A speech.

I mentioned the novel This Thing of Darkness in my recent list of favourite novels. In the novel the main character Robert Fitzroy is a prospective Tory MP for Durham. His election speech (in the novel) is a superb statement of the classic beliefs that are vital for a conservative party - to be worthy of the name - to believe in. I have abridged some of it below:

“There are 7000 more people living in County Durham this year than last. Next year, there will be a further seven thousand,. Seven thousand more mouths to feed. What shall we do, gentlemen? Shall we go on starving them, and forcing them into workhouses?[.....]Until our county, and our country, is bursting at the seams, and the multitude of the poor and hungry rises up in fury against us? The radical candidate, Mr Cowper, would give each every one of them the vote, and let them decide there own future. He would let them follow the Chartist lead, and smash the machinery in our factories and mines and woollen-mills. He would have them loot the houses of gentlemen, ‘til all prosperity is levelled to nothing, and every man made a pauper.[.....]But the road that Lord Melbourne’s government is following will take us there just as surely as if Mr Cowper were to lead us there himself. You may be satisfied of it. Already there has been one attempted revolution this year, in Newport. The factory system and the workhouses are not just breaking up families – they are literally starving our people to death. Are we not Christians, gentlemen? It would be an act of the most extreme injustice, I adjure you, if the wants of our population were not provided for. We must act, we must act humanely, and we must act now. This country must be governed in the interest of all its citizens, be they farmers or factory men, rich men or poor. It must be governed by men of experience. Men who have been trained to lead from an early age, for the benefit of all."

In modern Britain we are not seeing this. Taxation falls most heavily on low income and lower middle class workers who are struggling to raise themselves and their family through hard work. They are also being fed upon by the parasites called the 'underclass', example here. And finally we have mass-immigration enabling businesses to pay pitiful wages to these docile workers, thus maximising profits and exerting a downward force on wagesand squeezing native born workers out of the workplace. We now have a wider gap between the rich and the poor than when New Labour took office.

I can, and will, criticise Cameron elsewhere. But his policy of placing the interests of low income earners at the top of his priorities is the right thing to do. In fact it is the conservative thing to do. I only wish he would think more carefully about who he criticises in the future.