fast and reliable train, as anyone in the rest of Europe knows.

But the high-speed trains cost money. By implication, Mr Yeo was putting the case for higher public spending, as does the CBI when each year it rightly bemoans the state of Britain's transport infrastructure. Yet away from specific issues, the prevailing political mood celebrates tax cuts and a much less active state.

There is much confusion on the centre left too, what with Gordon Brown's crudely populist and unworkable slogan about British jobs for British workers and the broader doubts within the Government about whether immigration is to be welcomed or seen as a threat. But the political right is more interesting because of its dominance in the broader national debate. Labour and the Liberal Democrats do not come from the fashionable terrain I described. It is why the current Government still feels itself to be an impostor, ruling in a conservative country.

But what if the right is moving leftwards on the specific issues even as it calls in a contradictory fashion for tax cuts, less public spending and a smaller state? Here is some space for a shift in the wider abstract argument. Are we ready to plan and invest in order to prepare for population increases and climate change? Nearly everyone is calling for such a move. Yet so far the broader political mood in Britain prevents such a move from taking place.

s.richards@independent.co.uk