LEO McKINSTRY:
LAST year could have been a disaster for the Conservatives. They squandered their Commons majority through an ill-conceived, badly run general election campaign, then descended into a temporary state of panic.
But they somehow survived in government. Despite the gleeful predictions of critics, their party did not fall apart over Brexit, nor was it plunged into a bitter leadership contest.
Indeed, far from being ousted, Theresa May is more secure than at any time since the summer. She has not only ridden out the storm but has made real progress towards a comprehensive deal with the European Union.
Yet the Tories remain on the defensive, exuding timidity rather than confidence. Too often they surrender to the progressive metropolitan elite or allow themselves to be buffeted by spasms of manufactured media outrage.
This is the year to abandon that anxious outlook: 2018 should be the moment that Conservatives go on the attack against the Opposition, for they have everything to gain from a more aggressive strategy. After all they have a powerful, upbeat story to tell about their time in office since 2010, while the best of their policies, including the implementation of Brexit, are in tune with the majority of the public.
IT is the querulous alliance of Remoaner fanatics, selfappointed professional agitators and Jeremy Corbyn’s hardline Labour revolutionaries who are really out of touch with mainstream Britain.
The Tories should move beyond mere survival and go on the offensive. That means for a start enthusiastically championing Brexit and trumpeting the return of our national independence. Our withdrawal from the EU is not an obstacle to be overcome but an opportunity to be grasped.
The Government therefore has a duty, not just to negotiate a good deal for Britain but also to demolish the gloomy propaganda of the Remoaners which has turned out to be an exercise in deceit. If the Tories take the battle to the ideological Europhile lobby they will have the support of voters. One recent opinion poll showed that just 33 per cent of the public wants to overturn Brexit.
Britain’s post-referendum prosperity, which has defied the bleak predictions of the pro-EU brigade, is part of a remarkable tale of Conservative economic success since 2010.
For far too long the miserable Left-wing agenda has prevailed across the airwaves with all its manipulative emphasis on “Tory cuts”, food banks, public sector collapse and mass destitution.
The reality is very different. Over the past seven years the Conservatives have built a record on job creation that is unmatched by any other government in modern British history. Unemployment is at its lowest level since 1975.
The employment rate is at its highest since records began. Welfare reform has worked, significantly reducing benefits dependency and the number of jobless households.
People in work, especially those on low incomes, now pay much less tax while a greater part of the burden is taken by the wealthy.
That is a prime reason why, according to a recent report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, there has been “a dramatic fall in inequality” since 2008.
The Left’s portrayal of economic woe is contradicted by a host of other indicators, such as the revival in manufacturing, the boom in exports, the record high in the FTSE share index and a growth rate that matches Germany’s.
Amid all the fashionable alarmism about debt it should be noted that the value of Britain’s wealth was estimated last month to be £10trillion, far in excess of total liabilities. And talk of the decline in Britain’s infrastructure ignores an array of phenomenal engineering projects, such as the new Forth road bridge in Scotland, opened by the Queen last September, and Crossrail in the South-east, due to open this year.
The Left and the Remoaners ignore all this because they want to talk down Britain. The Conservatives should be the party that talks up the country. Outside the affluent urban enclaves of virtue-signalling, self-loathing globalisers, most British people have had enough of the relentless denigration of our heritage.
THE Tories should go to war against anti-British, politically correct nonsense, just as they should be guardians of the great British tradition of freedom, which is also under threat from the Left. Our universities, for instance, should be places for open debate, not centres for progressive brainwashing.
Similarly, unelected grievance-mongers should not be allowed to dictate the terms of civic life with invented claims about “Islamophobia” and “institutionalised racism”. Nor should the Government give any credence to the bullying, unrepresentative transgender lobby, which wants to subvert women’s rights, the innocence of childhood, biological science and the English language.
Above all the Tories should take on Corbyn’s Labour Party. Once the voice of the working class, the Labour movement is now a dangerous cult which would wreck the country if it came near power.
With all his Marxist baggage Corbyn himself is terrifying but even worse is his sinister shadow chancellor John McDonnell, a man who glories in aggressive rhetoric. The Tories need to do all they can to prevent Corbyn’s gang from taking office. The best way to do that is by standing up for real, patriotic Conservatism.
‘The year to abandon their anxious outlook’