I’ve always been left of centre, I’m very unhappy with austerity politics and the antipathy to the welfare state. I’ve never previously voted Tory.
BUT... to me these issues of free speech, safeguarding children and erosion of women’s rights are a generational issue. I think we are at a crossroads here where we either renew our vows with the core values that made the UK great or we go down a dark road.
Because I think the UK does have core values, however uncool that idea may be. I think they are; among others,
A general desire for decency - fair play basically.
A strong streak of irreverence, of Debate and of challenging of ideas - long history of political cartooning for example, from Hogarth to spitting image. The British have always been hard on ideologues, idiots and despots. We can’t lose that. We can’t have sacred cows we are afraid of taking the piss out of, or questioning.
A rejection of extremism: we never really had a strong extremist bent - the restoration happened, we had no truck with fascism, or nazism - even though small pockets of favour to these ideas was here the majority rejected it totally. Even now we are one of the few EU countries with no serious extremist political parties (UKIP are a joke.)
So well done Mr. Gyimah. This needs doing. I shall follow with interest.