RIP the Conservative Party........

If I wish to vote for the ‘conservative’ party, where will I find it? Maybe it’s away at the races. It certainly is not the Tory Party, which under David Cameron has morphed into a faux liberal party.

 

The basics of conservatism are ‘moderate’, ‘averse to rapid change’, ‘avoiding extremes’, ‘cautious’.

 

I would add to this dictionary definition ‘small government’, ‘protection of the currency’, ‘defence of the realm’, ‘support for enterprise ‘, ‘avoidance of unnecessary change’, ‘respect for tradition’, ‘freedom of the individual’, ‘support for ancient liberties’, ‘freedom of speech’, ‘adherence to the constitution’, ‘the rule of law’.

 

The list is long. So where will we find a party that adheres to these  principles? And where does the Tory Party stand?

 

Well, for starters, it wasted an inordinate amount of time and public money on changing the constitution so that the first-born becomes heir-apparent regardless of sex. Since this will not kick-in for at least another 70 years, that was all a farce, although it did provide a lot of freebies, since every Commonwealth country with Her Maj as Head of State had to be consulted.

 

Then there was the mess and muddle over ‘gay’ marriage which involved changing not just the law but the English language, since ‘marriage’ by definition is the legal union of a man and woman. Dave managed to divide his party and the country on a legal fiction; many voters were strongly against the notion; even more could care less. The adverse reaction of many Tory backbenchers gave a taste for rebellion, which is being indulged increasingly.

 

It is depressing to look back on these and many other time-wasting diversions when the country seems to be going to hell in a hand-basket.

 

Defence of the realm? We now have a navy that can muster 19 ships. This is the smallest since the days of Henry VIII. Unfriendly counties can now disrupt our trading routes at will. Even Somali pirates can safely ignore us. One day we will get an aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales. It might even get some planes to go with it. But since the Nimrod squadrons were vandalised,  there is no radar top-cover, so in action the PoW would last about as long as its predecessor

 

The army is at its smallest since before the Napoleonic Wars, even though the UK is still engaged in the longest continuous war in history. The RAF has been forced to stand-down fighters because the technicians who keep them flying have been made redundant.

 

Never mind, at least the foreign aid programme is so cash-rich, with its 37% budget increase, that it has difficulty in spending the money. And despite the burgeoning budget deficit and national debt, Dave can still, in true socialist style chuck £600 million at free meals for tiny tots regardless of need, and umpteen billions at the HSR2 Gravy-train.

 

Civil liberties? Blair/Brown created over 3000 new imprisonable offences, so that now you can land in the Bridewell for suggesting that a petty official should take to sex and travel. And there is the European Arrest Warrant, which arrived under the pretext of nabbing terrorists and has never been used for that but which can result in you being hauled off to a stinking jail in Bulgaria to wait 3 years to be tried for something that is not an offence in the UK.

 

What have the ‘Conservatives’ done to restore our (relative) freedoms? That’s right!

 

In fact what have they done to further a single one of the basic principles of conservatism? Do I hear just an echo?