Dogmatism is not an attractive trait in any politician. While political representatives should, of course, be guided by principle and conviction, they should not be so blinded by ideology that they refuse to look facts squarely in the face.
For example, could any true and honest Tory seriously believe that their party suffered the calamitous defeat it did at the general election in 2024 because it wasn’t liberal and progressive enough?
That the British electorate were crying out for more of the soggy, technocratic “centrism” that had dominated Westminster politics for most of the previous three decades, but felt that the Conservative Party just wasn’t offering it?
Well, it seems there are some in the Tory ranks who do believe such things. Many of them have thrown their weight behind a new movement, “Prosper UK”, created by former leader of the Scottish Conservatives Ruth Davidson and erstwhile West Midlands mayor Sir Andy Street.
The aim of the movement, say the pair, is to drag the Tories away from divisive populism and back to the sensible centre where, apparently, hordes of disaffected mainstream voters are to be found.
Prominent Tory “wets” have, predictably, come out in support of this new crusade. So we’ve had the likes of Dominic Grieve, David Gauke and Justine Greening welcoming the development as a step towards restoring “common sense” and “moderation” to the party – or something along those lines.
Grandees such as Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke have thrown their weight behind it too. Evidently, these people genuinely believe that the initiative will serve as a launchpad for propelling the Conservative Party back to office.
It does make one wonder just how detached from reality they are. Do they know nothing of the political and cultural convulsions that have rocked our country in recent times? Did Brexit pass them by? Are they not aware of the seismic realignment that has taken place – is still taking place – in British politics?
Do they not know that every opinion poll shows the two big parties holed beneath the waterline and at risk of being supplanted by more radical alternatives? Do they ever take the trouble to ask themselves why these things came to pass?
Tory wets are leading their party to oblivion. Nigel Farage must be rubbing his hands - Paul Embery
|Getty Images
They talk of reconnecting with the mainstream – not realising that the mainstream rejected their brand of politics a long time ago.
Fed up with an arrogant political elite that treated them as thick and racist, forced massive demographic and cultural change on their communities, sneered at anything resembling a “faith, family and flag” agenda, was frequently given to trashing the history and traditions of their country, and presided over two economic crises which slashed their living standards, millions of mainstream voters began to lose faith in the establishment parties and look elsewhere for solutions.
These voters are rebelling against the old order. They are sick to the back teeth of the elite-led technocracy, with its globalist worldview and its insistence that there is no alternative to the cosmopolitan liberalism that it peddles.
That style of politics might have served the interests of the professional and managerial classes, but it ravaged and alienated much of blue-collar, provincial Britain. And the Conservative Party was every bit as responsible for foisting it upon the country as any other institution.
Of course, once they twigged, in the years before the 2024 general election, just how unpopular they were becoming, senior Tories started deploying “populist” rhetoric (which basically means any sort of language that does not accord with fashionable liberal-progressive opinion).
But the words were rarely put into action. So they spoke of the need to get tough on immigration, only for numbers to skyrocket.
They told us that state-sponsored multiculturalism had failed but had no idea how to repair the damage it had caused. They acknowledged that much of the country opposed the divisive concepts of DEI and wokery, but sat back while virtually every public institution continued implementing them.
Voters wanted real change, not idle talk. Hence, it is absurd for the Prosper UK crowd to argue that the Conservative Party was annihilated at the polls because it succumbed to “populism”. Governing politicians may say all sorts of things, but they are ultimately judged on what they do – or fail to do.
Some supporters of the new group appear to be taking heart in every defection from the Tories to Reform, believing that an exodus of “hardliners” will make the task of re-establishing control of the party much easier. But it is highly doubtful that the Tories could secure power by focusing solely on voters in the so-called “centre ground”.
Any party seeking to win a general election must, first and foremost, keep sufficient numbers of its traditional voters on board, and then try to build out from there.
That’s what David Cameron did in 2010, and it’s what Tony Blair did before him, managing to do from the other side of the spectrum.
The problem for the Tories today is that they are haemorrhaging a vast chunk of their core vote to Reform – and so tacking away from that core and back towards the same discredited politics that helped to create the rupture hardly serves as a strategy for electoral success.
So crack on, Prosper UK, and do your worst. Drive out all the wicked “populists”, and fashion a programme around the same politics that caused the Conservatives to forfeit the support of millions. You’ll lead your party to oblivion. And that, frankly, would do us all a service.
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