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The Last Nabataean's avatar

Ask any progressive what he/she/xe believes in and they will not hesitate to roll out a list of their demands - diversity, equity, inclusion, trans women are women, fight global warming, refugees are all welcome, open borders, end whiteness. Progressives know what they want, are prepared to fight for their visions and, when the have achieved their objectives, will roll out their next programme. Progressives set the trends and the agenda and they know how to get whatever they want.

Now as a Tory what he or she believes in. You will get quite a lot of umming and ahhing before they mutter some sub-par Thatcherism about free markets or demand something along the lines of "common sense policies" none of which they are willing or able to articulate. A few will claim to support 'One Nation Conservatism' but, again, without any ability to explain what that actually means.

There is the problem; it is not Boris Johnson or the Conservative Party but conservatism itself. It's a broken,. clapped out, exhausted political movement which has now reached a dead end and can go no further. It's a rudderless, clueless, incoherent husk which stands for nothing, aims for nothing, believes in nothing, fights for nothing, delivers nothing and conserves nothing. I expect that Mr. Johnson will shortly be defenestrated and replaced by Our Lizzie or Our Penny or Our Rishi or Our Priti or Our Jeremy or Our Somebody in an attempt to keep the sinking ship afloat for a bit longer. It will fail. What has Johnson got to show for it? Frankly, who cares? What has Britain has got to show for voting in Conservative governments for 30 out of the last 43 years? Stopping Corbyn is not enough.

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Joseph Clemmow's avatar

To play devils advocate, the Tories have done ok considering that they were in coalition with the Lib Dems passing austerity, then had the Brexit constitutional crisis and then finally had Covid to grapple with. The past 12 years have been absolutely nuts politically, certainly when compared to the New Labour years prior to 2008. The Tories were dumped a truly terrible list of problems in 2010 and went someway to change things.

But yes, Boris Johnson has been a deeply disappointing Prime Minister. He had the opportunity for greatness but he's too lazy and too greedy to actually achieve anything in government. The time has come for him to go and for someone else to press the reset button on this Government. We should all fear another term of labour in power, so long as the Tories ensure labour don't get in, i'll probably still vote for them.

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