If you read this in the Torygraph under the byline of Nick Timothy or Fraser Nelson, you wouldn't be at all surprised. It's actually Rafael Behr in the Grauniad, who proceeds to demand Labour delivers a bold vision with an "upbeat patriotic inflection".

This is just another plea for sensible centrism, the premise of which is that the Tories' problem is a lack of virtue, hence he quotes Hopi Sen's daft line that “compassionate conservatism is social democracy for slow learners”. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/26/covid-tories-social-democracy-britain-inequality

In fact, it would be more accurate to say that historical social democracy was socialism for slow learners, & its inexorable trajectory was what necessitated its murder in the 1970s. What Behr is actually arguing for is the social market: capitalism with nicer manners.

Because he refuses to acknowledge that the contradictions of this go beyond a lack of managerial nous, he is obliged to interpret the Tories' failure to address inequality as due to a combination of incompetence & an atavistic aversion to the state & public spending.

As a result, he ends up promoting Labour as essentially a better class of conservative, which ironically means he has inadvertantly highlighted the reason why Labour is struggling to pulll ahead in the polls & why Starmer is so uninspiring faced with the calamity of Johnson.