Speaking this week, Matthew Taylor, former advisor to Tony Blair and Director of the RSA, stated publicly that:-
“what the Conservative party is doing on social action is brilliant and I absolutely agree with it. I begged the Labour party to do it for years and they ignored me..”
This statement from a former opponent signifies not just welcome support for Conservative work but a seismic shift in the political landscape.
Of course, it is hard to disapprove of our social action work, particularly when we have been initiating and supporting it for years without advertising the fact. Even the left wing press are struggling to criticise it. One Guardian columnist doing her best this week said that it could never add up to a political vision and further that mobilising people behind any political vision is not possible because we know we face an environmental apocalypse.
However, this need to give social action a new ideological label betrays a reluctance to acknowledge the core beliefs at the heart of Conservatism and the possibility that we were actually the good guys all along. Social action is simply the manifestation of Conservative ideals in the modern world where the electorate is more informed, more sceptical of remote government and increasingly more confident that they could do at least as well for themselves (given the right opportunity) as this government has done for them.
Another hard fact facing the left is that people at a practical level are innately Conservative. They may not vote for us (yet) but they believe in the same things. They want their children to attend a school where rules are enforced, they want support against extremists in their community who are radicalising their children, they want a benefits system which incentivises rather than demoralises people. Don’t take it from me, come and meet the mums and dads who bring their children to the Butterfly Reading Group, the leaders of the London Tigers’ football club or the All Stars boxing gym, or the teenagers who use STEP UP.
As Matthew Taylor has learnt, social action is Conservative in essence. Disraeli talked not only of the need for the safety net for the poor and weak in society but also of the “ladder back up”. It is the happy partnership of our passion for innovation and opportunity and our desire for individual freedom and opportunity. And most importantly it is the death knell for the liberal left which has argued for years with our words but cannot argue with our actions.
We have had a generation of wrong-headed well-meaning madness. But out here on the frontline hundreds of Conservative Candidates and activists are committed to transforming lives on the ground. This is true Conservatism at its very best.
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My 91 year old grandfather left school at 14 and worked many hard jobs before joining the army. I was the first member of our family to go to university and he follows with pride everything we do in Westminster North, particularly our social action work. On Tuesday evening at 7.50pm, he will be glued to Channel 4 to watch the Conservative political slot in which our social action project STEP UP will be featured.
