The Coronavirus and the Conservative Party:
Time for a Refund?
Sean Gabb
9th May 2020
Since 1945, and arguably since some time before that, the Conservative Party in government has been reliable for one purpose only – this being to let down anyone stupid enough to vote for it. Last December, I thought it would this time be different. The Conservatives had spent two years under attack by an Establishment openly at war both with conservatism and with the causes of conservatism. They swore blind they would take on that Establishment and give us our country back. That was what they promised. It was in their obvious interest to deliver part of what they promised. So millions of us pinched our noses and voted for them. We gave them their best majority since 1987.
Six months later, we are in week six or seven of a lockdown without precedent. Hundreds of thousands of private businesses have been closed since the third week of March, and many will not reopen. Much of the public sector has been sitting at home on full pay, with all the usual contributions dripping into gold-plated pensions. The National Health Service has been made into a new established religion. The police are so in love with their new powers that they are taking more besides. The public finances are a wreck. We are looking at an internal and external collapse of the pound. Cash will probably be abolished. Our mobile telephones will be repurposed as identity cards. Anyone who fell into a coma just before the last election, might, on waking now, assume a Labour victory, followed by an Enabling Act that had taken us into a kind of Venezuela plus social workers. Instead, we are where we are with a Conservative Government. Continue reading