In the Guardian today, Polly Toynbee argues that the election result is proof that Britain is no longer a conservative country. The state of\u00a0Labour, its widely disliked leader and all other things considered means that, for\u00a0Polly,\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018 for Cameron to win a meagre 36% of the vote was a phenomenal failure. Not a failure of Cameron\u2019s personally, nor of his campaign. The Conservatives were beaten because this is no longer a Conservative country.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0 <\/p>\n She uses the capital \u2018C\u2019 but presumably means the lower-case variety too. For Polly and her friends, we are therefore a \u2018progressive\u2019 country now.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to know where to start in\u00a0describing the wrongness of\u00a0this conclusion. This week, a survey found that 75% of people had considered moving abroad during the past year.\u00a0Similarly, in another poll last year, almost half of those asked would have emmigrated if they could.\u00a0I think it\u2019s safe to say that these people\u00a0are not giving up on the country because they are dissatisfied that it\u00a0isn\u2019t \u2018progressive\u2019 enough.<\/p>\n On all the major issues facing us \u2013 the EU, immigration, social breakdown, welfare dependancy \u2013 poll after poll signals huge public concern in ways which signal a great potential support for traditionally conservative sentiments.<\/p>\n The fact is, these issues were barely touched on during the election campaign, if at all. It was a phoney campaign, hugely enjoyed by the media class who are infatuated with process <\/em>maybe,\u00a0<\/em>but otherwise utterly hollow. Most importantly, there was no choice put before people; there was no one place\u00a0for them to go to register their concerns. So instead\u00a0they went everywhere.<\/p>\n But the crucial point about Toynbee\u2019s claim is this: the Cameron high-command probably goes along with it. They have internalised this reasoning. They too no longer believe Britain is a conservative country, or if they do, they\u2019re rather embarrassed about it and pretend it\u2019s not so.<\/p>\n I saw a nice little illustration of this only last night. At a meeting in central London organised by the uber-networker Carole Stone to consider the post-election landscape, I made a couple of the above\u00a0points from the floor.\u00a0By way of an\u00a0answer, one of the\u00a0guest speakers, the failed Tory Mayoral candidate Steve\u00a0Norris, railed against\u00a0\u2019bone-headed\u2019 right-wingers who nobody should take seriously, and rambled on instead about the effects of the death of ideology. There was simply an implicit\u00a0refusal to\u00a0take on board the notion that there was anywhere to go other than the\u00a0hallowed \u2018middle ground.\u2019<\/p>\n So what are we left with now? A bunch of politicians, to the public eye hardly distinguishable, horse-trading: a gaggle of bald men fighting over a comb. <\/p>\n <\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n No related posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the Guardian today, Polly Toynbee argues that the election result is proof that Britain is no longer a conservative country. The state of Labour, its widely disliked leader and all other things considered means that, for Polly, ‘ for Cameron to win a meagre 36% of the vote was a phenomenal failure. Not a failure of Cameron’s personally, nor of his campaign. The Conservatives were beaten because this is no longer a Conservative country.” She uses the capital ‘C’ but presumably means the lower-case variety too. For Polly and her friends, we are therefore a ‘progressive’ country now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/h3>\n