We are marking the anniversary of the 2024 General Election – the worst defeat for my Party in our long history. A question which often arose was: ‘what does your Party stand for’ or, in other words – tell me the relevance of Conservatism for the 2020s/30s. As a Conservative, sometimes that can be hard. We are a broad church of popular centre-right appeal. We have had no Little Red Book or Marxian jottings to constrain our path. Open. Pragmatic. Commonsense. Common ground. These have been our lodestars. Robert Peel, the founding Father of the modern Tory Party perhaps best summarised Conservatism as: retaining the best of what we have got and reforming only when necessary. So I thought it might be helpful (it might not) if I set out what I think the core and foundation principles of contemporary Conservatism should be.
· We believe in RESPONSIBILITIES as well as RIGHTS, seeing them as two sides of the same coin. We can have legitimate expectations of the State but so too can the State of us. Think Kennedy: “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. We have responsibilities to play our part in society, to pay our way, support our families and communities;
· The State should not be defined as being either small or big but rather, smart. We must always see the State as servant and not master. The challenges of demographic and changing tax takes means that every penny needs to be watched. The State needs to be fleet of foot, responsive but above all knowing its own limits. There is such a thing as Society but it is different from the State and the State will always err when it believes that it only can be the author of every solution;
· We need to instil faith in our Institutions: the Armed Forces, legal system, police, church and crown. Not forelock tugging deference but respect through understanding and confidence;
· We must have a sense of Britain’s role in the world and, springing from our democracy, free speech etc, be a beacon on the hill for those striving for the same. Soft power and influence needs to be maximised for the national and international good. This is different from Jingoistic blind patriotism but it is about national pride and self confidence in our ability to be a force for good;
· Conservative public services need to be modern and responsive to fast changing demand. Our Welfare State should be a safety net through which no one can fall. However, it cannot be a straightjacketing cocoon from which no-one can escape;
· We need to be wedded to social mobility, sound money, having a property owning democracy. Education and training should be the public service version of Timpson’s keycutting services – you need them to open life’s doors;
· We have to be collaborative and internationalist in our outlook while maximising the opportunities of Commonwealth and our wider global reach;
· We need a civic pride in the sense conserving our environment and building for the future;
· Necessity dictates we should be a force for unifying all parts of our United Kingdom – championing our common ground of shared values and hopes rather than seeking dividing fault lines.
Over the coming months, as our policies start to take shape, if they are founded on, inter alia, the above key tenets, centre right voters and all who cherish our country and commonsense will once again, find their political mooring.
