埃德•维泽

2023年5月21日

太阳04.00 2023年5月21日美国东部时间今天正式保守党比新工党与保守党首相在唐宁街在过去的13年,一个星期左右。经过这么长时间,这么多戏剧之后,保守党可能原谅只是躺着,等待不可避免的。奇怪,我仍然乐观。圣人Sunak被证明是一个强大的总理,以非凡的能量,一种非常实用的方法来解决问题。他可以做到。这使它更加难堪的压力团体和组织如雨后春笋般出现在减少胜利的党,而不是变大。所有这些人士认为他们的目标和合法的问题。但公众在战争本身,将看到一个派对,不愿或无法面对这个国家面临的实际问题。这不是一个赢得地位。保守的民主党组织(CDO)抱怨道,圣人Sunak加冕成为没有投票的成员。他们忽略了一个事实,没有其他候选人最后,和投票的结果是灾难性的前任辞职下台。 Ed Vaizey: ‘Whatever the outcome of the election, there will be a battle for the soul of our party in the years ahead.’ Photograph: David M Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images As William Atkinson pointed out in Conservative Home , not a platform instinctively behind centrists, the CDO seems to be an organisation for whom “being angry is so much easier than doing anything worthwhile”. Their recent conference in Bournemouth was not designed to be helpful. Incredibly, senior Conservatives actually turned up to speak at the National Conservatism Conference , a three-day festival where there was precious little evidence of unwavering support for the government in which they serve. As the former Conservative minister Alistair Burt wrote , the conference was marked by “indignation and anger …[T]here always has to be an enemy”. You have to like the country in which you live, and want to make it better, in order for the public to want to back you. This is spot on. Events like these are characterised by a refusal to face reality or confront the difficult problems the country actually has to deal with. The view of those who spoke seems to be that the sunlit uplands await, if only we didn’t have the civil service, the BBC and the rest of some vague establishment blocking our way. The politics of grievance is not a winning formula. We have been here before. After our defeat in 1997, so many Conservatives blamed the outcome on our party not being Conservative enough. It was a long and hard struggle to get the party back to the mainstream, and to relearn the lesson that you only win in politics by looking forward, not back. You actually have to like the country in which you live, and want to make it better, in order for the public to want to back you. Harking back to a golden age, with a wishlist of policies that are completely absurd in a modern, developed nation, is for the birds. People like Alistair Burt and I are regularly denounced as not being proper Conservatives, despite spending all our adult lives working for and supporting the party we love, to secure a better future for our country. We are criticised by people whose meandering ideology has taken them to different parties, and none, some of whom have never even knocked on a voter’s door. Whatever the outcome of the election, there will be a battle for the soul of our party in the years ahead. Practical policies, for Britain as she is today not as she never was, that evolve with our changing circumstances, are what attract support. Railing against different communities that might have supported you is no way forward. Margaret Thatcher would tell you that. Ed Vaizey served as culture minister for six years under David Cameron and now sits in the House of Lords Topics