It is no wonder Tories are looking elsewhere

What is the point of the Conservative Party? It was a question asked in Parliament by Sir Edward Leigh in response to Jeremy Hunt’s reversal of the mini-budget. At the moment, the answer appears to be that the Conservative Party is a caretaker – something that is better than the Labour Party, but at best is effectively just waiting until either the world is a better place and one more conducive to implementing ideas, and at worst is waiting for some ideas to even come their way.

It is hard to see any longer what the Conservatives are offering that Labour, once again now under “sensible” leadership, would not.

Where is the pursuit of individual freedom and the empowering of individuals? Policies that ban adverts for certain food or increase taxes on tastier fizzy drinks are the treating humans as unable to make their own decisions.

The last few years have also seen a total divorce from the idea that the state should not step in at any and all possible opportunities. First came the unwavering and unquestioning fanatical support of the NHS, where the Conservatives have presented the only viable solution to its problems as throwing ever more money at it rather than daring to question whether there could be a better system. The support through the pandemic, and now for energy prices in this current crisis, have once again shown that the Tories are just as keen on a big, interventionist, state as the Left.

The party of low taxes has now presided over 12 years of government in which the tax burden has risen to the highest in history, while even Brexit has not motivated then to shed red tape and regulation.

The Conservatives no longer have an identity of their own. They are only able to define themselves in comparison to Labour: they are Labour-lite. But that isn’t how selling yourself to the electorate works. It is not good enough to not be the other guy – if it were then Hilary Clinton would have become President. Just as in football, caretaker managers eventually get replaced, and that looks exactly what will happen now.

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