Five big ideas for how Tories could hammer
The Toolmaker’s Son
Senior Tories are on the stump to explain to the dwindling party faithful what they believe in, what they stand for, why they would make a brilliant leader. It puts me in mind of that great line from Groucho Marx: “These are my principles … if you don’t like them, I have others.”
That’s the problem with politics. There are so many carpetbaggers, careerists and bullshitters that membership of a particular party no longer guarantees a recognisable set of beliefs.
In fact, it is sometimes better to blur that list. Remember how little The Toolmaker’s Son told us of Labour’s policies before the election? He calculated that he didn’t have to; that the Tories were so inept they would simply hand him power.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake, Napoleon said. And it worked for Keir Starmer (Boney, not so much). Starmer got away with the sketchiest outline of his philosophy and policies.
True, Rachel Reeves tried to reassure us on taxes. And yet here we are again, looking down the barrel of another daylight robbery. I feel as helpless as a Primark security guard faced with a South American shoplifting gang.
I’ve already got my hands up and I’m whimpering: “There’s nothing left – the last lot took it all.”
The Tories have five years to recover from their shattering defeat and decide who they are. So, here are some of the things I, a lifelong Tory voter, would like them to dwell on as they tour the hustings and the rubber chicken circuit.
TAX:
Low tax is a cornerstone of Conservatism. The last Government forgot this and paid the price at the polls. When they left, the tax burden was as high as it has ever been since the Second World War. With Labour in charge, it is set to get even higher. But that would probably have happened even under the Tories.
When eventually you form a Government, don’t forget, it’s not your money; it’s ours. We worked for it. Everyone understands that we have to pay taxes to make the country run properly. But there’s a tipping point and beyond that, it’s socialism.
Start with a philosophy: How much is it fair to take from working people in taxation? Then tailor spending to match what you can raise. This might mean reining in benefits. So what? You have to make it worthwhile to have a job. If you can do as well on the dole, why work?
And look at it the other way round. Everyone has to pay their share. That includes voracious tech giants who negotiate with HMRC and get to decide how much they will and won’t pay.
In fact, there’s a good case for shutting down their operations – block Twitter/X, take down Facebook – if they refuse to cough up. Or rewrite the tax laws so that they pay on turnover in this country, rather than on profits channelled through another.
And don’t let them tell you their headquarters are in Dublin, so that’s where they should pay taxes. The Irish Republic is the world’s biggest tax haven and multinationals can pay as little as 2.2 per cent on global profits.
IMMIGRATION:
This is, certainly as far as voters are concerned, the biggest problem facing the country. It is also Labour’s Achilles heel. “Immigrants welcome,” read the placards carried by those facing down far Right rioters. But in many communities across great swathes of the country, it is simply not true.
Every day more boats arrive with people seeking a new life. Almost 30,000 crossed the Channel last year – the equivalent of a small town. On Sunday alone, 700 arrived in 11 boats. Some are seeking asylum from brutal regimes; most are fleeing grinding poverty.
All of them are paying people smugglers so that they can throw themselves on our mercy. Those already here are costing us £8 million a day. There’s nowhere left to put them. Charity is wearing thin.
If they keep coming, the National Health Service, one of the beacons of post-war civil society, will collapse under the weight. So will the welfare state.
So what will the Tories do about it? And don’t say Rwanda. It was a costly and barking mad brainwave that was never going to work. Rishi Sunak nailed his colours to that mast and the ship of state sank under him.
The immigrants are able to come because of our adherence to laws and conventions designed for another time, a different world. There is a difference between launching a lifeboat to rescue a ship that has run aground in foul weather, and going to help people trying to enter Britain illegally in leaky, overcrowded dinghies pushed into the Channel from the French coast by merciless gangsters.
DEFENCE:
Sorting this will take years. The era of peace is over and we don’t have enough soldiers, weapons, warplanes, tanks, or missiles. None of this will be high on Labour’s list of priorities and even if it were, there’s no money until the economy is fixed.
The best thing to do is pray … that Putin is too tied up waging war on Ukraine to bother with us. And that Trump doesn’t get in. He won’t be a steadfast ally to us or to Europe unless someone discovers a vast untapped oilfield here.
But defence is important to Conservatives, so plan to beef up our armed forces and call out Labour when they fail to do so.
HEALTH:
The phrase “free at the point of delivery” masks the fact that the National Health Service cost us £182 billion last year. It is a money pit and the more you pour in, the faster it disappears.
At the last count in February, the NHS employed 144,000 doctors, 377,000 nurses and almost 40,000 managers. It is insatiable. The bigger it gets, the more doctors we have to recruit from overseas. They bring their families and, oops, we need more still.
The NHS is revered in Britain and it was, for a time, one of the greatest of our post-war achievements. But it no longer works. It is in need of radical reform, which it won’t get under Labour.
So recognise its status as the sacred cow of politics but tell voters how much better it could work. You have five years to come up with a plan.
POLICE:
How did we end up with the police service we have? Killers, rapists, perverts, the lazy, the fat, the woke, the thick – they are all in there, hiding among perfectly decent, well-trained, committed officers.
How did Wayne Couzens, the killer of Sarah Everard, ever get into the force? And how did he stay there? He was a diplomatic protection officer who carried a gun. He was also a flasher, reported to his own colleagues. Nothing was ever until done until he kidnapped Everard, raped and killed her and burned her remains.
Law and order matters to Conservative voters, at least as much as it does to The Toolmaker’s Son, who is a lawyer by profession.
So promise to recruit and train police officers who will not stand by as protesters glue themselves to motorways or dance with revellers at the Notting Hill Carnival, or give you a crime number for the insurance company instead of investigating the burglary that has robbed you of precious memories that were kept on the laptop the thieves stole.
These are the ways to win back power. Oh, and one more thing, as Columbo used to say: Learn to be an effective Opposition. In some ways, it is harder than governing. But it is where you prove yourself, where you temper your character. It is where you learn to win.
*****
I’ve been ripped off, conned, fleeced. I’m embarrassed and ashamed that a bunch of Chinese crooks are now in possession of £34.95 that strictly speaking belongs to me.
I saw this advert for slippers on Facebook and thought, hey, just what I’ve been looking for. A company called Navy London was selling them. Soft-looking tan leather. Should go perfectly with my scarlet silk bathrobe with the dragon on the back.
So I bought them. I spent several weeks tracking their progress from a remote warehouse in China and finally they arrived. They weren’t anything like the ones in the picture, different footwear, cheap and nasty.
So I complained. I got an email back clearly written by AI. It started: “Dear Richard, thank you for reaching out…” and asked if I would like a 25 per cent discount to save me the bother of returning them.
No, I said, give me my money back. Well, would I like 30 per cent off? No, just tell me please where to send these crappy slippers, which are not the ones I ordered and which I do not want.
They sent me a returns form. They have to go back to the place in China. The postage would cost several times what I stupidly paid for the slippers.
I looked the company up. It doesn’t appear to have a presence in London at all and I can’t find any trace of it at Companies House. But I will go on looking.
If I track them down, I plan to send the bastards a vial containing the very latest Covid variant.
*****
“Never pick a fight with an ugly person. They’ve got nothing to lose.” – Robin Williams
RICHARD DISMORE
13 August 2024
