The Failure of the Conservative Party

The main purpose historically of the Conservative Party is to conserve. Rather like the RSPB is supposed to protect birds the Conservative Party is supposed to protect Britain. Protecting Britain involves defending our island against its enemies, which requires us to have a strong defence and a series of alliances with friendly nations. Britain now has a very weak defence. Our armed forces are tiny and relatively powerless compared to how they were historically. But perhaps more importantly protecting Britain means protecting our quality of life and preserving those aspects of living here that most of our citizens love. It is here too that the Conservative Party has failed to conserve.

Conservative voters want to live in pleasant towns and cities amongst other British people where politeness is the norm, crime rare and a decent standard of living is reasonably easy to obtain if you work hard at school and then go to work.

People are content with relatively little. A house, a family, enough food, a garden, a park nearby, the ability to drive to work cheaply, and go on holiday to the Mediterranean once a year.

If the Conservative Party could give British people up and down the country an economy that gradually improves, peace and prosperity and otherwise leave them alone it would continue to win most elections. But it hasn’t. It has failed in its mission to conserve.

The West is faced with three main external threats, Russia, China and radical Islam. We must contain these by spending sufficiently on defence and maintaining our technological advantage over opponents. But if America goes back to isolationism under Trump, Britain and indeed Europe in general would struggle to deter anyone.

But the threat from China and Russia is a limited threat because it is external. The threat from radical Islam is not merely that it is in Yemen, or Gaza or Iran. We can contain these threats because we can identify them. The real danger is that radical Islam is here and we cannot distinguish between the radical and the non-radical because the ideology is essentially the same.

It is here above all that the Conservative Party has failed to conserve, because it has added a threat to our security that simply did not exist in 1914 or 1939 and could not even have been imagined then.

It was being an island that meant we were kept free from invasion apart from 1066 and arguably 1688. While every country on the continent suffered invasion, and occupation and changes to its borders due to war we avoided this. No one could invade us so long as we had a strong navy. Even in World War II with our army defeated and shattered we were never seriously threatened with invasion.

But now being an island has for the first time in our history become a disadvantage. We cannot build a fence in the sea and anyone who arrives on a British beach no matter who he is, where he is from or what his intentions are will be allowed to stay forever. Not only this – we will pay him to do so.

It is this above all that is leading Conservative voters to desert the Conservative Party. They look around and see their towns and cities transformed beyond all recognition. The buildings may be the same, but everything else is changed. Your job, Conservative Party, was to conserve our way of life and you failed.

Brexit was above all a rebellion against the feeling that we could do nothing to stop our country changing in ways that we opposed. It was a hope for millions of British voters that they would gain some control over not merely our borders, but our government and that this government would listen to the concerns of ordinary voters. The Conservative Party is being punished above all because it gave us hope and then dashed that hope.

British society developed over many centuries and was characterised historically by the migration of Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Normans and others. But in the thousand years since the Conquest the mix of the British population was static. Where there was migration, it was on a small scale and easily absorbed.

It is perfectly possible to believe that limited migration from anywhere in the world brings us people with useful skills and is perfectly compatible with conserving the essential character of Britain.

But unlimited migration which the Conservative Party has not only allowed by failing to control our borders, but encouraged by the issuance of hundreds of thousands of visas, is gradually changing our country beyond all recognition.

We must treat each new arrival pleasantly and politely. He has the right to live and work here legally and it is quite wrong to treat him badly.

But the nature of British society is quite different from that of the United States. We were until the 1950s a homogenous society whose population had remained largely unchanged for a thousand years. We were not like the United States a society in any reasonable sense a nation of immigrants.

But it was just this that gave the British people its characteristics. It was just this that gave us our way of life. It was the Conservative Party’s job to conserve this and it failed.

Life is not better now than it was when the Conservative party came to power in 2010. Educational standards have fallen through grade inflation. It is harder to see a doctor now than it was. We have had high inflation and seen our standard of living decline due to the cost-of-living crisis. We have been locked up at home for nearly two years and we have seen woke ideas which even in 2010 would have been considered mad become so mainstream that we have to be careful when disagreeing with them lest the police charge us with a hate crime.

The British people are continually attacked by the public bodies that have come to power during the present Conservative government for daring to live in our own country and liking it the way it is. Even our countryside is called racist and colonialist as if it was us who colonised our green and pleasant land. Well maybe my family did colonise it, but it would have been when the Celts and then the Anglo-Saxons arrived.

Conservatives are going to continue to desert the Conservative Party not because we think it will be better under Labour. It may well be worse. But when a political party fails to do its job in a democracy you have to kick it out and hope for something better.

I think the present Conservative Party is going to be annihilated this year and deservedly so. Indeed, better so. The only hope left is that a party emerges that is willing to do what is necessary to defend our country and conserve what is left. It is clear now that the Conservatives will conserve nothing.

Effie Deans writes at Lily of St. Leonard’s here. To support her writing, donations are welcomed here.

This piece first appeared in Country Squire Magazine, and is reproduced by kind permission.

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