By Roger Scruton
During 13 years of opposition the Tory Party had the opportunity to think. Issues that were of ever increasing prominence in the minds and the feelings of the electorate were ignored or fudged by the Party hierarchy. There was a need to re-examine the core beliefs and assumptions of Tory politics, and to reconnect with the instincts and values on which the Tories had in the past depended for their support. But the Party entered into coalition government with virtually no intellectual contribution of its own, and with a rooted desire to avoid the places where thought was needed. It was as though the entire period out of office had been spent sipping cocktails in the Bahamas, watching the antics of the Labour Government on television with quiet murmurs of dismay. Issues where the Party should be taking the lead – the environment, marriage and the family, the place of religion in the public square, press freedom, policing, the armed forces – have all been addressed as though the Labour Party were still in office, and as though there were no need to change one iota of the left-liberal agenda. True, in the matter of Europe the Party has made moves to protect national sovereignty, though largely because UKIP has forced the Tories to recognise that, by not doing so, they have jeopardised their core support. Perhaps it is only in the fields of education and welfare that we see the evidence of serious thinking, with Michael Gove and Iain Duncan-Smith making a courageous attempt to unravel fifty years of egalitarian claptrap.
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