“Meanwhile, I’ll be voting UKIP. I listen to what they say, and agree with most of it. I can’t say that about the Conservative Party any more”.

“Meaningless, feel-good, new-age mumbo jumbo” 

Chairman

Findon Conservative Association

Dear Bob,

You won’t be surprised to hear that after enduring a year of David Cameron’s perverse leadership of the party, the time has come for me to resign as a member of the Findon branch committee of the Arundel and South Downs Conservative Association.

I didn’t think that listening to Ian Duncan Smith, who I used to think of as a solid Conservative, would trigger this action for me. But on last Friday’s BBC Radio 4s Any Questions, Duncan Smith just underlined why I no longer feel any affinity with the party. Duncan Smith answered a question on climate change which would have pleased George Monbiot. Instead of saying that the real issue was how to conserve scarce resources like fossil fuels in an intelligent way, Duncan Smith gave us the Cameron/new-Labour answer, which will justify penal taxation, ruin our economy, and have no impact at all on the climate. Duncan Smith followed this up with an answer on gambling which had more in common with the Guardian than a freedom loving Conservative. We need the nanny state to protect us from ourselves, was the gist of Duncan Smith’s answer.

I voted for David Davis in the leadership contest, but I felt that I ought to give Mr Cameron a chance. After 12 months of Cameroonian wrong-headedness including hug-a-hoodie, the “embrace” of Polly Toynbee, the drive for more happiness, endless juvenile spin and an embarrassing lack of passion and belief in the Conservative cause, I think the point is proven.

As someone who endured the frustrating, cul-de-sac years of the John Major leadership, I’m not one to quit if I can’t get my way on particular aspects of policy. The trouble with the Cameron regime is that the direction and tone seems to be so completely misguided.

Meaningless, feel-good, new-age mumbo jumbo

His analysis of Conservative problems is awry. The party was defeated because the country had become bored with it, and felt that the Labour party could be trusted to govern without influence from the loony left. The idea that Tories were somehow the “Nasty Party”, as described so fatuously by Theresa May, and must patronise the electorate to show it has become civilised, is an insult to the ordinary members of the party. The idea that Conservative principles were somehow wrong and out-dated, and have to be replaced with some kind of meaningless, feel-good, new-age mumbo jumbo is wrong and contemptible.

Cameron’s call for modernisation is a sham. Far from “modernising”, Cameron is simply taking the route of least resistance to the easy conventional wisdom propounded by the corrupt and incompetent Labour party. An election win for Cameron would indeed give us “Blue Labour”. If Cameron wanted modernisation, he would be seeking serious National Health reform, not a rearrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic which his latest feeble ideas represent. He would be proudly calling for tax cuts, as a serious way of freeing people from an over-wheening state. He would have pointed out that the legislation forcing the Catholic Church to foster children to homosexuals included a religious opt-out in its draft form from Brussels. And I still can’t believe that a Conservative party has eschewed grammar schools, a golden ladder to education and prosperity for the underprivileged.

Cameron has fallen for the sophomoric campaign, orchestrated by the superficial socialite Zac Goldsmith, that humans have the power to change the climate. A campaign treating scarce resources with intelligence and economy would have hit the spot, rather than trying to make us all feel guilty, and using this as an excuse to raise taxes. How do you increase tax on polluting commodities like petrol, when it is almost unaffordable already because of duty built on tax?

Cameron’s leadership campaign was based on a lie. If he had campaigned honestly about his intentions for the party, he would have been laughed off stage. He is unfit to lead.

I hope you might have me back when the party has the guts to depose Cameron, and restore a proper Conservative. Meanwhile, I’ll be voting UKIP. I listen to what they say, and agree with most of it. I can’t say that about the Conservative Party any more.

   Yours sincerely

Neil Winton, February 5, 2007