Preserving UK conservatism

Fire of Liberty

In the past months I've written several posts that have been critical of the UK's new Tory party leader David Cameron and how the conservative party seems to be running off the tracks laid by Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher with his darting towards the center on various issues to get the Tories elected to the leadership of the House of Commons. While he can carry on about England becoming overweight and attack candy companies for selling orange flavored chocolate to kids(I love Terry's Chocolate Orange like his "candy crusade", favoring the greens when it comes to the environment and his attacks on parts of the private sector might get him in the Commons it still saps the party's energy from important issues like crime, immigration, education, taxes, and poverty.

Luckily the Tories are still sticking with a conservative philosophy when it comes to poverty. Like the conservatives of America, the Tories know that the best place to fight poverty is locally via the family, church, voluntary groups and the private sector rather than the bothersome and lumbering government who creates greater problems by developing a growing sense of dependency. I'd have to say that Cameron and the Tories have pretty much gone by the conservative cards when it comes to the fight on poverty. Just take a look what Cameron had to say with regard to fighting poverty in this article in the Financial Times:

Mr Cameron said: "The state has become a guarantor of means-tested dependency, of the status quo, not of a new start"”. Conservative policy would highlight how the voluntary sector had "“the crucial role to play"” in giving people a second chance to escape from poverty, drug addiction and homelessness.

The focus of the speech was on organizationsions working within the voluntary sectors, or engaged in what was called "“social enterprise"”, could often get people out of poverty far more efficiently than government agencies.

Standing alongside Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader who now heads the party'’s centre for social justice, Mr Cameron said: "We'’ve both seen how the voluntary and social enterprise sectors provide intensive, long-term, holistic care to our vulnerable people. The public sector does a great job but its targets and caseloads make it difficult to provide the necessary level of help for the most needy.

"“Small community and voluntary groups who care for broken lives deserve financial support, the use of which isn'’t micromanaged by Gordon Brown'’s huge army of bureaucrats," he added.

Now the FT says this policy is a shift to the center or the left but if you look back to speeches of Disraeli, Churchill, Thatcher and various other philosophers/thinkers of the right, you learn that this approach to poverty is deeply entrenched in the belly of most if not all conservative thinking folks. So I say carry on Mr. Cameron but try to get your party back on the politically "right" track on other issues before you lose your base. They can just as well stay home if you erase all notions of conservatism from your platform.