What do you think of Polly Toynbee?

How should Conservatives fight poverty?

Has the membership of your local Association gone up or down in the last year?

OTHER than the Conservative Party which political party in Britain is CLOSEST to your views?

>>> These are some of the questions in ConservativeHome's November survey of the Tory grassroots - timed to coincide with David Cameron's first anniversary as leader.  Click here to have your say.

Comments

[Serf]

Its unprintable

[RightOfCentre]

For the best part of 40 years I have been a member / voted for / supported the Conservative Party. I may be set in my ways and out of touch with the "yoof" culture of today and now I am finding that I disagree with "my" party's approach, policies, lack of "traditional" values and feel disenfranchised. Woe is me, where do I go?
I believe in the free market economy, a monetarist economic policy, the privatisation of state-owned industries, low direct taxation but conversely higher indirect taxation. I believe that people should be allowed a high disposable income to do with as they chose and not for governmnet to spend it for them.
I oppose trade unions, Nationalism and Centralisation, and desire checks on the size of the Welfare State and government, both central and local. I believe that people should be given every assistance to help themselves and that all revenues raised through taxation should be spent wisely.
Why do I feel so out of step with the modern Conservative Party?

[Torygirl]

Have I gone mad, or is this just a nightmare from which I will wake?

[Simon Chapman]

Tim,

I have just taken the survey. I would have preferred an option along the lines of: Polly Toynbee sometimes identifies important issues, but I disagree with her left of centre prescriptions. The 2 options: we have a lot to learn from her/her thinking has no place in the Conservative Party were a little too black & white.

[Sean Fear]

Roger Helmer speaks for me on this.

[Cllr Iain Lindley]

Simon, let's be honest, that question was designed entirely to produce a "99% of Conservative members disagree with Greg Clark about Toynbee" headline, rather than any useful analysis of policy positions.

Similarly, watch out for "Cameron risks Tory deserters to UKIP" from the "other party" question, even though it suggests nothing of the sort. I voted "none", for the record.

[anon]

Poly Toynbee represents what is worst about the current cultural marxism that is permeating our political thought. That of do as I say not as I do. Cameron also appears to be suffering from this (see my comment on the mayoral thread) in dictating to others what they should do but not doing it himself.

That is not to denegrate entirely what Toynbee says as occaisionally there are some valid points in there. However, whilst I can see Cllr Lindley's point, I am inclined to believe that this is with the intention of promoting debate on the site.

I would still like to have seen something on Trident in their. I do wonder how DC is going to square the circle on that one.

[Daniel VA]

"OTHER than the Conservative Party which political party in Britain is CLOSEST to your views?"

You didn't include the Greens, or an 'other' option. I could feel convulsions going through my body as I selected the Liberal Democrats!

[Editor]

Ooops, DVA. Greens should have been included! Sorry. But Blue is the new Green, isn't it?

[Bill Melotti]

Like Simon I thought the Toynbee question was loaded on two extremes and I chose not to answer it for the reason highlighted by Iain Lindley.

The particularly got me was 'Toynbee's left wing views have no place in the party.' As we move to the centre and adapt, the clear lines of left and right are blurred. I don't like Blair's phrase of political cross-dressing, but he's right. So we might find ourselves adopting a position that would previously have been considered left wing.

Therefore one or two of Toynbee's 'left wing views' (whatever that means these days) *might* be appealing, but by and large most of them aren't.

[Daniel VA]

"Ooops, DVA. Greens should have been included! Sorry. But Blue is the new Green, isn't it?"

That's true :-)

(Some might ask what the new blue is though...)

[tired and emotional]

Not you mate if you have to choose between the greens and the lib dems

[justin Hinchcliffe]

"I could feel convulsions going through my body as I selected the Liberal Democrats!", say DVA. Me too!!!!!

[Mark Fulford]

"I could feel convulsions going through my body as I selected the Liberal Democrats!"

I couldn't bring myself to do it. Selected None like Cllr Iain.

Like others, I also felt that the positions on Polly Toynbee were too extreme, so went for "I have no opinion", which is clearly not the case.

[Sally Roberts]

Ms Toynbee must be laughing herself silly at the thought that we Conservatives are falling for her rhetoric! How gullible can we be?

[malcolm]

Absolutely Sally.Even 'though there is a very broad range of opinion on CH I doubt that there is anybody with much sympathy for Polly Toynbee who notwithstanding her very unconservative view of the world is someone who's integrity is to be doubted.
I am rather suprised and disappointed that, to coin a phrase, the Conservative party has 'given her the oxygen of publicity' when there was absolutely no need to do so.

[George Hinton]

That fact that it lives and breathes is an insult.
How is it that that self opiniated, sanctimonius, egotistical, air-head gets space and actually finds idiots to support her ridiculous assertions is mind-boggling.
A pox and plague of biblical proportions on her.

[Tory Loyalist]

I find anything to do with the unspeakable socialist Polly Toynbee utterly disgusting.

The same applies in equal measure to the moron who recently suggested that this creature should be a model for the Conservative Party

[Tory Loyalist]

I am rather suprised and disappointed that, to coin a phrase, the Conservative party has 'given her the oxygen of publicity' when there was absolutely no need to do so.
______________________________________________________

Malcolm, what do you expect, given the mob that are currently running our party?

Stop being "disappointed". Come over and join the good guys.

You'll be glad you did.

[malcolm]

If you mean by joining the 'good guys' I would have to join a relatively small bunch of discontents who seem to denigrate everything the Conservative party does and are therefore doing the Labour party's work for it, forget it!

[Tory Loyalist]

Malcolm, your disillusionment is palpable, Better to start working for the future now than to leave it till you are the only one left on board the sinking ship.

I joined the party in the 1970s and I assure you I didn't join a Conservative Party to work for the furtherance of PC Socialism.

My loyalty is to Margaret Thatcher and everything she stood for, not the heirs to the cowardly dwarfs who betrayed her.

Grassroots concern is spreading. I know a number of Z-listers, and they're seething. Who can blame them.

We have to fight the cancer of Political Correctness within our party, and that means confronting those responsible for it, whoever they may be.

[johnC]

'One can picture our nation as a convoy crossing the desert. Everyone may be moving forward, but if the distance between those right at the back and rest of the convoy keeps growing there comes a point at which it breaks up.'

This was the Polly Toynbee image which Greg Clark approvingly referred to. But it is nonsense. As a nation we have never been anything like a convoy crossing a desert. We are an island race with a proud history and when we are threatened we never 'break up' but stick together and make personal sacrifices for the country we love. Our strongest instinct, pace Toynbee, is patriotism and not class animosity, and our goal is not material enrichment but freedom and the opportunity to serve. This is why Toynbee's outlook on life can never be shared by the Conservative party.

[Annabel Herriott]

I voted "none" as well, Iain L.

[Jorgen]

Well said, Tory Loyalist!

[Martin Cole]

There has been an interesting debate on the future of the Conservative Party following the three part analysis 'Retreat from Politics' by Richard North on the EU Referendum blog. The conclusion to that series was that DC intended the party's destruction.

My last contribution to the comment thread was the following:

====================================

The CP is important as the gut reaction in General Elections remains Labour OR Tory. Even among politically informed recent graduates I have found this to be the case - along with a continuing desire to still give Cameron the benefit of the doubt.

I believe that the media led national self-hypnosis that all is OK within the UK cannot possibly survive for very much longer. A house price correction, realisation of the lack of substance to economic indices and/or continuing alarming headlines highlighting the real Blair/Brown failure on education, health and crime will not just destroy New Labour but potentially the Cameroon's who are using Blair methods to promote themselves.

The beneficiaries of the above scenario would seem to be the Lib/Dems.

A crisis of major proportions in the EU (eg Italy pulling out of the Euro) could make UKIP appear prophetic, but more likely would be an outcry over the Home Office fiasco leaving immigrants (both EU and non-EU) appearing responsible for bad economic events and the BNP the beneficiaries.

I previously believed English nationalism would make EU withdrawal more difficult if not impossible, but if the Scots look like ditching the Union anyway that argument now lacks weight. The English Democrats perhaps offer a potential solution to the Tory dilemma.

The SNP if successful in May would boost the growing realisation in England of the privileged position of the Scots which none of the three main parties are presently positioned to exploit. The illness of Brown's son announced today adds to the drip effect of such deemed inequities, screening for the disease not yet being available under the English NHS.

At present, however, we seem to still need the Conservative Party to remove New Labour, but the Conservative Party is soon to be worse than that we oppose.

Given no brave Tory MPs or MEPs cutting free, the best means of advance seems to me to be to campaign against all established politicians (which would necessarily include the UKIP). That realistically means a new party of non-politicians and Veritas showed the difficulties of that.

Attacking all Westminster MPs having sold out to the EU and promoting an English parliamentary replacement, might be the way ahead?

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[Patsy Sergeant]

Polly Toynbee is a good example of the hypocrisy that exists in parts of the media. A woman from a privileged background, having opportunities that a lot of other people could only wish for, she chooses quite reasonably to give her children an elitist education, while criticising middle-class parents who would aspire to the same sort of education for their off-spring. She appears to regard the state education as quite adequate for everyone else except her own....

Its the usual socialist-marxist mantra, equality for all except for me and mine.

[Larry Green]

Our latest triumph timed to coincide with David Cameron's first anniversary as leader.

Newcastle (Lemington Ward) By-Election held on 30.11.2006:

Liberal Democrats 1180 (46.732%)
Labour Party 815 (32.2772%)
BNP 383 (15.168%)
Conservative Party 147 (5.821%)

Looks like Cameron isn't working.