The post you are reporting:
There is a lot to catch up on from the weekend.
Those of you on the left clearly have no real understanding of the Conservative Party and that is very much a weakness. It is this lack of understanding that leads to ill-conceived class war tactics that have so clearly failed.
PaulB, Ross etc. Dogma has never been central to the Conservative Party hence its success over 200 years because if weighed down by dogma it could not have survived changing times. Take the Tories of Pitt (perhaps better described at 'Pittite Whigs' as Pitt never called himself a Tory), the Peel Tories, the Disreali Conservatives, Heath's Conservative & Unionist Party and the the Thatcher Conservatives. There a a common set of values and traditions that link them but the Party was always able to adapt to changing times.
The key point about the Conservatives is a belief in the power of the individual. This comes accross as personal responsibility, personal freedom, share ownership, enterprise, home ownership and generally smaller Government. Indeed the debate in the Conservatives is about just how small should Government be and DC has revealed a lot of the localism agenda that is a strong thread informing policy. That localism is not one based on local government so much as individual people. What stops this a being dogma is an acceptance that small Government does not mean no Government and there is a strong belief in our nation, in Defence and law and order that underpins it.
To the Labour Party the old left wing call of 'power to the people' was about collective power and it is that belief in collectivism that remains the hindering dogma of Labour. It is this that leads them to justify high taxation and nanny state interfering in our lives, 'we the Government know best and here are your targets'. It hinders them because Governments, politicians, do not know best and do not always have the best of motives. It also is a problem for them when dealing with a crisis and when leadership is required. We can see that in Brown's response to expenses in setting up committee after committee compared to Cameron who made a decision and then set up a panel to implement it. We have seen locally how that hinders good administration when they were in control of DDC.
To the Conservatives 'power to the people' is a different thing. For instance real public ownership is where people buy shares in businesses directly or through collective investment schemes. Real public ownership is people being encouraged to buy their own homes. Under new policies its about locally directly elected police chiefs to determine operational and prosecution policy. Its about trusting and freeing headmasters and doctors from Government targets and rafts of policy documents to apply their own expertise and judgement to run their schools and hospitals. Its about leaving people free to run their own lives and businesses without interference. Its about getting Government off our backs, cutting back its role, lower taxation for all remains an asperation once UK PLC can afford it.
