Saturday, October 01, 2005

Is there any difference between the two main political Parties?

Is there any difference between the two main political Parties?

That is a question that I am often asked, including today during a street surgery outside Kingsway shops. I can give an answer that very clearly sets out the differences, but I hope the differences are becoming more apparent.

As a politician, and not as a Conservative, I was appalled and ashamed when the world was shown how Labour not just runs the country, but runs its own Party. Labour showed the world that it has abandoned democracy. When an 82 year-old man gets forcefully evicted for accusing a Minister of talking ‘nonsense’, and is then held under anti terrorism laws, the words Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe spring to mind. Can that really have happened in 21st Century Britain by its own government? Well it did, and we cannot be given a clearer demonstration of Labour’s total contempt and disregard for democratic free speech. The country is run their way, and don’t you dare say anything against it.

But are we rapidly becoming a National Socialist state?

We are now in a position where there are 5.85 million people working for the state, that’s nearly one in four workers. (Is it any wonder why the trade gap, the difference between how much we import and export, has negatively widened year-on-year since Labour came to power.) We are no longer a nation that encourages industry and entrepreneurship, with manufacturing declining as more and more companies move their operations abroad. With an increasing proportion of the workforce working for the government, it is obvious why we have to pay an ever increasing amount of tax. But Gordon Brown told us that he would cut the number of public sector employees. Has he? No, apart from cutting 8,000 jobs from the military, the one arm of the public sector that most needs investment, not cuts. So how will he reduce spending? He won’t. Under Labour the government, or the state, will continue to employ more people and our tax will continue to rise to pay for it. As the government increases its grip on the country, we increasingly become the servants of the government. So are we becoming a National Socialist state? The facts speak for themselves: Yes we are and that cannot be denied.

Conservatism fundamentally believes in free markets and minimal state control. We believe that low tax economies are the strongest economies. We believe in encouraging and not hindering businesses and entrepreneurship. We believe communities should be run by local people, not government quangos.

In a nut shell, we believe that government should be the servant of the people.
So to the gentleman who asked me this morning, the answer is: Conservatives and Labour are as different today as they ever have been.

Next week at our Party conference we will be hearing lots about how we as a Party need to change to win the next election and form the next government. That may be true, as long as we don’t abandon our core Conservative principles because it is those that make us different to Labour. Labour may appear to be conservatives (with a small c) on the outside, but they are still socialists, and National Socialists on the inside.

And a final question? Do I think we are wrong to have spent the last few months debating the leadership ‘contest’? Of course not. We have had a full and open debate followed by a democratic vote about how we will choose a leader. Now we will have a similar debate and vote to decide who becomes the leader. We are being openly democratic. From what we saw at the Labour conference, only Labour would think that to be wrong.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Couldn't have put it better myself. Labour's conference was a disgrace to the country. Kick em hard. Great web site by the way.