In the 2024 American and British national elections, it was no mystery why the incumbents lost. Both the Democratic and Conservative parties had abandoned their core principles. Democrats veered so far left that they fell off the edge of the world. Tories squandered 14 years in power competing with the sopping opposition over who could be more wet, a strategy perfectly designed to alienate the entire electorate. Left-wing voters will not – surprise – vote ‘Conservative’. Conservative voters want – surprise – conservative representatives and instead got sheep in sheep’s clothing.
Although I’m seldom keen on purity tests, Kemi Badenoch now heads a party that resembles Britain’s sewage-mucked rivers, and it could use some purifying. So I welcome her announcement that she will weed out from the next list of Tory parliamentary candidates anyone who still backs net zero and who doesn’t support withdrawal from the ECHR. The Tories will field candidates all united firmly around the same pragmatic right-of-centre message.
Conservative softies in the pressure group Prosper UK object to such opinion vetting, claiming that the party must remain a ‘broad church’. Yet ‘broad’ positions that are all over the map fail to offer voters clear answers to their country’s difficulties. Further, a party is not a church. Governing as if running a Presbyterian charity bake sale was the Tories’ problem.
