Where Have All the Conservatives Gone?

by A. Millar
January 6, 2010 at 5:00 am

http://www.hudson-ny.org/983/where-have-all-the-conservatives-gone

Britain will hold a general election within the next five months. And after more than a decade of the Leftwing Labour party, the Conservatives are expected to win. Party leader David Cameron is a likeable if nondescript man, in sync with the fashionable concerns of the media, and out of touch with the electorate.

Labour is loathed in Britain. So much so that there has even been talk of it being cast into the political “wilderness” for a decade, if not of its total destruction. It is not difficult to grasp why. In the last decade, in an attempt to change the country once and for all, Labour has encouraged uncontrolled immigration and has presided over the growth of radical Islam. It has surrendered British sovereignty to the EU without so much as giving the people a vote on the matter. And, perhaps, most importantly, it has made political correctness the norm, stifling dissent and silencing even the most reasonable objections to its project. Only “extremists” and “racists” would worry about such things, has been the message given out at every opportunity.

In the 2009 EU elections Labour came third, behind the Conservatives and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). The latter wants to withdraw from the EU, and under its new leader, Lord Pearson, it will also tackle radical Islam.

Cameron’s speech on January 2 was an opportunity to show the public that he too will tackle the matters the electorate cares about. The thwarted terrorist attempt over Detroit on Christmas Day provided reason enough to raise the issue of radical Islam in Britain, the damage that it does to the US-UK “special relationship,” and the threat it poses to the public’s safety, to democracy, and to liberty. He did not. Instead, Cameron repeatedly spoke of “hope” and - you guessed it - “change.” He has plans for “a new high-speed rail network,” but has no plans, so it seems, to tackle radical Islam - or “violent extremism.”

The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in the USA is striking in comparison to the difference between Labour and the Conservatives. Britain’s Conservative Party is a supporter of nationalized healthcare, and has embraced bureaucratic “multiculturalism” and environmentalism. When Barack Obama ran in 2008 he could speak of healing the rift between America’s Left and Right, because there was, and still is, one. Then, even many Republicans were fed up with Afghanistan and Iraq, and preferred to wish radical Islam away. A great many believed that a “post-racial” president who had grown up in a “Muslim country” would make the problem disappear.

A year later, the reality has sunk in.

But not for Cameron. His portrayal of himself as an Obama-like healer is absurd on the face of it, particularly considering the US president’s plummeting popularity.

“And over the past four years,” Cameron said on Sunday, reminiscent of Obama’s campaign rhetoric, “we have always tried to work with other parties rather than looking for political dividing lines where none exist.” That is the problem: There should be a dividing line between Left and Right, between those who are politically correct and those who are prepared to face the difficult issues, those who want nationalized healthcare, a welfare state, etc., and those who do not. If Labour will not tackle radical Islam, rising crime, uncontrolled immigration, and the EU (which makes 75 percent of Britain’s laws), then the opposition must.

Cameron does not get that. Consequently his party goes up and down in the polls, depending on what the country thinks of the Labour government, not what it thinks of the Conservatives. And in December, with the elections looming, his party was at its lowest point in the polls since May.

People will vote Conservative only in the hope that it means getting Labour out -- not the Conservatives in. Most suspect that a Cameron government would be little better than the Blair or Brown government. The tone of Cameron’s latest speech - with its repetition of “we can't go on like this,” and lack of content - seems to suggest that he recognizes this, but, like the public, lacks faith in himself.

In contrast to Cameron, Lord Pearson is in many respects an old style conservative, closer to that of the Republican party in the US, than the (“progressive”) Conservative party to which he belonged until 2007, when he defected to UKIP. Others have made the same move. Thatcherite economist, Prof Tim Congdon, and Lord Willoughby de Broke both defected to UKIP in 2007. And Lord Willoughby has since introduced a Constitutional Reform Bill, detailing how Britain would withdraw from the EU. This would not have been possible in his old party.

In August, former Conservative Cabinet minister Lord Tebbit remarked that Cameron’s electioneering strategy would drive “hard-core” conservatives to vote for UKIP; this does indeed appear to be happening.

UKIP will run 500 candidates in the general election, and Lord Pearson has said he hopes to force a hung parliament. If so, his party will push for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, and raise the issues of pressing importance to the country, especially the country’s conservatives.

Most readers will be aware of Lord Pearson. He was thrust into the limelight almost a year ago, after he invited Geert Wilders to screen his movie, Fitna, to a private audience in the House of Lords. Britain does not have an equivalent to Wilders. But with his experience of party politics, his moral compass, and willingness to address the issues, he might well be on the way to becoming something close to it. Naturally, the media is not keen to include him in the debates leading up to election day.

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