Not in our name

29 March 2003

Peter Hitchens says that this is a left-wing conflict and Conservatives should not support it

There is nothing conservative about war. For at least the last century war has been the herald and handmaid of socialism and state control. It is the excuse for censorship, organised lying, regulation and taxation. It is paradise for the busybody and the nark. It damages family life and wounds the Church. It is, in short, the ally of everything summed up by the ugly word 'progress'.

So why did the Conservative party support this left-wing war? It has missed a wonderful opportunity to be true to its principles, to be right, and to re-engage with the people of this country. Those who have dismissed it for years as a callous pressure-group motivated by nothing but money might have been forced to reconsider their view. But the Tories have so utterly lost the power of thought that they have become what their cruellest opponents pretend they are. Not since they endorsed the unhinged privatisation of the railways have the Conservatives acted so contrary to their own wisdom, and so exactly as if they were the brainless destroyers that alternative comedians imagine them to be.

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