There was a time when the Conservative party was associated with resisting change, harking back to the good old days and shoring-up the barriers of social exclusion. Those days are gone. To be a Tory today is to sign-up for an agenda of change, it is to embrace the pressing responsibilities that befall our generation and to demand that everyone be given a fair chance at success. That’s what makes me Conservative.
Four years ago I was abroad watching supra-national intervention fail the people I was trying to help. At the same time I saw nascent businesses struggling to survive but delivering skills, jobs and prospects for the communities that surrounded them. In those sad months I lost all faith in even the best intentioned centrist state-heavy interventions. The first thing I realised was that the closer you get to a problem, the closer you are to the solution. The second thing I realised was that, given the space to create, people will prevail.
For that reason, when I returned to the UK and looked to helping my local community by becoming a councillor, I knew I could never become a Labour or Liberal politician. I care too much about the freedom of the individual and the de-centralisation of power.
I became a Tory because I don’t believe that children of unemployed parents should strive merely to get better benefits than those that raised them. I don’t believe that being shift manager should be the summit of aspiration for a labourer. I believe that given an education system that is flexible, given companies that train as well as work, given employers that are blind to colour, religion and sex, given communities that encourage success, given parents that understand their responsibilities, given public servants freed of bureaucracy, given children that believe there is more, in essence – if given a fair chance, everyone of us can achieve the full scope of our potential and make a positive difference.
The problem is, of course, that not everyone is given a fair chance. The truth is that people are still born into terrible disadvantage. The truth is that, for thousands of young people, potential is snubbed out in childhood by parents that don’t care, by peers that mock or by teachers too busy marking exams to nurture the talent they see. The truth is that there are now multiple generations of the same family that have never known real employment. The truth is that the Labour government, obsessed with targets, central solutions and problem-solving by restricting the activities of individuals, has failed to deliver on its promises.
I believe a Conservative government will be different. Look at the policies pages on this site and see how enthusiastic we are about driving change through incentive and opportunity – not legislation and restriction. You’ll also notice how a Conservative government would understand that wealth is a means to an end – not the end in itself. Unless increased wealth brings increased social good it is pointless. This is something the Labour government, too busy running from its socialist past, never really understood.
So what do I believe in on a national scale? I think the following points summarise it:
- Reducing central government interference – less bureaucracy, form filling and targets.
- Local experts should be in charge – teachers should run schools, doctors hospitals and policemen police forces
- We should all have a chance to succeed – that means educational opportunities throughout our lives, employers incentivised to support education and training, skills based education for those that want it, and de-coupling a person’s exam results as a 16 year old from their final salary as a 60 year old.
- We need to stop living off an environmental bubble. We’ve seen what happens when we all live off the false weath of an economic bubble – no one quite believes its going to fail until it does. We cannot make the same mistake with the environment. Our generation has one chance to save the world.
- Finally – I believe that there are lots of problems government can’t solve. Where they exist – we have to look at ourselves, our families and our communities and decide to make the change.
