I came across a video from Tory Party Conference, a round table on whether the Conservatives were doomed. It was hosted by Unherd, and the panellists are, Peter Hitchens, Ed West, Miriam Cates MP and Matthew Goodwin. For more as ever, read more …
It interests me, because it shows on the whole a level of thinking beyond the contemptuous simplism of Johnson and Cummings. There’s some real heavy duty thinking going on here, although I think Ed West’s contribution was rhetorically weak, although his comments on the left’s somewhat immaterial hegemony over ideas were both unique and contested in this debate.
It helps to understand the viciousness of their ideologues and the debates they themselves have, it’s not about agreeing, but their allegations that Cameron & Osbourne are heirs to Blair is fascinating. There is a recognition that Thatcherism cannot be reconciled with a voting coalition based on blue collar, or ex-blue collar workers.
The criticisms, although mainly from Hitchens who is just there to shock, on climate change, grammar schools. university entrance are ideas I thought dead.
Ed West states that the problem for the Conservatives on using British/English nationalism as a unifying force is the stateless internationalism of the bourgoisie.
Goodwin poses that nexus which we, well I, know as Blue Labour, based on home, and a conservative, nostalgic identity is a source of medium term success for the Tory Party, He is a clever man and probably better than the Cummings whose sole legacy is a fetishisation of ignorance. However, I wonder how long the racist element that supported Brexit because they were fed up with ‘losing their home’, will recognise they’ve been conned as the Europeans are replaced with Commonwealth migrants as any study of the nationalities of those being let in to drive our lorries and kill our pigs will show.
Cates held her own, but we have to ask, how genuine is Johnson, and the Tories in supporting a levelling up Agenda. Those that think that Sunak will be trapped into this by the neo-poujadist movement that have won the Tory Party have to answer the question asked by the moderator, how this could be so when most of the red wall parliamentary intake are Thatcherites.
ooOOOoo
I wrote this as a bookmark to check out Matthew Goodwin, who teaches at Kent, and describes himself in his own words.
So I had to look at Ed West, who is the author, of “Small Men on the wrong side of history”, which is reviewed on amazon, “Forgoing the typically tedious and shouty tone of the Right, West provides that rare gem of a conservative book – one that people of any political alignment can read, if only to laugh at West’s gallows humour and dry wit. Crammed with self-deprecating anecdotes and enlightening political insights, Small Men on the Wrong Side of History discloses a life shaped by politics and the realisation that perhaps this obsession does more harm than good. ” One of the things that the reviews point out and lesson for many in the Labour Party, and maybe the Libdems, winning [an election] is not enough
While looking for a picture to decorate the article with, I found this, by JKohn Rentoul on the ‘net.
Labour is now the party of the young, the cities, ethnic minorities and liberal graduates, whose priorities drive its old supporters further away.
echoes comments made at the panel.