The last nine months have seen an astonishing revival in the fortunes of the Conservative party. From a ten-point deficit in the polls last autumn, the Tories now enjoy a 20-point lead. And following a crushing by-election victory at Crewe and Nantwich last month, they are increasingly seen as the government-in-waiting. George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, is one of the key figures behind the revival. His speech at last year’s Conservative party conference—promising cuts in inheritance tax and stamp duty—is credited with rattling Gordon Brown sufficiently to make him bottle plans for a snap election he would probably have won.
Osborne is one of David Cameron’s key lieutenants in the mission to modernise the Tories and “decontaminate the brand.” At the astonishingly young age of 37, he has already become one of the most influential politicians in the country. Osborne emerges in my profile as a shrewd and disciplined tactician—sufficiently scarred by past failures in opposition to sacrifice ideology in pursuit of power. But in some areas it’s been easy for him to jettison some past Tory baggage: he’s a libertarian who has no problems with alternative lifestyles. He presents himself as someone who is genuinely comfortable with the modern world. His courage and tactical astuteness are not in doubt. But it remains unclear to what end will those talents be put if and when the Tories win power again. Please comment below.
This comment is in fact in response to David Goodhart’s on-line piece England Arise ; however , since it did not appear to have
an easy comment option for webtoddlers , and it will undoubtedly
be up to Mr Osborne and the conservatives to conserve what is left of Britain , it is being blue-tacked on here
ENGLAND ARISE
Dear Mr Goodhart,
I enjoyed your piece immensely , and welcome more intelligent analysis along these lines.
The noble British habit of understatement ( aka emotional repression by some Americans ) alongside a disinclination to fuel the zealots of political correctness ( which, c1992, Geoffrey Thomas pointed out does not stand up to linguistic analysis : usage of the word ‘correctness’ implies a standard, which itself demands a consensus of opinion - which would remove the need for PC etc ) might help explain the possible outward appearance of wearing national citizenship lightly …
However , this might not mean that the British , for whom it was once a successful evolutionary imperative , feel their nationality lightly ( and some of whom also feel guiltless pride about the Empire ; regretting only the 80 million or so British passports
granted to colonials by Mr Atlee, according to Andrew Marr , with little or no consultation )
What hope of real integration for the 2 million or so Muslims, who presumably for a similar evolutionary imperative now choose to live and worship among us, if , as Theodore Zeldin reported : ” 2/3Rd’s of Brits do not trust the French” ( BBC Newsnight , March ‘08 ) amid our current near histrionic demands for the promised referendum on Europe ? ( ” What’s Europe got that we haven’t ? Rabies ! ” )
It could be argued that “the enfeebling effects of socialism” ( most visible against Brown’s claim of ” lifting 2 million children out of poverty “… straight into illiteracy / drug abuse / prostitution / suicide / knife crime ) means that the British are more unlikely than ever to willingly exchange their former proud allegiance to ‘God, King, & Country’ for New Labour’s criminally over-priced, operationally inefficient ‘ Client State ‘, where under the disguise of ‘redistribution of wealth’ , morally corrupt politicians ( how dare these public servants vote against disclosing how they spend the public’s money ) and lawyers get even richer ; and the dependency culture encourages unprecedented levels of crime throughout the country
Moreover, the ‘top-down’ idea that all foreigners moving to the UK become instant ‘ pot-noodle’ Brits could be why many of the Island’s indigenous population ( i.e. chilblains since Doomsday etc ) now describe themselves colloquially as English / Scots / Irish /
Welsh / Cornish - giving rise to the idea of further devolution - while leaving the slightly cartoon
sobriquet ‘ British ‘ for those whom they refer to off-stage, as it were, collectively - and without malice -
simply as Ethnics .
On a smaller scale , as even urban immigrants complain about the number of non-European immigrants in our cities , relatively affluent Brits who can retreat to the hills - ergo the countryside, more at ease among it’s reassuring monoculture ( despite New Labour’s envy-led attempt to rip the heart out of rural Britain by imposing the ban on hunting with hounds ; since when support for the sport has dramatically increased ) ; leaving the frustrated urban white working class, who perceive their own ethnicity / birthright as under threat from ethnic minorities ( now the majority
in several London boroughs ) to vote BNP , and go a-head-butting around the football fields of Europe