I’m a great admirer of the writer and member of the Social Democratic Party Patrick O’Flynn. Mr O'Flynn primarily writes about the state of Britain and of British politics. Neither he and his party could in any way be termed as ‘extreme’, far from it, but some of Mr O’Flynn’s writings are quite radical in the context of British politics. Mr O’Flynn is not afraid to call out problems nor to criticise politicians who may deserve criticism. I don’t of course agree with all his party’s views or all of Mr O’Flynn’s positions but they are in my opinion worth a hearing.
Mr O’Flynn has put up a post on X in which he clearly identifies what has gone wrong and what continues to go wrong for the Conservative Party. Mr O’Flynn has said that the power in the Tory party is held primarily by those who call themselves the One Nation Group of conservatives. However they are not like the One Nation Tories of the past say for example Stanley Baldwin in the 1920’s and 30’s or Sir Anthony Eden in the 40’s and 50’s, Tories who recognised that reforms such as state pensions and innovations such as comprehensive healthcare would, as was seen at the time, be beneficial to the bulk of the nation.
The modern ‘One Nation’ Tories, or those who refer to themselves as such, are often not much like conservatives at all. They are the technocrats, the enthusiasts for open borders and sometimes supporters of hyper-liberal socially progressive causes. They are I believe politicians who would be more suited to the Liberal Democrat Party than a Conservative party.
Mr O’Flynn commented on the lack of public support for the new iteration of the One Nation Tories on X and said:
Mr O’Flynn is correct here. There’s a lot of very clever people involved in the One Nation grouping but they do not have much appeal to the voters. I tend to agree with Mr O’Flynn when he says that these One Nation Tories are ‘repellent’ to voters. They are repellent because they are associated with all the worst failures of the recently departed Conservative administration. They are associated with open borders, social upheaval and disintegration, support for the Trans issue, the failure to properly manage Brexit, economic failures and much much more.
Why should I, as someone on the centre-right politically vote for a Conservative Party where the levers of power are controlled by people who might not be out of place in the Liberal Democrats? There is no reason for someone who believes in free speech, a functioning free economy, national sovereignty, social cohesion and properly controlled borders to consider voting for the Conservative Party as it currently manifests itself.
It’s no wonder that those of a conservative frame of mind are flocking to the Reform Party. After all Reform do indeed give the public the distinct impression that they are broadly conservative, unlike the actual Conservative Party. It’s both a good thing and a bad thing for this to be the case. It’s good to see a conservative minded challenger party doing so well in the opinion polls, but with two credible parties fighting for the right wing votes it raises the danger that the right wing vote will be split and that will only benefit the nationally damaging socialists and their fellow travellers.
Can the Tories turn this around? It’s possible but those who are high up in the party need to be honest with themselves and admit that the One Nation crowd is not the big vote winner that they might have been back in the days of David (now Lord) Cameron’s ascendancy in the early part of the 21st century from 2005 when he took over as leader. Whether the leadership of the Tory Party has the metaphorical balls to seriously examine themselves and understand why a party of the right has promoted people and ideas that have turned off right leaning voters, remains to be seen. I don’t want the Tory Party to die, but I do want it to be more conservative again.