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Tory Party roadshows
Friday 21 July 2006
Last night I attended a Conservative Party Built to Last roadshow at the Peter Chalk Centre in Exeter with Oliver Letwin.
During the period for questions and comment on the draft Built to Last document I made the following observation about point 7 under the heading “What we’re fighting for”. I said that I wanted to endorse the sentence “We believe in the role of government as a force for good”. My line of reasoning was as follows:
i) My sister-in-law says that she never votes. Her reason is that, “The two main parties are the same. There’s nothing to choose between them.”
ii) I reply to this that in fact this may be taken as the sign of a healthy democracy with a free press and broadcasting media. This promotes vigorous debate and it is to be expected that arguments will converge towards pragmatic solutions to many issues.
iii) Given this situation, one of the strongest cards the Conservatives have in presenting themselves to (in some respects) an increasingly thoughtful and well-informed electorate is this: Conservative MPs are less doctrinaire than many Labour and some Lib Dem MPs. This does not mean that they lack conviction but that they are wary of dogma. Therefore the Conservative Party is best equipped to arrive at good, well-thought out pragmatic solutions to problems including the unexpected ones that Governments have to tackle. So the Conservative should indeed be proud to stand on a platform of limited but good government.
Oliver Letwin replied by saying that he totally agreed with me and went on to say that there was a time that the Tories had a well-deserved reputation for economic competence and good (but limited) government. This had been lost partly as a result of the ERM debacle. There was now some evidence from the polls that the party could win back this reputation.
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