Andrew Lilico is an economist and political writer.
Recently, ConservativeHome has hosted a lively “What went wrong?” debate featuring writers criticising the Conservative Party from outside, both right and left. I wrote for ConservativeHome for many years. I don’t feel my political positions have changed at all since then. But I now believe the Conservative Party must be eliminated. Readers might be interested in why.
In my view, the Conservatives have been on the wrong side of every major issue of the past 17 years:
– It backed the bank bailouts
– It refused to seek to repatriate powers from the EU in 2010 despite running for four General Elections in a row promising that it would
– It backed Remain
– It sought to stop us from leaving the EU with No Deal
– It locked us in our houses for months too long with Covid
– It provided mass handouts to stop energy prices rising
– It refused to engage in any substantive reform of the NHS
I agree that on almost all of these issues, Labour would have been even worse. But a true Right-wing party would have been better. I’m not prepared to vote for “marginally less bad than the other team” anymore. There will be similar issues that arise over the next 17 years. I want a Right-wing party that advocates for the Right-wing position on major issues.
I emphasize that, as anyone can see from my past writings on this site, I am a very mainstream Conservative. I have very standard middle-of-the-Conservative-road beliefs. I am pragmatic and recognise the limitations of politics and the importance of recognising political restraints in determining policy.
Yet I am confident that one key objection to my case above would be the claim that favouring the mainstream Right-wing Conservative opinion would have guaranteed electoral defeat on any of those issues. This points to a key way I differ from Conservative MPs, a way that I’m sure makes me seem to them like an extremist ideologue.
The difference is this: I believe that the things I believe in will work. They aren’t negotiating positions for me, a kind of overstating of my beliefs from which I expect to compromise in practice to get something more like what I want. The things I say are what I actually believe and I genuinely believe that if the things I believe in are done then they will work.
This belief that my beliefs will work is fundamental to my political pragmatism. It’s not that I unrealistically want politicians to do things that will get them kicked out of office. I believe that if politicians did the things I believe in, even if they are initially unpopular, that those things would work, the voters would see that they’d work, and those politicians would be rewarded for doing the things that work by being voted in again.
Conservative MPs have demonstrated decisively that they do not believe that. They find such an idea touchingly naive and reflective of a kind of ideological extremism. Note: it isn’t that the policies are extreme; it’s the genuine heartfelt belief that those policies will work.
That is why Conservatives have not backed and enacted Conservative things these past 17 years – because whatever they declare are their beliefs, they don’t expect that if those beliefs were implemented into policies, those policies would work and get them re-elected.
I believe that about 40 per cent of the electorate would back mainstream Right-wing Conservative policies, and that the enacting of them would result in vindication and re-election, even if those policies were initially unpopular. But it is only possible for there to be a Party advocating and implementing genuinely mainstream Right-wing Conservative policies if the Conservative Party is eliminated and gets out of the way.
Furthermore, I do not accept that Labour would have been even worse on all these issues had it faced an opposition that advocated for the Right-wing position. Labour adopts the positions it does to differentiate itself from the Conservatives to its left. Labour has only ever won elections over the past 60 years from the centre, tacking slightly to the left of the Tories.
If it faced a serious opposition that genuinely believed in and argued for mainstream Right-wing Conservative ideas, Labour would be forced to lean towards those positions to remain electorally attractive. That would take it well to the Right of the centre-left positions the Conservatives have adopted and would adopt in the future if it were to be re-elected, in its attempts to “compromise” and be “sensible”, “grown-up” and “realistic” instead of (the horror!) “ideological”.
The Conservatives cannot claim we have not given them a chance. We forgave it for backing the bank bailouts, refusing to renegotiate in 2010 (making liars of us, its activists), backing Remain, trying to stop us leaving with No Deal, and refusing to reform the NHS.
We even forgave it for locking us in our houses for months too long because “something will turn up” and for giving massive energy handouts instead of allowing high energy prices to produce a market-driven greening of the economy. But it squandered all its chances.
Now we look to the future. I don’t yet believe Reform can be the new Right-wing Party I want either — at least not alone. But I do know that for me and millions of other mainstream right-wingers, the line has been crossed. We’re not gonna take it anymore.
We want a Right-wing Party that genuinely believes in Right-wing things, believes they will work and make people’s lives better, and will when new issues arise over the next seventeen and more years, continue to advocate and implement Right-wing policies even when they are temporarily unpopular. The Conservative Party is not, and will never again, be it
The post Andrew Lilico: The Conservatives have betrayed right-wing voters. They must be eliminated. appeared first on Conservative Home.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Andrew Lilico
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, http://www.conservativehome.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.