The Tories Have Invented a New Philosophy – Unpopulism

In a stinging article for the Spectator, Gareth Roberts accuses the Conservative Government of indifference and passivity due to its 13-year inaction against the rising influence of American progressive ideologies in both public and private institutions. Here’s an excerpt:

Steve Barclay is appalled. A source close to the Health Secretary has told the Mail that he is “appalled to hear some NHS managers are failing to respond” to a directive that told them not to let Stonewall write their ‘inclusivity guidance’. But fear not! He “will be discussing with officials what further steps to take”. Phew. …

It has taken the Conservative Government 13 years and 95 days to stagger breathlessly to this point. Thirteen years in which almost every public and private institution in the country has capitulated, to a lesser but usually greater extent, to the imported American ideology of intersectional progressivism. Everything – from the BBC to the National Trust to every library, gallery and museum in the land – is stuffed to the gills with this guff. The Tories outsourced sex education in schools and didn’t bother to check who was hired. They stood back and shuffled, tongue-tied, as progressivism gobbled up all before it.

It’s hard to do justice to the enormity of their failure on this front. Their recent noticing of this is a bit like the fall of Troy, but with King Priam holding up a finger and saying, ‘hang on a second, I think there might be something a bit fishy about that wooden horse’ as his wife is carted off over the shoulder of Agamemnon and chunks of toppled masonry smash into the strewn bodies of his slaughtered children.

What were the Tories doing while the institutions fell? Either answer – they were not in control, or they were not interested – is damning. Wilful blindness is not something one looks for in a politician. For Barclay to wake up now, to shake his head, suck air through his teeth and say ‘You’ve had some cowboys in here’ is unacceptable. You were one of the cowboys, Steve.

Kemi Badenoch, by contrast, is more clued up. It sometimes feels like she is, in fact, the only shield protecting the public from what she calls “destructive things”. Although she has many remarkable qualities, this feels somewhat precarious. It’s like sheltering in a downpour at night in a shop doorway – you may be just about dry, but it would be better to be inside.

The Tories’ long string of excuses for their culture failures – ‘well, it was the Lib Dems, you see, our hands were tied’, and then ‘well, Brexit took up all our time’, ‘and then there was Covid, oh and Ukraine’ – ring increasingly hollow. I suspect the real reason was the well-brought-up reluctance to avoid hyperbole, to swerve anything resembling a ‘scene’. They are embarrassed to be conservatives, ashamed to do things that might upset ‘nice’ people, which crippled them from the very beginning.

Worth reading in full.