Why ARE we a much more Left-wing nation despite 12 years of Conservative governments?

A leading historian examines one of the most perplexing conundrums of our age...

CONSIDERING that the Tories have been in office, one way or another, since May 2010 – almost 12½ years – you might expect most areas of life in Britain to be markedly conservative, stamped with the imprint of our political masters. Certainly, a very different country from the land ruled by New Labour’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

But in very many key areas of national life, there has actually been a strong drift to the Left.

On the broader social and cultural fronts, the evidence of Left-liberal momentum is particularly stark.

If, back in the summer of 2010, a soothsayer had forecast that after 12 years of Tory governments, universities would be vigorously ‘decolonising’ their curriculums, young people would be routinely offering their ‘pronouns’ to forestall any confusion about their gender and museums would be seeking to give away some of their most historic treasures, you’d have thought them completely deranged.

Of course the Left-wing activists who infest so many of our great institutions insist that such developments are pure common sense. Anybody who resists their latest obsessions, they howl, is waging a ‘confected culture war’ – as if echoing what most normal people instinctively believe makes you some kind of dangerous Fascist.

This significant swing to the Left is not a move to the Left-wing values of Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson, nor even those of Blair and Brown, but it represents a much more hysterical, intolerant Left, obsessed to the point of unreason with race and gender.

Indeed, it’s a sign of the times that people who in 2010 considered themselves to be Labour supporters, such as the writer J. K. Rowling

or the philosopher Kathleen Stock, are now routinely smeared and vilified, simply because they have the guts to question the latest fashionable orthodoxies about what it means to be a woman.

So what’s the explanation?

Is it the fault of Tory governments for failing to pack cultural institutions with their own supporters? Should we blame universities for filling youngsters’ heads with such woke nonsense? Or should we chastise conservatives themselves, for failing to present an attractive alternative?

Let’s take those propositions in order.

There’s certainly some truth in the theory that Tory governments have been too spineless to stand up for small-c conservative values.

The Government was lamentably weak, for example, in cracking down on the mobs of lunatic activists smashing up our cities in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 – a murder of a black man by a white police officer that happened in America and which had nothing to do with us here in Britain.

It’s also been too weak to clamp down on the extremists of Extinction Rebellion and similar groups – though the greater culprits are the police, who, for their part, seem more interested in investigating people for using the wrong pronouns than in maintaining order and catching villains.

But in some areas of the arts, the Tories have promoted their supporters. The BBC director-general, Tim Davie, is a former Conservative councillor; its chairman, Richard Sharp, has advised both

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak; and its board includes Theresa May’s former press chief, Sir Robbie Gibb, a keen Brexiteer who has openly criticised the BBC’s ‘woke-dominated groupthink’.

A much bigger problem, I think, is the insidious supremacy of that groupthink – which a handful of senior appointments can do little to shift.

Across many cultural institutions, from the National Trust and the Church of England to once-great museums and publishers, you find the same slack, unthinking jargon, the same obsessions with the imagined crimes of history, the same lazy obsessions with gender and slavery, the same convoluted babble of abstract nouns and meaningless Americanisms.

Why is this? One answer is that graduates have been pouring out of university humanities departments having been lectured for three years about the supposed evils of British history and the importance of recognising that there are actually 72 genders – or perhaps 73, or even 74, depending on the madness of the academic.

In many ways, therefore, the finger of blame should be pointed at our higher education system.

How ironic that although academics love to preach about ‘diversity’, the only diversity they seem to be interested in is skin colour – not independence of thought.

In a revealing survey two years ago, the think-tank Policy Exchange found that just nine per cent of academics had voted Leave in the Brexit referendum, while only seven per cent identified themselves as ‘right of Centre’.

Most disturbingly, only half said they would feel comfortable sitting next to a Leave supporter at lunch, while just a third said they would be comfortable beside somebody who questioned their transgender dogma.

But it’s too easy to explain this as the result of some deliberate, nefarious conspiracy. In truth, many, even most, academics are smug, closed-minded and intellectually second-rate – too dimwitted, in other words, to be plotting anything so sinister.

Instead, the fundamental problem is that very few clever, sceptical Centre-Right people contemplate working in artistic or cultural institutions. Instead, they go straight into business, finance, medicine or the law, which offer far greater financial rewards.

As a result, museums, universities, even schools are often run by idealistic, over-earnest, hectoring Lefties, bereft of the basic maturity or intellectual confidence to question what they’ve been taught. So how to fix it?

Well, the past 12 years have shown that Tory governments are unable to de-wokeify our great institutions. Indeed, if the past few days are any guide, there’s not much point looking to a Conservative government to do anything.

The answer, I believe, is a calm, confident campaign in defence of

It’s much more hysterical and intolerant, obsessed with race and gender

Graduates pour out of university, having been lectured for years about the evils of British history

There are still tens of millions who are small-c conservatives at heart

the cultural values most of the British people hold dear.

What’s more, such a campaign might do a lot better than people expect. As the reaction to the Queen’s death shows, tens of millions are still small-c conservatives at heart.

Unlike the people running the Church of England or the National Trust, they make it clear that they like our country, and are passionately proud of its history and heritage.

For too long, those tens of millions have been silent – not least because most have better things to do than to engage in debate with a peculiar, half-crazed band of jargon-babbling ideologues.

But as a result, they’ve been let down – and Britain has moved significantly Left-ward. So it’s now high time for a fightback – polite and respectful, of course, but implacable nonetheless.

Clearly, the job cannot be left to Conservative MPs. But I’m convinced there are countless sane, sensible people in the arts, the media, publishing and education who are sick of this nonsense, and of the shrieking and howling that accompanies it. In fact, I know there are, because in private they often tell me so.

So isn’t it time that they stood up? Isn’t it time to stop appeasing these eccentric bullies?

And isn’t it time to stand up for Britain, before they destroy it for ever? l Dominic Sandbrook hosts the podcast The Rest Is History.