I gave up on the Tories or at least on voting for or supporting the Tories back in 2020. I’d voted Tory in 2019 only to see the Tories mess up dreadfully the response to Covid, prop the nation’s doors open to all and sundry whilst we were all locked in our homes and fail over a 14 year period to push back against Leftism in the public sphere. I also gave up on the Tories over their disastrous championing of Net Zero, their lazy acceptance of the Cult of Trans, their unwillingness to turn back the tide of deindustrialisation, their lack of support for freedom of speech and because the Tories no longer had their unique selling point of being trustworthy with the economy.
When Kemi Badenoch took over as Conservative Party leader I initially cautiously welcomed her as leader but for a long while was unimpressed by her performance, especially when she had the open goal of a clearly dangerous authoritarian and increasingly hated Labour government to fight against. ‘Surely she should be doing better than that?’ was a question that I asked myself whenever Ms Badenoch intervened or commented on the great issues of the day. I started to see Ms Badenoch less as a politician who could take on Labour at the next General Election and stave of the threat to the part from Reform but more as a temporary placeholder leader who would keep the seat warm for someone like Robert Jenrick for example.
However, I’m feeling a lot more good about Kemi Badenoch’s leadership following her performance at Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday 17th December. Her robust attack on Islamic extremism was like a breath of fresh air as not enough politicians from any party have spoken up about this issue even though it’s an extremely pressing and challenging one. It was a speech containing moral clarity on this matter when so often we’ve seen mainstream politicians from both the Left and the Right morally equivocating on this issue.
Here’s a post on X containing Ms Badenoch’s statement on Islamic extremism following the Islam inspired Bondi Beach Atrocity.
https://x.com/GBPolitcs/status/2001327311401226567
I still don’t think, as some die hard Tories might do, that Kemi Badenoch is the political messiah that Britain and the British Right needs, but to show moral clarity on the Bondi Beach Atrocity and to name in the Chamber the threat we face is a lot better than many might have expected of her. If she can continue in this vein then she might pick up for her party some of the votes that have gone to Reform out of disgust at the Tories choice to embrace the more nutty end of liberalism. I don’t think she’s going to change the Tories overnight, there are still too many Tory MP’s who would be better off in the Lib Dems who will stand in her way, but she is at least making a start on doing the correct things for Britain and for Britons.
We do face a civilizational threat from Islamic extremism and it is good to see at least one mainstream politician in the UK admitting the existence of this threat. Well done Ms Badenoch, let us have a whole lot more of this sort of statement from her and from the Tories.
My view of the Tories, who I’ve never voted for but you’d expect that your resident friendly leftie, is that they should be super efficient running a country proving that capitalism, a free market economy, and a small state can work. It’s distressing if they ignore their heritage and expertise gathered over the centuries and input from the brightest and often privately educated in favour of a less discerning decent into populism to get votes.
As you probably know from reading my stuff I used to be on the centre Left although I rejected for both practical and moral reasons the excesses of the far Left. i would never have voted for Thatcher back in 83, I couldn’t have done it, but over the years I’ve seen so many leftist nostrums either go bad, have questionable outcomes or become more exploitative than capitalism. Now, having experienced much worse from socialism than I could have imagined I’d gladly vote for the shade of Thatcher if it appeared.
Free markets work, they don’t work perfectly but they work for the majority. I agree with you that the Tories who I later voted for have failed. Their failure is nothing or little to do with how they were educated but more to do with the Tories forgetting to protect the nation’s heritage or be aware of their own political heritage as efficient custodians of the economy and the integrity of the nation. I supported Cameron’s recognition that Britain had changed with regards to such things as lGB rights and acted accordingly but he and his successors let in so many people to the party who might have been better off with the Lib Dems that it took away anything recognisably ‘conservative’ from the party. As for populism (which can come from both the Left and the Right) it is what you get when major centre Left and centre right parties fail to do what they are supposed to do which is govern a nation in the interests of the majority of its inhabitants.
In the absence of a Social Democratic Party candidate at the next election on my ballot paper I will probably vote for Reform, not because I believe that they’ve got everything correct or because of their stated policies, but because, like with me and Thatcher in 83, I can’t morally, ethically or politically bring myself to vote for the Tories, Labour or the Lib Dems.