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Samizdata quote of the day “So too is the Tory party a tragic paradox. It is led by a professional optimist, but weighed down with an almost superstitious pessimism, as commentators prophesy a shift in the “natural political cycle”. It believes in individual free will, but has surrendered to the apocalyptic terrors of climate change, and the inevitability of welfarism in an ageing society. It is repulsed by radicalism, but champions Net Zero and draconian lockdowns to stay in vogue with certain voters.”
– Sherelle Jacobs.. She is writing in the Daily Telegraph (£).
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In a nutshell. But in fact a fair description of most ‘Conservative’ Parties in our erstwhile free, democratic World.
The Conservative Party has always changed tack and adapted to circumstances, just as people do in their lives.
It is not beholden to a fixed ideology like the left.
That’s why it is successful, winning most elections.
It takes an impressive level of incompetence to turn a fully functional electricity grid into one that requires rationing, sorry demand management, to keep running.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/02/08/national-grid-scheme-to-ration-households-power-use-at-peak-times/#comments
There is a strange tendency amongst so-called conservative politicians to look down on the people who do vote for them, and to try and curry favour with people who would never vote for them in a million years.
Some do not fall for it. Mrs Thatcher didn’t. Boris Johnson stumbled on a formula for winning the votes of former Labour supporters, by promising to deliver Brexit (not that he did properly), and by not being an out and out Communist (which is mostly true). He did not win votes by promising to abandon border controls, increase taxes to a 70 year high, and destroy the economy with net zero, so he will find that come the next election, his red wall seats will disappear.
It’s a shame, he stumbled upon something beautiful, but like a footballer’s cat, just kicked it across the room with ignorant disdain.
Like all the writers at the Telegraph, Jacobs is deluded. You could have maybe said this somewhat plausibly twenty years ago, but now? The Conservative party believes in nothing at all, except in its own short-term survival. It’s mainly a front for green billionaire-driven globalism. Johnson’s optimism is an act, at least it has been for a very long time. The occasional backbencher may not go along with all the crap, but most of them do. (Even Steve Baker is a WEF member.) It’s full of low-quality New Labour-style managerialists who are dragging the country into the mud. Anyone who is interested in freedom should treat the party with disdain and loathing, and never vote for them ever again, and certainly not write endless articles about “How the Tories can still turn it around’. The party needs destroying, not encouraging.
We’ll know our side is winning in the UK when the Conservative Party starts dropping out of elections for lack of candidates.
The Conservative Party is an abomination and should be nuked thrice from orbit to be sure.
Except Jacob Rees-Mogg. Save him. He is quite moderate for my taste, but at least he is a more or less proper conservative.
Every other “conservative” MP into the dustbin of history without a proper sendoff.
And send Boris Johnson to the circus to perform tricks for the children.
As usual the comment of “pete” misses the point – if is pointless to “win elections” if government spending, taxation and regulations continues to INCREASE. Nor is there any evidence that most of the people who vote Conservative actually want these policies – as someone who has actively worked in every British election since 1979 I can tell you that they most certainly do NOT want such policies.
As for “the left” – “pete” is the left. “But Pete works at Central Office” – I have no idea whether “pete” works at Central Office or not, but if he does it would not alter the fact that he is the left (a Collectivist) – as every comment he writes on this site makes horrible clear.
Leaving aside the irrational collectivist “pete”.
Just using words such as “optimist” and “pessimist” will not do on its own.
After all Mr Johnson (or indeed anyone) could say “I am an optimist – because I am optimistic about what the state can achieve”.
And someone can be a “pessimist” if they think that government intervention will do HARM. For example, I was seven years old when I thought that Prime Minister Edward Heath price controls would do harm – so I could be described as a “pessimist” at seven years of age.
There really is no substitute for a basic grounding in economic principles (economic law) – for example the “small” error in British 19th century economics that government backing for “Collective Bargaining” would be a good thing, led to terrible consequences.
Such things as the 1875 (Disraeli) Act and the 1906 Act (and later Acts of Parliament) led to eventual mass UNEMPLOYMENT and the decline of basic industries in the United Kingdom.
The Keynesian response (essentially – create money, from nothing, and spend it) was an “answer” to a problem (mass unemployment) that British and other governments had themselves made – by their backing for “Collective Bargaining” (in some ways a return to the guild system of the late Middle Ages, or the late Roman Empire). But without a basic grasp of the fundamental principle that prices and wages (and so on) should be determined by the free interplay of supply and demand, then this error (and other errors) is very easy to fall into – especially considering the political pressures that governments are subject to.
Hat tip the late W.H. Hutt for a lot of the above.
As for the specific points the post raises.
The voters who loved lockdowns and love “Net Zero” will never vote Conservative – and they voters who hate such policies always have the option of STAYING HOME (voting is not compulsory in the United Kingdom). So even leaving aside the irrational thinking behind such policies – they make no political sense either. They seek to attract the votes of people who would never vote Conservative – and they alienate people who might vote Conservative (hello North Shropshire byelection – I have not forgotten you, even if Central Office has).
As for the idea that getting rid of the 1% of C02 emissions that the United Kingdom produces will make any real difference – well it will NOT. Destroying this country – in order to make no real difference at all to world C02 emissions. As the People’s Republic of China continues to INCREASE C02 emissions – and laughs all the way to world domination.
“But Britain will be so much better off powered by solar farms and windmills” – someone who holds that opinion is a bit beyond “optimism”, they are away with the Elves and Pixies.
To all these dripping wet Tories and ‘right of centre’ commentators currently having an attack of the vapors about Boris toning down his language to quieten the rabid mob of far right thugs they imagine hang upon his every word…………
The left in this country have spent decades demonising anything to the right of Neil Kinnock. The general “Thatcher is literally Satan” mood music of the BBC in the 1980s and early 90s and the nation’s descent into emasculated, over-emotional neurosis during the Blair/Brown years aside, life in Britain since 2010 has been punctuated by a series of violent left wing tantrums. Students hurling fire hydrants off the top of buildings because the state won’t pay for them to idle around getting their Batchelor’s degree in feminist tapestry studies. Occupy crusties littering the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral because of a vague notion that ‘the one per cent’ being responsible for them not having the latest iPhones. London set ablaze because a scumbag drug dealer was shot dead after a police chase. The victims of a tower block fire being whipped up into an indignant frenzy, blaming the Tories for fitting EU cladding waved through by Labour and threatening to go on the rampage if the government didn’t hose them down with cash. John McDonnell’s lynch mob language. Angela Rayner’s Tory Scum rhetoric. And to say nothing of the SNP’s rabid hatred of anything that falls outside the deranged ‘progressive’ orthodoxy.
So what exactly is there to be gained by playing nicely with these people? Nothing at all. To quote Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp: “This is not a gentleman’s war.”
The Left dominates the media, so they dominate the opinion, plus pretty much most of civil service. So the “conservatives” play to be the “acceptable conservative”.
I’m a fan of the Tory MP John Baron. I had barely heard of him until recently, and he has about as much chance ever being PM as I would frankly. However, he favoured leaving the EU and has voted against every misguided foreign policy misadventure from the Iraq war to today. Was the only Tory MP to vote against the Libya nonsense in 2011. Clearly has good instincts.