News from the New Party

Following, not leading

The Tories enjoy massive poll leads, Labour cannot hold its twenty-fifth safest seat in a by-election, the government is sliding inexorably towards defeat and disaster.  Now is the time for the official opposition to present a credible alternative leadership.  Melanie Phillips does not think this is happening:

It was, of course, the wretchedness of the Easterhouse area in Glasgow East that impelled Iain Duncan Smith to formulate his own vision of social justice based on an end to state dependency and the restoration of individual responsibility.

The Tory leadership has embraced many of his ideas.

But on the really big things, it is still not delivering a clear alternative to the Left-wing programme it once thought it had to go along with to gain power.

What are the Tories saying, for example, about the fundamental onslaught upon the integrity and identity of the United Kingdom posed by both devolution and our membership of the EU, which aims to reduce nations to regions controlled from the centre by the super-state of Euroland? They are silent.

What are they saying about Labour's ruinous levels of public spending? Pledging to match them.

What are they saying about the obsession with global warming which has produced ruinous policies on land use which have pushed up the cost of food? They share it.
 
Far from providing a clear and principled alternative, the new model Tories still defer too much to fashionable opinion; are still terrified of offending that opinion - particularly in the BBC; and are still following rather than leading.
 
That's why, although they are clearly benefiting from the collapse of belief in the Government, they have yet to ensure that voters believe in them instead.

Looking in vain for a clear alternative, voters conclude that 'they're all as bad as each other'.

The result is a profound disaffection with the whole of mainstream politics.

The danger is clear: when mainstream politics becomes unpalatable to the majority of the population, extremists will prosper.