« Conservative Movement Awards 2007/08 | Main | Nominations for Lifetime Achievement »

Comments

Interesting - and confirmation of what many in the country are thinking and experiencing on a daily basis.

On the 15th November the Telegraph opened a thread with the title "Why are so many Britons emigrating?". It began with the words, "Britain is experiencing the greatest exodus of its own nationals since before the First World War.." and invited feedback from on-line readers on the reasons behind the exodus.

The thread attracted a staggering 650 posts which make fascinating, if depressing reading, and give a rare insight into the thoughts of voters in the country who are experiencing on a day to day basis the very real damage done to the country since '97, and which is confirmed the Policy Exchange paper.

Most comments are from folk who are about to leave, some are from ex-pats who talk about the changes they have seen in Britain as they have visited over the years since they left.

Anyone looking for an insight into the areas which concern voters most should make a point of reading the comments.

The thread is available on the Telegraph website - find the search tool on the home page, search on "emigrating Britons" - the thread is the third or fourth one down in the results list.

In my job as a surveyor and valuer I frequently meet people who are about to emigrate and of course we talk about it.

One major reason common to all is disgust at the level of immigration to the UK and the unacceptable changes this has brought.

Not to mention, of course, the associated PC 'racism' taboo which has descended on this country in recent years.

I imagine it was an excellent talk that you gave. Your diagnosis is exemplary (I'm not agreeing with every word but that's hardly the point, is it). If Conservative Home continues to help the party build the narrative about Breakdown Britain under Brown it will be doing a great service for the country.

Partiot, yes every politician should be made to read those posts in the Telegraph, posts which goes right to the heart of the failure of our political class.

It should be noted that British people are fleeing the country for first world countries, while the British state is seeking to fill up with people from developing and third world countries. If nothing else that shows this country is on the slide.

Oh dear, like the leaders of your party you are trying to ignore the real crisis facing the nation, namely the effective destruction of our parliament.

Please read the most recent posts to my blog where I detail some potential strategies up to 13th December e.g. the illegality of the Reform Treaty negototiations and conflicts with the 1688 Reform Act in attempting to bind future parliaments.

After Brown signs ( if he has the courage so to do), I suggest threatening the pensions of MPs opposing a referendum amendment who were elected in 2005 on a party platform promising such a referendum.

Peter Oborne reviewing his book on the Political Class on Parliament TV at the weekend damagingly, but probably correctly, lumped Cameron and Osborne in that category.

Attacking the pocketbooks of Labour and Lib/Dem MPs (plus Ken Clarke) might help counter such charges which will become increasingly damaging as the election approaches and Tory treachery over the Treaty becomes ever clearer(see Hague in The Independent on which I have also blogged).

Brown comes from the Scottish elite despite his attempts to masquerade as a Red Clydesider. As one of the elect, he was brought up to believe in the power of the parish to cure all ills at the local level. He is dedicated to spending other peoples’ money on the causes he believes in. Paternalism and the dependency culture are the inevitable consequences of his ideology.

He has surrounded himself with clones and incompetents. Dissenting voices are re-educated and confess their counter revolutionary errors. Public humiliation follows as Admiral West learnt to his cost.

Brown still has time to recover if he really wants to keep the job he has pursued all his life. However, he will have to dump his friends and change his policies and spending priorities. Will he choose the path of James the First or Charles the Martyr? Can DC outmanoeuvre the man who saved his political career? The politics are fascinating but…

What is certain is further decline if the government continues on its present path. Northern Rock is symptomatic of the shambles all around us. The seventies are back and everyone wants to get out if they can.

Truly depressing reading. Why don't we just knock it on the head and; open our borders and speed up the magical process of multicultural Britain whilst offering native Britons financial incentives to emigrate to regions of the Anglosphere as a reward. De-establish the Church of England to affirm our commitment to open faith. Abolish the Monarchy to symbolise our dedication to Europe and the New World. Convert town villages into lush apartments and build more out-of-town Tescos. Pacify the military and phase out regimental loyalty, thus ending demoralisation in the forces. Continue the political inertia of devolution and confine 'Great Britain' to our wretched past and redirect our national pride in areas such as football, lager consumption and the supremecy of our language.

10 years of Labour.

Nice post, editor.

The extent to which the British want radicalism in their politics will depend on the economy in the next year or so. Labour have been lucky with the economy, i'm sure it helped them gain a workable majority at the last election.

Things will only get worse for Britain, and therefore for Brown and Labour as well. We have to make sure that we convey an aura of optimism, whilst making sure that the electorate hears all about what a bunch of cretins this Labour lot are.

Conservatives have to be realistic and accept that the first period back in office will be about damage limitation and getting Britain back on track after the mess that will have been left by Labour. The great change that we all crave may take time as the ship is turned around in the right direction. Labour's obscene level of borrowing will have to be addressed and rectified, again something that will take time.

I see many parallels with the problems president Reagan inherited after the wasteful Carter years. Mr Reagan had to deal with a bloated public services and many gimmicky schemes that served no purpose and cost a great deal of money to the taxpayer. On the economic from president reagan had to lead the shift from a demand-led, and inflationary, economy, just like Labour's today, to a supply-side economy that put the emphasis on production leading pricing and not vice-versa. So patience is the key, there will be hard times ahead but as Ronald Reagan showed it can be done.

I agree with Tony Makara. The Conservatives first task will be to get Britain back on track.

If the Tories defeats Labour in the next General Election, the Conservative party's main campaign video for the next General Election (2013 or 2014) should focus on that issue. How Great Britain is a better place under Conservative government than under New Labour.
I am imagining sort of a British version of Ronald Reagans famous campaign video, "It's morning in America again".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-IBF8nwSY

"Why would we ever want to return to where we were, less than four short years ago"

My greatest fear is that "BORED HOUSEWIFE" has emigrated, and no number of Polish plumbers will be able to replace her.


Touch wood, the tide finally seems to have turned in our favour. I am sure that much of this owes to the sheer "unlikeableness" of the new First Lord Of The Treasury and his goofy, unworldly cohorts. The Brownite press has picked up on this- you can almost sense the despair of the likes of Freedland, Kettle and Ashley as their man clunks ahead and confirms all their worst suspicions.

Of course, not everyone liked Mrs T by any means, but with her you had an over arching narrative, allied to a general competence and the "vision thing", all of which Brown is proving he totally lacks.

We must now hammer on about Northern Rock, the West Lothian question, and continue to ram home the message on Stamp Duty and IHT.

Further exposure to the electorate of Balls, Miliband(s), Harman etc will do the rest....and the Great Clunking Fist himself of course !

"We must now hammer on about Northern Rock, the West Lothian question, and continue to ram home the message on Stamp Duty and IHT."

No, you look at the now 730 odd posts on the Telegraph emigration topic web site, a majority of the respondents point to the uncontrolled immigration, and over crowded situation developing here for their unhappiness. The issue the Conservatives need to raise is population sustainability, for population sustainability dove tails with the case for immigration controls, for it makes the moral case for strict limits on immigration.

It dove tails with the issue of global warming, for if you don't have a population policy you don't have sustainability.

It dove tails with the issue on housing availability, for unless the Conservatives link the housing crisis with population sustainability, Gordon Brown is going to make it an issue of Conservative councils not allowing their countryside built over.

And it dove tails with the issue of congestion and public services availability, for the Government policy is to cram the country with people, then ration the resources available.

Bruges Group NG, yes, the Labour government has nothing by way of vision. What do they stand for? The way they recycle old policies must be embarrassing to their more sensible supporters. Take for example last weeks grandiose statement over re-training British workers, which on closer inspection turned out to be just another name for the discredited NewDeal work-experience programmes which are already up and running. This government does more re-heating than a bachelors microwave.

The Conservative party is ready and primed for government. There is now a clear blueprint to take our nation forward. A realistic programme that doesn't promise the earth but will be able to deliver. Thats all the public wants. A government that will do what it can with the resources that it has at hand. The British people are sick of pie-in-the-sky promises that never get fulfilled. Labour have failed in all their key policy objectives. It really is time for change.

Don't worry DavisFan, I haven't emigrated. But the reason for my silence was very relevant to this thread. Mr Bored Housewife was away this morning, so I had to "look after" the Polish plumbers working on our house. They are VERY good with their hands, I can tell you. I'm now very pro-immigration and plan to work my way through the EU27.

Enough of that Bored housewife, thank you!

I'm delighted to hear that, Bored Housewife. The party needs to realise that sometimes, affairs are the best ways to support marriage. A sound marriage can be a team effort.

Would you set up a Tory dating service, Editor?


@Iain

Banging on about immigration turns off precisely the sort of moderate, floating voter we need to attract in order to get 42% to vote for us. Many, many of these people now have an "immigrant" as part of their extended families.

730 foaming posts on the Telegraph website won't butter any electoral parsnips- please learn the lessons of 2001.


The tide has turned, I think. Anything can happen in two and a half years, but my feeling is that the Conservative Party is heading for a working majority, at the next election. I find it hard to see what can go right for Brown now.

That said, we must hope for a Conservative government worthy of the name, one that is prepared to do in the social and cultural field, what Mrs. Thatcher's did in the economic field.

A really excellent (and depressing) post. Britain is in decline again. There can be little doubt of that. unfortunately Cameron is no Thatcher and he won't reverse that decline.

Very similar to the Scenario of Britain in the Late 1970's....and we all know what happened next!

"please learn the lessons of 2001"

I would sooner we learn the lessons of the past 2 months. Don't tell people what they want.

BTW William hague could never have won the 2001 election, Blair was unbeatable and the tory party was a joke.

Alan S - true that Cameron is no Thatcher - but times have changed in that the Dragons which have to be slain this time around need a different approach. Great as Margaret Thatcher was (and see my reply to you on a different thread), her approach in 1978/79 would not necessarily be better than David Cameron's in 2007/8

Why aren't comments being moderated anymore?

"Banging on about immigration turns off precisely the sort of moderate"

I wasn't looking for anybody to 'bang on' about immigration, I was looking for the Conservatives to put forward a cohesive set of polices, which means having a view on population. For you can't have a rational set of policies on global warming, sustainability, housing, road congestion, public services availability, etc unless they have a view on population. And if they have a view on population, it makes the moral case for immigration controls.

I'm experimenting Dale to see if the threads can run without moderation.

Editor, perhaps it might make life easier for you if you were to allow certain posters to contribute unmoderated but keep an eye on those people who only come here to throw hand-grenades? Many here only want to have a level-headed debate with people and certainly would never resort to slanging matches with other posters.

Unmoderated? Trad Tory is on today and I am guilty of trying to rattle his cage. Sorry!

Perhaps he will do the mature thing and ignore me or cofine his comments to my spelling errors and poor grammar.

I think it would be a bad tactical mistake if we were to start relying upon a narrative of impending disaster as our hope for election. I don't deny that the British economy faces current challenges, but comparisons with the 1970s are well wide of the mark.

We should aspire to have a policy positioning that can win even if the economy is chugging along very nicely thankyou in two or three years' time.

In the meantime, the major challenge of macroeconomic management is that inflation is too high and is set to be rising and above target for many months, just at a time when the economy is tending to slow. Further, in terms of political impact, if house prices were to start to fall I see no guarantee that the MPC would cut rates unless and until house price falls started to manifest themselves in consumption falls - and the traditional consumption/house prices relationship broke down in about 2003/4, so it is by no means obvious that we could not have quite significant (e.g. 10%+) falls in house prices without serious impact on consumption. Hence the more modest falls currently projected (e.g. 5%) could well be uncompensated by interest rate movements. That scenario might have political consequences...

Stupid question, but what the hell do people expect if McLabour come to power ONCE nevermind THREE times!!??.

Bruges Group NG. Calling people 'foaming', who are upset, angry and concerned about the state of the British population and culture is completely disingenuous. They are NOT concerned about foreign races (your comment of immigrant in the family) they are concerned about overpopulation and what that does to our neglected infrastructure (see breakdown Britain list); AND to the fact that a successful society works on shared culture and values and this has been disastrously undermined over the last 10 years.

As if this was not bad enough, they cannot talk about it or show their concern because of the ideology of political correctness. This ideology discriminates against them and calls them 'names' for wholly justified concerns. At the same time, the same ideology allows so called 'minority groups' complete freedom to traduce the values of this country eg sexual discrimination, freedom from religious hatred. So much so, that it is now frowned upon if your call terrorism what is is Islamic Terrorism. And now the Government seeks to twist the arm of the media not to report on Islamic 'affairs'.

By glossing over this huge injustice and totally unacceptable position, you do no-one any favors. It is perfectly possible to point out both the physical unstainability of population, and the injustice being perpetrated in society, without upsetting those who have an 'immigrant in the family'.

Andrew Lilico, with growth forcasts so negative and the problems with liquidity now on our shores the Labour government should be looking for the BOE to cut interest rates. However they dare not. The reason being the underlying inflation that will surface once the pound depreciates. Over dependence on foreign imports and particularly fuel and foodstuffs means that a weakened sterling would be a disaster for Labour's self-exalted image of economic efficiency. Even if the BOE wanted to move on cutting rates we can be sure that Gordon Brown would use the clause outlined in his May 1997 statement to the BOE to 'Intervene' if circumstances demanded it. So much hinges on the position of the pound, which cannot possibly maintain its overvalued status for much longer.


Miranda

You are clearly part of the Ostrich Tendency (or the Cornerstone Group).

Do you actually want to see a Conservative Government in power ? Because sadly many in the electorate are not as discerning as you, and thanks in part to the ludicrous Theresa May, will automatically equate

IMMIGRATION-OVERCROWDING-NASTY PARTY-NO VOTE

Its harsh, it may be unfair, but its true.

We are not a 6th form debating society, or an extension of the Daily Telegraph Bloggers Club.

We WERE the most brilliant election winning machine in Western Europe. Lets shut up about immigration and population, and who knows, we might actually win again.

It should be perfectly clear that Britain is on the slide. Hospitals which infect, schools which indoctrinate, police who shoot the innocent, who then refuse to resign; natives who leave, illegal immigrants who stay, a government which raises tax and squanders the proceeds, which involves us in a futile war, which does so on the basis of evasions and half-truths, which lets rapists and murderers out of gaol early... How much evidence do people require? Only the malign left bias of the BBC can explain the lack of open public outrage before this appalling mess.

The only reason the Iraq scandal was allowed to dent Blair's reputation was because, in the view of the Beeb's leading lights, it represented a step too far to the American-friendly right.

To those who rubbish Cameron - and yes, I am sometimes of your number - I suggest that he will at least mitigate the worst of these evils. He has at least shuffled back towards central Tory policy over matters such as inheritance tax. It remains a worry, however, that he is insufficiently radical and bold in the face of mounting political and economic disfunction.

Civitas today makes available a blueprint for a revamped health service in the form of the Dutch arrangements, which are based around private insurance. This is clearly the only way to drive the bugs and the bureaucrats - firm allies as ever - from our hospital wards.

Abundant evidence from this country makes it plain that the comprehensive schooling system fails all who are ensnared in it. Selection has to return.

The Human Rights Act blatantly impedes the capture and the punishment of criminals. It must be scrapped.

Will Cameron manage all this? His dilemma remains that he can either play the Macmillan or the Thatcher cards. The danger of the first is that he ends up a species of Heath. The danger of the second is that he never gets elected. Perhaps we should be wily enough to back him in the hopes that a conservative victory will, in itself, supply momentum to the forces of common sense.

Bruges Group NG, I notice that you now include population as topic to be censored off the agenda, but when has it ever been raise? Never? So why should the topic be off limits, a topic which has never been raised?

If you had noticed I have posted several times in the past suggesting the Conservatives stay off the immigration topic, but only raise the issue via population sustainability. By doing this the Conservatives would show up the hypocrisy of the BBC and left, who bang on about global warming etc, but also wax lyrical about the benefits of mass immigration. The two, as polices go, are inconsistent and incoherent, and by raising the issue of population, there would be no comeback from them with the old 'racism' charge, because you are specifically defining the debate along the lines of sustainability. More to the point, they would be struggling to suggest they have any cohesiveness in their agenda, for to be for mass immigration, must by implication make you in denial about global warming. I think hung by their own petard would be an apt description!

Simon Denis, the main objective must be to get in power. To stop the rot and start to rebuild the country. Repairing the social breakdown and restoring essential public services to a decent standard. The Conservative party was able to win back-to-back elections from a right-wing platform because the Labour party at the time was so left-wing. Currently that is no longer the case. However I sense that Gordon Brown would gallop to the left if he were ever to gain a mandate at the polls.

Good post Editor.But we must be careful. I agree with those posters above who say our primary objective must be to win power and adopting a narrative of Britain 'going to the dogs' is not going to achieve it. Ask Hague and IDS ,both tried it.
We identify specific problems and we try to solve them,harking back to a golden age that for many people never was will not be successful.

Dear Bruges
Neither.

I work daily with the results of this Governments disastrous stance on multi-culturalism -do you? I know, because I see it all around me, the tension that is being caused and the rising sense of frustration. Have you been out there and seen it, felt it, been with it??? This is no 6th form debating society, this is reality. People's lives are ticking away in this mess - You obviously don't live with it by your attitude.

I'm not particularly for the Conservatives, but I do want Labour out. Many I work with are floating voters. A fair voice of justice would be music to our ears. Whilst the deafening sound of silence does not win our hearts or our minds. Makes you look like another party who will do anything to win power, rather than stand for justice.

Stand up for justice and play the population card which is a fair one - or are you not clever enough to do that? Do you want to be for ever beaten up by the left for being 'racist' just for mentioning the subject of population control and cultural integration? If you were a 6th form debating society you'd have lost because you walk away instead of having a debate.

Miranda

Yes, I have worked in inner city London for over 20 years and am a member for a London Tory marginal as well.

All of which has convinced me that whilst there is undoubted validity to some of your arguments, we as a Party must be incredibly wary of creating false bogeymen which in turn allows the BBC and a still sceptical Murdoch media to paint us as "nasty/extreme".

One voters "justice" is another voters "intolerance".

THE most frightening spectre in today's papers cams up in the tiff between Milliband and Brown. Are they undermining Milliband on purpose in order to rule him out for the succession and leave it open to Brown's favoured one? - who, is likely to be replacing Darling at No.11
ED BALLS!!
For PM !!!! Enough to give you nightmares.

I've given thought to this and can see a nightmare scenario where we win power in a recession and have to increase taxes and cut services at the same time, not as bad as 1979 possibly, but after the boom year it will hurt badly. Thatcher got little thanks for her efforts, and if we had listened to those bawling for Labour we would all be driving bangers and living in flea-pits.

But the public are not long-term political theorists and will rarely vote out a Government where things are good. We need to win them over by first getting them to listen, then getting them to trust us.

Bruges Group NG, I understand your comments about caution and perception, and certainly it would be entirely wrong to approach immigration with any hint of hysteria, but I agree with Iain that sustainability must underpin every policy we have and sustainability is a direct product of the size of our population. A sensible population policy is fundamental to this country's future - for many reasons. We are already no longer self sufficient in food and energy, and water supplies in some areas of the country are under pressure. Even our waste disposal operations are beginning to feel the strain. The effectiveness of the country's Infrastructure and services such as Health and education are directly related to the country's population, so to ignore increases in population which are a result of uncontrolled immigration is not an option for a government which intends to make any claim to competence.

The public know this, and even those who until now would never have voted Conservative are considering holding their noses and voting, but before they do they need to know that 1. we understand their concerns and recognise that there is a problem and 2. we have a strategy to deal with them.

I haven't yet met anyone who can explain to me what is wrong with turning back on the border controls which Jack Straw turned off in '97. It displays incompetence of an astounding degree to be in a situation where we have no clear idea who is coming into the country, and absolutely no idea who is leaving. We need to agree what size population we actually want and that our country's resources can sustainably support, and then ensure that we get to that number in a measured and controlled way with new arrials who can genuinely add value, and at a speed that our services and infrastructure can adapt to.

As a country we can either get to this point in an organised way, or we can carry on as we are and be driven to far harsher emergency measures when the population reaches an unsustainable number and our services break down completely.

Not having a population policy and choosing to ignore the country's population increase as we are now is like letting the debt on your credit card grow every month because you don't think it matters. The thing you can absolutely count on is that one day it will.

Malcolm: I agree that we mustn't be the 'end is nigh' party but we must be honest - at least to ourselves - about the state Britain is in. I was careful to call for our manifesto to be "hope-drenched" - not depressing. We need to show that a new direction is possible - building always on the rock of things that have worked elsewhere. I think of zero tolerance policing in New York, apprenticeships in Germany, welfare to work in Australia etc

I do get fed-up with people constantly saying that talking about immigration is alarmist; last year it was considered racist to talk about the subject, but Trevor Philips helped to change that stupidity.

Was it racist or 'blinkered' of David Davis, to say last night - as reported in today's Daily Telegraph, 'The Government must work with EU partners to prevent a surge in illegal immigration when internal border controls are abolished in this country.'

Was it racist or 'blinkered' for the largish article that the above quote was lifted from, to be published today - article entitled - 'Migrants gather for assault on EU's own iron curtain.' ???

I don't think so. The fine words of some posters with %'s etc:, mean nothing to the ordinary person in the street. Whenever I get talking to those people which is frequently, the first subject that THEY mention - all types - is immigration!

Once again as stated in this article, quoting a senior officer at a military camp in Chop, 'Many want to go to England.'

Why do so many immigrants want to come to England? Because they have heard or seen films of a prosperous country, where people have nice houses, and plenty of money to spend on nice things (at least in comparison to their experiences); the schools are free, medical attention is free, and you get help if you don't work AND lots of different nationalities tolerate each other. Who wouldn't want to live in a country like that.

I am sure that several posters above think thst I have lost my marbles, but think a moment, do the newspapers in the new countries in the EU, actually write about how crowded our little island is getting and the difficulties that is causing, I don't think so.

So when the further influx of immigrants arrive in the future - even the projected number only - and they find a country struggling to accommodate all the people who want to partake of 'the good life', so much so that the 'good life' doesn't exist anymore as it once did, and if the present level of Emigration continues, the multi-cultural level of the population will be much higher than now, which will also change how that society works; how will those new incomers react then?

Surprisingly enough I think it is the ordinary people in the street who ARE able to think ahead like that. I think it is politicians and others who don't want to think ahead (politicians especially don't want to think beyond the next vote!)

I am for the radical choice. It's the exact thing I've been saying all along, that Cameron has only been promising a chane in management not a change in direction. This country CAN recover. It MUST recover. I want to be part of it.

One thing that worries me is that the stupid British voting public (yes they are bloody stupid) will elect a Tory Government, but always remember the 'good old days' of New Labour, the ten years of growth and prosperity that they have taken credit for. It will be a myth in the hard times ahead that future Labour oppositions will be only too happy to perpetuate. That is why it is brilliant that Brown called off the election -hopefully some of these turkeys will come home to roost on his watch. But we must NEVER spare any opportunity to ram home the message of sheer fiscal and economic incompetence that destroyed a golden economic legacy, both now and when we get into power.

"welfare to work"

Editor, I saw Peter Hain bragging in the house that there are 600,000 vacancies, yet he failed to explain how he was going to move 5.4 million jobless into those jobs! Does he plan to have them all job sharing and working a ten hour week topped up by tax credits? I use a ridiculous scenario because Peter Hain and Labour have a ridiculous, even a bizarre take on unemployment. They keep telling the country that more are in work and that we are on 'the verge' of full employment.

My hope is that the future Conservative government will be more honest with the British people and give it to us straight. The Conservative government can certainly be proactive in ensuring that any vacancies that exist are filled by supplying the training that the jobless need. However there will not be enough jobs for every jobless person, that has to be understood and explained for our people.

According to Labour's Alice-in-wonderland logic full employment occurs when all the vacancies are filled. The reality is that full employment only exists when we have eradicated unemployment.

Tony - have a look at Adam Boulton's destruction of Hain's re-announced announcement. It'll take 50 yerars to take 1 million off the total - and then its only the new applicants.
http://adamboulton.typepad.com/

Ted, thanks for the link. Yes, what a farce. This is yet another gimmick to make Labour appear to look good. The solution to this is very simple. We need one uniform 'State-dependent' benefit across the board with one standard payment for JSA, incapacity and income support. Then each individual case could be assessed on its merits and extra money can then go to those who genuinely need it.

I really don't see the logic of trying to shoehorn the disabled into work when there are 1.6 million able-bodied people on JSA who are chasing after a mere 600,000 vacancies. I'm not against the disabled working if they think they are able to, but I really think that considering the problems we have with social breakdown we really ought to be setting the focus on getting the young into the structured responsibility of work and helping young families by getting the head of the family into work.

Labour's whole disability philosophy is driven by political correctness and egalitarian dogma. Those with disabilities are not a social problem but many young unemployed men are, lets set the focus on the young and break the cycle of generational dependency.

This is priceless. You spend months moaning about net migration, then complain when people want to emigrate? You can't have it both ways. If people can't hack living in a multi-cultural society, well frankly, good riddance. It's no coincidence that ex-pats are predominantly Tory voters.

People don't want to migrate to declining countries; they want to migrate to succesful world powers. Why do you think so many people want to come here? If there was no work or opportunity, they wouldn't.

I suspect that we are due for economic decline, and we may have reached a peculiar reversal. We've had a decent economy for 10 years - just look at Sterling - and this unprecedented economic stability can't carry on for ever. Almost every time Labour has got into government in the past, it's been in recession and often economic crisis. This time, if the Tories get in, they are likely to be the ones presiding over an economic downturn.

"People don't want to migrate to declining countries; they want to migrate to succesful world powers. Why do you think so many people want to come here? "

Well our skilled and talented people are emigrating to first world countries, whilst the British state is attracting people from third world and developing countries.

That fact alone would suggest we are no longer in the first world rankings.

The usual tripe from the passing leftie. Far from attracting the industrious with our booming economy, we are sucking in the idle with our lavish welfare - all of them ready to start voting Labour, no doubt. Contrary to the leftie's uplifting waffle, this is not a booming but a declining society, which can no longer supply its own skilled and unskilled working class. Soon, its supply of middle class professionals will be affected, once the slow campaign against the remaining grammar schools begins to bear its poisonous fruit. As to the glib idea that it is somehow perfectly all right to see an indigenous people fleeing its historic homeland, only a coarse, insensible socialist robot could pass this off as merely a matter of "making room". England is more than a cupboard, passing leftie and the difference is not a matter of dimensions.

"adopting a narrative of Britain 'going to the dogs' is not going to achieve it. Ask Hague and IDS ,both tried it." - Malcolm Dunn

There is a difference. Back then only a few prescient people could see the writing on the wall. Now it is clear for all to see - the country IS going to the dogs. Jo People recognise it and they want something done about it.

Precisely, Deborah. Think of "Labour isn't working". Hardly sunny and upbeat, was it? But it focussed public resentment squarely on the Labour party, where it belongs. The pinkos themselves have never refrained from being negative - look at their infamous "Fagin" poster; look at the way they caricatured Major and Clarke as Laurel and Hardy and so on and so on, ad infinitum. The upbeat side has a role to play, but merely as decoration - especially when things are as bad as they are today. The public knows that things are out of control and the politician who minimises or glosses or ignores their concern will forfeit much of their support. We are entering a late seventies moment; the time is ripe for counter revolution.

Not sure how well you remember the late 1970's Simon but I can assure you it felt very different to now. Britain is not being paralysed by strikes now as it was then,nor can the majority of people see that the rest of the western world moving forward whilst Britain became weaker as was also very apparent in those days.
I'm not suggesting that the Editor is wrong,far from it. I'm merely saying that we need to be careful about how we present the challenges that face Britain. If we are only harbingers of impending doom I fear that the electorate will desert us.

The harbinger of doom sees no solution. I do: Grammar schools, Private health insurance, border controls and liberation from the EU. As for seventies Britain, its problems only became obvious because people took the trouble to complain of them. As many contributors to this site have confirmed, the difficulties faced today are no less severe than those of thirty years ago, even if not exactly the same. A Britain of terrorists, superbugs and illiterates is not a reassuring prospect. However, the process of bringing this to wide, indignant public attention is now hindered and muffled by the BBC. This nest of pinkos has skewed British politics well to the left of its real centre of gravity, such that even a good conservative, such as Mr Malcolm Dunn, can imagine that things are not as bad as all that. Believe me, sir, they are. It is our duty to diagnose the severe condition of this country and - ultimately - to supply the radical treatment it needs.

Good article. I think its a bit of both. Just preaching doom will fail so we must be positive about where we want to take Britain. How radical should we be? I think the problem is that many voters now regard all politicians in a poor light. Its also true that there are a number of complex issues that will face the next Govt. In order to tackle both these factors we need to pick a key issue and concentrate on actually solving that issue in a bold way rather than trying to do everything. Pick what you are going to be radical on carefully and on other issues play a steady-as-you-go game,

Matt

The comments to this entry are closed.

#####here####

Categories

ConHome on Twitter

    follow me on Twitter

    Conservative blogs

    Today's public spending saving

    New on other blogs

    • Receive our daily email
      Enter your details below:
      Name:
      Email:
      Subscribe    
      Unsubscribe 

    • Tracker 2
    • Extreme Tracker