Grayling: teach young how socialism failed
THE CONSERVATIVES must do more to warn young voters about the “gloom and failure” of life under a socialist government, Chris Grayling will say this week.
The Transport Secretary will insist that it is “not good enough” for opponents of Left-wing policies to simply say that “socialism is bad”.
Instead those who lived through the Seventies should set out the reality of a socialist government “to those who have never experienced it in action”.
Mr Grayling is also expected to state there is a “great irony” in younger generations being the most sceptical about a “free enterprise, capitalist society”, when they are “umbilically linked” to devices manufactured by technology giants and their lives are “shaped by Google and Amazon”.
His intervention, in an address to the Institute for Economic Affairs, the free market think-tank, on Wednesday, comes amid concerns among senior Conservatives about the gains expected to be made by the Labour Party in May’s local elections, following the significant losses suffered by the Tories at last year’s general election.
Last week Lord Hayward, the veteran Tory pollster, said Labour could achieve its highest vote share in London since 1974.
Earlier this month, Chris Skidmore, the Conservatives’ vice-chairman for policy, warned in this newspaper that people voted for Labour in last year’s election because “they wanted hope” and that the Tories needed to set out “our own positive vision” to counter Mr Corbyn’s message.
Mr Grayling is expected to say: “For those of us whose political adolescence was in the days of the Seventies and Eighties, when the contrasts between socialism and capitalism, between Theresa May is on course to join Marylebone Cricket Club.
Her membership to the MCC, which owns Lord’s cricket ground, was proposed and seconded by Sir John Major and David Cameron. Applicants normally stay on a waiting list for around 27 years, but there is speculation that her membership could be fast-tracked.
Mrs May is a keen cricket fan and, as a girl, had a poster of Geoffrey Boycott on her wall.
nationalisation and privatisation, were at their most acute, the idea that these battles are back is almost bizarre. But they are.”
He will add: “There is that great irony. The generations that have seen, and built their lives around corporate disrupters are the most sceptical about a free enterprise, capitalist society.
“This is the generation who are umbilically linked to products by Apple and Samsung, whose lives are shaped by Google and Amazon.
“Without capitalism and free enterprise you simply don’t get a thriving economy in a democratic nation, and without those you don’t have the quality of public service that we all want to see in our country.”
Mr Grayling is expected to add: “It’s not good enough to say that socialism is bad. We need to explain why all over again to those who have never experienced it in action.
“It’s a task that’s crucial for the future of our country, and ironically for the future and prosperity of those who are tempted by the ideology of the Left.
“We cannot let a throwback to a time of gloom and failure grab defeat from the jaws of a better future.”