Explaining...the Conservative Party

Background

  The Conservative Party was officially founded in 1834, but traces its roots to 1678 and the formation of the Tory Party - a name the modern party still bears. The Conservatives merged with the Liberal Unionists in 1912, giving the party its rarely-used official name of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

  The party spent 57 years of the twentieth century in government, with leaders such as Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher some of the most famous figures in recent British history. From 1945 to 1975, the party espoused the post-war social democratic economic consensus established by the Attlee governments of 1945-551; after 1975, however, the party under Thatcher's leadership swung to the right and the Conservative governments of 1979-1997 saw the dismantling of the post-war consensus and the establishment of the neoliberal economic orthodoxy as the lynchpin of British political discourse.


The Party Today

  The modern Conservative Party has 174,000 members and is led by David Cameron MP. The Conservatives are the largest party in the current Coalition government, with the Liberal Democrats as their junior partner. They won 36.1% of the popular vote in the 2010 General Election and currently hold 302 seats in the House of Commons (46.5%). They also have 19 seats in the European Parliament (26% of the UK total) and 40.3% of Local Government positions.


Policy Record

  The modern Conservative Party dates from 1975; its principal actions from 1979 to 1990 under Margaret Thatcher were the lowering of direct taxes in favour of raised indirect taxes; the privatisation of major national infrastructure and industry including British Steel, British Telecom, British Airways and British Petroleum; the increase in police powers and numbers; and the deregulation of the financial sector. Thatcher was also largely responsible for the introduction of the Single European Act, introducing freedom of movement in goods, services, capital and labour throughout the EEC.

  Under John Major, privatisation continued with that of British Rail. Most other policies remained consistent from the Thatcher era, while Major pursued a controversial policy of integration with Europe, signing the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Conservative economic incompetence led to the catastrophe of Black Wednesday and sparked a recession, eventually culminating in a Labour landslide victory in 1997. In opposition, the party adopted the minimum wage and opposed strongly the UK joining the Euro. Under Michael Howard, it became increasingly critical of the USA and of the Iraq War.

  Since the return to government under David Cameron, the Conservative Party has followed a programme of vast public spending cuts, coinciding with a sharp rise in borrowing. They have continued the privatisation of earlier Conservative governments with the sell-off of Royal Mail and have ceded control of many schools through the academies and free schools programmes and parts of the NHS through tranfer of some services to private companies. The party has also pursued a slashing of the social security budget through the introduction of Universal Credit, the benefit cap and the so-called 'bedroom tax'. Promised environmental reforms have not materialised, and whilst the introduction of behind-closed-doors trials for some crimes and the reinforcement of security service surveillance powers have strengthened the coercive state, military expenditure and troop numbers have been drastically cut.


Policy Promises

  Economics

• Eliminate the deficit by 2018
• Raise of the tax-free Personal Allowance to £12,500 by 2020
• Raise of the threshold for the 40% income tax band to £50,000
• Further reduce public sector pay

  Social Policy & The Constitution

• Maintain of the SMP system for General Elections
• Replace of the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights
• Prevent non-English MPs from voting on English-only Bills in the House of Commons

  Health, Welfare & Education

• Maintain current NHS budget in real terms
• Lower benefit cap to £23,000
• Ensure patient access to GPs 7 days a week

  Crime and Justice Policy

• Introduce extremism prevention orders to ban radical speakers from communication channels

  Foreign Policy and Defence

• Help deal with Islamic State

  Europe

• Renegotiate the UK's membership of the EU, with particular focus on migration
• Hold a referendum on UK membership of the EU by the end of 2017
• Support the TTIP trade compact between the EU and the USA

  Transport, Energy & Environment

• Complete the HS2 and HS3 high-speed rail links

Important Party Figures

  Cabinet Ministers

• David Cameron       Prime Minister and Leader of the Party
• George Osborne     Chancellor of the Exchequer
• Theresa May            Home Secretary
• Phillip Hammond     Foreign Secretary
• William Hague          Leader of the House of Commons
• Iain Duncan Smith   Work and Pensions Secretary
• Chris Grayling         Justice Secretary
• Michael Fallon         Defence Secretary
• Jeremy Hunt            Health Secretary
• Eric Pickles              Local Government Secretary
• Nicky Morgan          Education Secretary
• Justine Greening    International Development Secretary
• Theresa Villiers       Northern Ireland Secretary
• Stephen Crab           Wales Secretary
• Sajid Javid               Culture Secretary
• Elizabeth Truss        Environment Secretary

  Others

• Michael Gove           Chief Whip
• Grant Schapps         Co-Chairman of the party
• Andrew Feldman      Co-Chairman of the party
• Boris Johnson          Mayor of London

WEBSITE: http://www.conservatives.com/

No Such Thing as Society?

  When Margaret Thatcher uttered those now-infamous words in an interview with Woman's Own journalist Douglas Keay, she did not mean quite what many assumed she did. The gist of the wider context of that statement was that society was not some giant, conglomerate entity in and of itself - rather, it was made up of individuals and families living together and that the actions of individuals dictated how 'society' functioned.

  But unfortunately the late Mrs. Thatcher seems to have been blessed, if not with the gifts of diplomacy, tact or indeed economic understanding, then with a supernatural prescience. Society at the time of the statement - 1987 - was still relatively intact, though hard-pressed by the introduction of neoliberal economic doctrine. Today, however, this is no longer the case.

  The post-Thatcherite consensus - in place in the UK arguably since 1983, and certainly since 1995 - is the general acceptance between the major political parties that a free market economic model - with private control of industry, low taxation, limited state spending, reduced welfare provision and deregulation of the economy - is fundamentally a good thing. 

  The four largest political parties in terms both of membership and votes at the last general election (Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem and UKIP) all basically follow the same economic policy. There are small differences, placing the parties on a continuum - UKIP are the most neoliberal, Labour the least - but all four are basically in agreement on the core tenets of economic policy.

  The consensus among the main parties means - short of a seismic shift in UK politics - neoliberalism is set to remain the guiding economic ideology in the UK for some time to come, but the social impact of this model is extreme and highly damaging. The idea of neoliberalism is that a deregulated economy with minimal state interference will allow competition to flourish, driving the market forces to create masses of wealth. This wealth will be concentrated at first in the hands of large corporations and the individuals who run them but, over time, expenditure by these big beasts will cause that money to 'trickle down' into the rest of the economy and everyone else benefits too.

  All sounds very reasonable, doesn't it? The problem is, it doesn't work. 

  Or rather, stage one works sublimely well. A deregulated economy does indeed allow large corporations to generate huge amounts of wealth, and the CEOs and major shareholders of these companies do very well as a result. But the 'trickle-down' effect simply does not happen. Last year, the top 1% of earners in the UK took in 10% of total income, whilst the bottom 50% received only 18%. A recent report by Oxfam revealed that the five richest families in the UK own more wealth than the poorest 20% of the population. Clearly, the money is being generated at the top and staying there.

  And this causes a polarised society. Politicians on the economic right often accuse those on the left of promoting class warfare when they talk of the redistribution of wealth and the equalisation of society. But it is the neoliberal economic system imposed by the right, and accepted by the traitorous so-called Labour Party, which creates the classes in the first place. Inequality in the UK today is higher than it was before the First World War. In light of that, of course those at the bottom of the economic hierarchy are angry with those at the top. Why shouldn't they be?

  Not only does neoliberalism affirm and enhance class distinctions, it also splits society along racial lines. It is the failure of the neoliberal economic system which caused the financial crash of 2008. In the aftermath of that crash, right-wing parties with strong anti-immigration and openly racist rhetoric have been going from strength to strength all over Europe. Why? Because, when money is scarce, people want to ensure that the pool of people competing for resources does not grow any larger. It is difficult to blame the average UKIP voter for being concerned, even scared, of immigration when money is so tight and immigrants represent more competition. Thus, the right creates social problems with its economics and then exacerbates them by offering false solutions.

  Then there's the obvious - poorer people means more crime. By increasing inequality, neoliberalism creates an underclass - a group characterised by chronic unemployment, low standards of living and high crime rates. When you have nothing, or next to nothing, you will be more inclined to steal in order to get more - or alternatively, to blow what you do have on drink and drugs to escape the ordeal of life. Neoliberal economics are largely responsible for much of today's crime and increased drug and alcohol dependency. They also must bear some of the blame for rising suicide rates, particularly among the high-risk category of middle-aged men who find themselves unable to support their families due to inability to find decent work.

  In short, neoliberalism promotes greed, disincentivises altruism and co-operation, polarises society along class and ethnic lines and contributes to the creation of an underclass which is then demonised by the press and systematically purged by government policies. Margaret Thatcher was not passing judgement when she made her famous statement, she was making a prediction. A prediction her government, and every government since, has helped to fulfill.

  About time we did something about it.