My advice to the Conservative Party

Members have been asked to tell the new Chairman exactly what they think. So I did.

I have been a member since 1969, although that would have been the Young Conservatives at the start and I may have missed a few years along the way. Nevertheless, it was only at this election that I first considered voting for another party.

I didn't but I seriously considered Reform and, oddly, the old SDP seemed to have some sensible policies and Rod Liddle talks and writes a great deal of sense. He might have got my vote had he been in my constituency.

My loss of confidence in the Conservative Party arose from several sources:

1. Poor management of the behaviour of MPs.

We all know that people make mistakes and sometimes are downright stupid but (a) the public doesn't need to know about it and (b) if they do, action has to be prompt and decisive. There was a succession of naughty boys who really should have been spotted as liabilities at a considerably earlier stage when someone could have had a good, old-fashioned 'word' with them. There were also a lot of arguments - 'blue on blue' becoming a phrase we could do without hearing. Boris was really popular and most of the supporters were prepared to accept that he could be a bit bizarre at times but he stood up for things they liked someone to stand up for. He was brought down by some very clever work by a combination of people in the party who didn't care for him much and some darker opposition-friendly forces in the background who saw an opportunity to ruin the Party's chances at a future election. There simply was no-one of sufficient popularity or standing willing to take over and there really should have been far more control at the top, closing ranks behind Boris, at least for a while, and a realisation of what image needed to be maintained for the outside world. Mistakes were made in Lockdown etc. and Hancock was plain stupid not to realise that there might be cameras here and there. Cummings seemed to dislike Boris intensely and, brainy as he might be, he caused more damage to the Party's image than a lot of the stupid people did. When we needed really smart management of the image there was no-one.

2. Lack of action on woke stuff

I really could not believe what was happening to Great Britain in this respect. We watched statues being dumped or disrespected, ridiculous demonstrations by very minority minorities getting massive publicity and attention, police with rainbow armbands and NHS with rainbow crossing marks outside. I have no complaint about Pride or, for that matter, any minority organisation having a voice but we were being told that Mr Normal White Guy was some kind of evil bloke who destroyed the lives of savages in Africa or wherever and no-one ever seemed to counter any of this for years. Companies paid training firms of dubious certification large fees to lecture their staff on how they were apparently racist and wrong about almost everything and everyone suddenly started putting weird pronouns on email signatures. If anyone was honest enough to say out loud what they thought of all this they were disciplined and heaven help anyone who was a teacher or similar. They just got suspended or sacked.
All this gave rise to the Free Speech Union and week by week those of us who joined for some sort of protection were provided with daily tales of woe. Again all very very smart stuff by some dark forces who operated under the radar and were able to use poor legislative drafting to further their case almost unnoticed for a long time. Then it was too late and we had everyone taking the knee, Black Lives Matter people got rich very quickly and the Conservative Party were the baddies. How the hell did no-one see any of this coming? And when it did we still did very, very little.

3. Scotland's bloody marvellous, Wales is cool, don't mention Ireland and England's awful.

The SNP have now been shown to be a complete nightmare of a group but somehow they managed to control everything that happened anywhere in Scotland. Almost every bit of news about Scotland was how much better it was there than in Tory England. Nicola Sturgeon outmanoeuvred Boris on COVID by waiting to see what he'd planned and doing the same thing a little earlier if it was likely to be seen as strong, or delaying it and blaming having to follow Boris if it was weak. Rubbish policies but brilliant politics. Each week Scotland seemed to be tearing further away from the rest of Britain and we were allowing that to happen, with massive funding going across the border too when it might have been better utilised stopping in Northumberland.

Wales had a Labour 'government' that was making the biggest blunders imaginable but did we manage to make anyone aware of this? No. Not in the slightest. We even let them have a 20mph National Speed Limit for a while which any reasonable motorist would be horrified by. The whole Green ECO whatever Climate Change stuff has never been something that the Conservative supporters have been much bothered about. The vast majority of normal Conservatives take the view that the world is not about to end, that our children and our children's children will still be around to listen to our Children's Children's Children by the Moody Blues and there'll be electricity at a reasonable price to run the old record player too.

We like recycling but not cycling and especially not the Highway Code changes which reduced the motorist to some huge liability on the road that had to give priority to whatever other forms of life wished to cross the road. That wasn't just Wales but all over the land. Motorists were bad. They were already paying a fortune for fuel and now they're told their cars are rubbish and they'll not be able to buy a new one in a few years unless it's an electric one. We really do not want to hear this. It is not what Conservatives do. Leave us alone.

Northern Ireland was never going to be easy but we didn't exactly endear ourselves to whoever voted for us there either. We let EU negotiators get away with too much, though, and they all sounded so reasonable. Once again, our message was completely lost or meaningless to the voting public and they largely gave up on the whole thing. To be honest no-one knew or knows what to do about that but we were in charge and didn't handle things well. If one part of a lump of soil is in the EU and another is not then there will, by definition, be a border between the two. Different rules apply on each side. That's life. So some additional controls would be necessary to cut down illegal shipping of stuff or people one way or the other. That's life and nothing to do with The Troubles which someone will always bring up. Incidentally, we also allowed military personnel to be prosecuted for whatever did or did not happen in the 70s and that was not a Conservative Party's best moment either. We seemed to be frightened stiff still of the Nationalists there.

Basically all this made us English people feel pretty useless and pathetic. We were good at nothing, it seemed, and only we had voted for the Conservative Party so we had ourselves to blame. No effort that I recall was made to counter this crazed hatred of the English. As I said, some very effective forces operated behind and under the scenes to change the way we appeared and sounded and Angela 's 'Tory Scum' comment sort of capped it all nicely for the people operating the whole anti-Boris-Conservative show.

4. Poor quality MPs

As someone who was considered as a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (way back in 1974) I like to think that Conservative MPs have one or more features: intelligence, panache, charm, nouse, passion, hard-working, dedicated. Ideally they'll have at least some star quality and be able to hold people's attention in a speech. They may be nerds or geeks, however, but still of big brain and valuable, for whom we need to supply a sort of care package to ensure they're not embarrassing when let loose.

My view is that most of the members I have witnessed on TV or Radio have not been very impressive. They do need to have talents of some sort and, if they are devoid but simply were the best on offer in a particular constituency then they need to be guided and cared for. I am not saying we should clamp down on their free speech but they do need to be very careful about what they say, write or type and someone needs to assess how they come across to the Joe Public that'll need to support them at the next election.

Of course, there are some really good people in the Party but we need to manage better who gets to advertise who we are and what we stand for.

I do hope to vote Conservative again but I do need to feel confident that the next leader will be a Prime Minister of whom I can feel proud and who has a team that is behind him or her for the long term and that they can appreciate what voters really want and distinguish between policies that work and can be beneficial and those that are merely following some ancient ritual or practice and just expected to happen.

Be quite radical, even, in some respects, like building an argument that shows both sides of the Climate Change argument. Challenge whether electric cars really are the solution? Restore our past achievements as Great Britain and explain, explain, explain just how wrong so many of the things now been taught or suggested really are. Counter all the demos that are against British values with better demos that support and explain them. Get more Conservatives as teachers. That's very important as much of what has gone wrong has come from actively left-wing teachers, lecturers, middle managers and legal experts.

Abandon all race, equality and similar legislation. If there's one law that says everyone will be treated with respect regardless of whatever minority or majority they may think they're in then there's no need for anything else.

The one thing Conservatives have got right in a big way is to support Ukraine. They have led in that respect and Boris, had he stayed, would probably have been able to gather sufficient extra support to bring more weapons and people to their defence to prevent the atrocious advances of the Russians. What is now a sort of uneasy stalemate could have been a victory and a return of most land back to Ukraine. Losing Boris lost a lot of ground, and lives, there.

I hope these thoughts are of some value and interest.

With kind regards and the best of luck,