Conservative campaigning

Like some others reading this, I received an e-mail yesterday, from the Conservative Party.  They wanted me to take part in a quick survey seeking my views about what was important to me and my family and what was important to the country on a range of subjects.

I responded in what I think is a conservative way and am not shy to share them with others.

The issues facing me and my family - the level of taxes, government deficit and debt and opportunities for the next generation.  I could only choose three!

Those issues (don't you just hate that word - issues?  Sounds so Tony Benn and 1960/70s socialism ) that are most important to the country tax levels, deficit and debt and the EU.

Who would I prefer as Prime Minister?  The choice is Ed Miliband or David Cameron - so no real choice, then. 

Then, I submitted the survey and received a thank you and an appeal for a donation.

The latter made me think of why I don't donate to the Conservative Party and then to wonder why I was asked these questions.

Firstly, the poll results are rarely published - and I think that there is a reason for that.  I believe that those people that bother to respond - the 'saddos' like myself - will do so along the lines I have answered.  That is, following and supporting 'traditional' Conservative values. 

One of the choices offered was 'the environment and  climate change.'  Do I care about these?  Of course I do but do I put these above the needs of my family or my country?  No!  Do I agree that the British people should be impoverished  on some less than half-baked policy that says Canute-like,  that Britain can single-handedly reduce so called green-house gas emissions in any meaningful way?  No!  Especially when we seek to do so while importing ever higher levels of mass produced Chinese goods that are made in an increasingly carbon-energy based environment!   

PS Note how it is now called 'climate change' and no longer 'man-made global warming'!  Initially I thought that this was a good sign - that science was returning to a fact-based approach to climate and, recognizing that there has been no appreciable actual warming, in recent years and that they had been hood-winked by a bunch of watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside - read James Delingpole's book of the same name - highly entertaining and informative!) but no, the charlatans that eschew scientific practice and doctor test results and data to fit a pre-conceived premise still hold sway.  'They' have just realized that even 'they' can't get away with fooling all of the people, all of the time.  So don't change the fundamental lie, just change some of the words!

Anyway, green rage rant over.

So, I suspect that the actual purpose of the survey was to rekindle my conservative views and then seek to get me to make a donation to the Conservative Party, on the basis that this party supports the views that I have just endorsed.

That might work, if, for one minute, I actually believed that the Conservative Party did support  and share my views on low taxes or deficit and debt reduction.  But they don't.  As evidence, I offer the last 4 years.  Neither taxes nor the deficit are appreciably reduced from the levels left by the outgoing Labour party, in 2010.  Directionally, Britain is still left-leaning.

The leftist approach to politics is to push the socialist agenda, ever leftwards.  They do this by taking a great stride in that direction.  If there is concerted opposition to the extent of the leftward thrust, then they move back a little but the net position is that the policy/country has moved to the left - they step a yard to the left and retreat six inches, if you like. 

The UK Conservatives, since before the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, have been afraid to do likewise in a right-ward direction.  Since they are effectively 'professional' politicians, and the same applies, maybe even more so, to the other parties, there whole raison d'etre is about getting elected and re-elected.  So the question isn't that personal taxes are too high, the argument rages around the top rate, which actually doesn't affect too many people (and of, course doesn't raise that much income!).  The whole premise of the discussion is not about the iniquity of taxes (or theft/confiscation by the state, to give it its right name) and how they should be minimized but rather about a small and inconsequential sub-sub-part of taxation.  One, incidentally on which you might see some Conservatives wavering, on the grounds that someone earning £1M  a year can better afford to suffer higher taxes for the common good!

The Conservatives need to offer a radical platform based on traditional Conservative values.  This would require stepping a yard or two to the right - moving the ground on which the arguments are held, to the right. 

Consider Britain in 1979.  The country was very close to collapse and to the anarchy that would have followed a left-wing victory in the election.  However, Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives were elected and set about re-taking power from the union-bosses that had brought the country to the brink.  These Conservatives didn't do so in some kind of cosy and conciliatory way.  They large-stepped to the right and said this is they way the problem with unions will be addressed.  How effective was this?  Well along with the failed Miner's strike of 1984/5 the whole landscape changed.  Unions in Britain are now largely confined to the remaining state bastions - the civil service, local government and the NHS and barely present in private industry.  It is also interesting to note that having loosened the grip of the leftist unions, there has since been no mandate to undo the reforms that  the first Thatcher government brought in, nor the enhancements that they enacted, subsequently.
So in this field, at least, the leftward direction of the union agenda was halted and then moved to the right and has remained there. 

The same needs to happen in other areas but I don't get the sense that the current crop of Conservatives are the ones to do it.  It is almost that we need to experience some of the economic convulsions that have affected Greece and Italy before we can expect to see a mainstream party offering Conservative solutions.

It is quite depressing that we  might need to see riots on the streets and very high unemployment and real and deep austerity being imposed (from outside!), before we can get a Conservative view put forward - one that says, we are going to take not one but two or more steps to the right and restore the UK.  We will take back sovereignty from the EU, we will scrap green taxes that are asinine and dis-proportionately punish poorer people, we will create a wealth-generating economy that allows the individual to keep a far higher portion of what they earn and so on.   You can read more here  http://bit.ly/1lFufJL and here http://bit.ly/MCuYMt


Donate to the Conservative Party?  I think not.  To them I am just a 'swivel-eyed loony'.  They will get my vote but only because the alternatives are even more ghastly but they won't get my money!


By the way.  Read the bit about Margaret Thatcher and what the Conservatives did, again.  

These Conservatives didn't do so in some kind of cosy and conciliatory way.  They large-stepped to the right and said this is they way the problem with unions will be addressed.

See how much better it is when an 'issue' is honestly called what it is? 
 

Conservative Soul

Sorry music lovers, this isn't a piece about some long lost strain that emanated from a rich enclave in America's South.  This is about the missing soul of conservatism.

Frit is the word used by the late and former UK Prime Minister, Lady Margaret Thatcher to describe someone who is frightened.  That term seems very apposite to describe modern day conservatives in both the UK and the US.  

I have posted here before concerning the lack of focus amongst America's conservatives -  http://bit.ly/1kiLq2r - so, today, I want to concentrate on UK conservatives but I think that there will still be resonance for US ones, as well, so stay tuned!

The UK will shortly be 'celebrating' four years of a Conservative 'led' coalition.  I use the term led because nominally, that is supposed to be the case.  The Conservative Party have the highest number of MPs in the House of Commons and considerably outnumber their Liberal Democrat partners, and yet one regularly comes away with the notion that it is the Lib Dems that are the senior partner.  It isn't just about better press management, by them.  Look at the policies of the Conservatives and see if you can find those that can be called truly Conservative.   Ok, how about just one? 

Europe is always touted by the media, led by the in-thrall BBC, to be a very divisive and electorally damaging issue for the Tories.  We are regularly 'told' that voters don't like to see a divided party and that the factional fighting within the Conservative party will make them unelectable.  And yet, these same voters are also, in large numbers,  said to be skeptical of the whole Euro project.  These same voters want to see a changed relationship between the UK and the European Union.  This is what is 'promised' by David Cameron along with a post the next  General Election, referendum.  I sense though that people just don't trust the Conservative leadership to deliver.  Cameron states that he wants to remain in Europe and will campaign on that basis, in any referendum, which kind of preempts his view of the choice that will be put before the British people -

 "Well we went and had these discussions with the EU and they agreed that, going forward we, the great British people, can have our MPs, sitting in the 'mother of all parliaments' decide on whether or not we retain British Summer Time (or insert some other meaningless non-concession).  Of course, negotiation is about compromise, and so we had to concede that in future, Britain's economic policies will be first approved by our colleagues in the EU, before we put them to the House of Commons, so that we know that they are aligned with those of the other EU states.  Yes we also had to cede control over foreign affairs to the EU but, with my former colleague, Nick Clegg, now the EU High Commissioner, we know we have a friend who will look after British interests and don't forget, while we had to give up the Pound Sterling, as an independent currency, we did manage to get the name of the Euro changed to the Pound"  

 Back to reality:
Why then aren't the Conservatives using their historical opposition to statist/corporatist institutions like the European Union and pushing this as a policy to the electorate?  Providing a real choice on Europe, for a change.  I know some will say, that this is what the UK Independence Party does but I really can't see them making the breakthrough in significant numbers to radically change the political make-up of Parliament. So it has to be the Conservatives that do this.  But first they need to regain their 'soul'.

The name of the Conservative Party in the UK is more properly, The Conservative and Unionist Party.  The Unionist tends to be forgotten by some because of its past associations with Ulster Unionists and their seeming intransigence (imagine! They wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom!!).  However, the party's roots are in maintenance of the whole United Kingdom and yet...
Consider the referendum that will occur in Scotland this year.  Where are the weekly or daily speeches by the Prime Minister and other leading Tories, extolling the virtues of a United Kingdom over a split one?  Where are the monthly ones?  Any speeches?  All we get are minor passing references buried in other keynote addresses.  If the Scottish electorate were some girl that the Unionists were trying to woo, then our apparent indifference will drive her into the arms of the Scottish Nationalist cad, who roguishly offers to take her away from an over-bearing parent and into the bright sunny uplands.  Where is the robust defence of what the 'union' means?  Where are the vigorous attacks on the economic lunacy that is presented as Scotland's future?  The attacks on the ever-encroaching state presence on Scotland's landscape?

If I were a Scot, I would look at the indifference shown by the Conservative and Unionist Party and think that since the Tories 'cannot be bothered with putting up any kind of fight for Scotland, then I cannot  be bothered with them or with the Union.  Maybe Salmond has a point!'

It is though on economics that the Conservative soul is found to be most absent.  

Consider.  At the tail end of the 1980s, communism was in its death throes (thanks in large part to Thatcher and Reagan's policy of confronting communism and showing to all, its inherent flaws).  Its slowly, slowly sister ideology, socialism, was also tainted by its association.  Even now people can look back at communism and see it for the human and economic failure that it was.  Nazism (which incidentally was based on socialism, though socialists and labourites get offended when you point this out), led to the slaughter of many millions of innocents but think on how many millions  Stalin and Mao and  Pol Pot and their communist fellow travelers massacred.

And yet, instead of seeing the adoption of capitalist and small government principles and the retreat of socialism, we have seen that governments of every hue, continued with the creeping implementation of socialism.

The UK's Conservatives have been complicit in this when out of office and we continue to see this with the current government.  The idea of moving the needle on public spending by a meaningfully noticeable amount seems alien to the current Tories.  True conservative values require that the state steps back, that the starting premise is why should the government be involved in doing this at all and why can it not be left to the private sector?  Instead there is no 'rolling back the frontiers of the state' but mere tinkering at the edges.  Does anybody think that Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan would consider the current crop of UK Tories and American Republicans as 'conservative'?  Or would they see them as faintly pink quasi-socialists?  I believe the latter, you will take your own view.

These 'socialist-lite' Tories follow such defeatist policies even when in opposition, such as supporting the UK Labour parties bail-out of over-extended banks.  They wrap-up such an anti-capitalist policy in words that could be lifted straight from the Communist Manifesto and then blindly follow Labour through the division lobbies and support such dangerous and costly legislation.  Again, they allow the Bank of England to devalue currency by simply printing more of it, via Quantitative Easing  and then rationalize the whole thing by saying that there is no alternative and that they are making cuts to public spending.  Even when they know that the cuts that are being made are, despite all of the grandstanding and soundbites from the Labour Party and its mouthpiece, the BBC, tiny, and represent barely a scratch on the surface of the bloated beast that is state spending.

So, if you are a conservative, what can you do?

In the USA, the Tea Party represents a more conservative option.  They are touted as a divisive 'faction' within the Republican Party but I sense that they are actually a far greater influence than the 'old' Republican establishment yet understand.

For UK Conservatives?  I couldn't recommend UKIP, though their policy on the EU - offering a straight In/Out referendum is sound.  Their other policies, seem quite limited and seem to have patches of socialism running through them.  In fact, I would go further on the UKIP EU policy and say that this is the right one.  I don't think that the EU can be reformed, I do not believe there is the political will to do so.  For evidence refer to Francois Hollande's comments last week.  Still though, for me, UKIP is a one-trick pony. 

I think what is needed is a UK Tea Party - or a Tea Party done in the UK style.  That is, Conservative Associations adopting candidates that understand what being a conservative means.  That understand the need for a complete re-alignment of the social contract between government and the governed, with power and responsibility moving from the former to the latter. 

Of course this will take time but when you see people like Tim Yeo being de-selected by his constituency association, one lives in hope.

Please pass this post on to any Conservative Party members that you know and tell them that the future of conservatism lies in their hands.  All of us need to get active and breathe new life into the soul of conservatism and to use every opportunity to roll back the frontiers of the state and state control.