Mx Cousins, writing about the future for the Conservative party for the Times in July 2019
extract
Wednesday July 31 2019, 12.01am BST, The Times
In the 1900s, a political party of the day was divided. Terribly. It was so disunited on the issue of tariff reform, that the factions within the party were in some cases standing against the official party candidate in the 1906 general election. After a landslide defeat, that party drifted into a brief fit of radicalism — advocating for referenda on every issue and siding with Ulster paramilitaries. It only averted remaining like this due to the First World War, meaning the issues of Irish Home Rule and the Liberal Party were sidelined.
That party was the Conservative and Liberal Unionist Alliance, the predecessor to the Conservative and Unionist Party, created in 1912.
Of course, we should be careful not to draw easy but unhelpful parallels with history. But it is a warning of how bad a situation Conservatives could find ourselves in, if we continue our current trajectory. Now, as well as then, there was a desire to play to base instincts and rewrite the party’s internal values and shared history.
This dramatic change did not start on the day that Boris Johnson became the Conservative Party leader — like many radical regimes, the change began from below — but it is has now become institutionalised. As well as drastically changing the political constitution of the Conservatives, this process has rewritten the rules of what is acceptable in public discourse. Apparently this now includes “f*ing business”, attacking the free press, our courts and Electoral Commission, as well as the legitimacy of parliament.
Some Conservative commentators would argue that this is hyperbole — that Johnson is a social liberal who will fund services. But he has appointed senior figures to his cabinet like Patel, Truss, Raab and Kwarteng (four of five of the contributors to the now infamous libertarian tract, Britannia Unchained), and he and his allies — including Vote Leave’s Dominic Cummings — have never made any bones about undermining liberal and democratic society.
The fact we’re even thinking about crashing out of the EU without a deal suggests that a history of reasonable, moderate euroscepticism is sharply coming to an end in my party. Moderate (or even, gasp, People’s Vote-supporting) MPs are being hounded out and deselected. A campaign of bullying — heretofore unseen outside of the Labour Party — is being directed by Leave.EU at high profile “dissenters”. Islamophobic conservative Facebook groups, and the ruins of formerly radical organisations like the vile far-right Monday Club, are gaining a permanent foothold in my party.
I have now left the Conservative Party, but I would argue that in reality, the party has left me. I was a member for two years, and chair of the Manchester Metropolitan Young Conservative Society, and I quit on the day Johnson was elected leader. I know many like me who feel similarly. A fighting retreat led by Conservatives for a People’s Vote and their youth group, while admirable, is still a retreat.
I am sorry to say that the only way now to stop this Conservative Party and force it to be better, is to kick it in the ballot. I, a One Nation conservative, left the party because the country and its people deserve better than a disastrous no-deal that was not on the ballot paper in 2016. This country doesn’t just deserve a People’s Vote, it demands one.
Sebastian Cousins a former member of the Conservative Party and a supporter of For our Future’s Sake