A moral revival?

David Cameron’s speech about putting morality back into British life was certainly an event. The Tories have avoided the m-word like the plague since the ‘back-to-basics’ debacle under the Major administration. This was a notable decision by Cameron to put his head into the jaws of the alligator. So far he has emerged not only unscathed but with many respectful and admiring noises in reaction.

Why has he not fallen victim to the ‘back-to-basics' trap? People say it’s because he has so successfully decontaminated the Tory brand. Because of his touchy-feely-greenery, the Tories can no longer credibly be painted as hatchet-faced bigots who would starve the feckless while kicking them into the gutter. Maybe so; but there are surely other explanations too.

‘Back-to-basics’ was a good idea hopelessly sold. Although it was originally supposed to be about education, as I recall, the Tories allowed it to be presented as ‘moralising’ about sexual behaviour. Given the serial sexual shenanigans of the then Tory administration along with its alleged animus against lone parents, the party set itself up for the media auto-da-fe which then ensued.

Cameron’s speech steered clear of this trap by correctly setting out the broad context for concern. He didn’t just identify the social ills of

family breakdown, welfare dependency, debt, drugs, poverty, poor policing, inadequate housing, and failing schools

and commit the Tories to the progressive task of remedying them and thus improving society, as opposed to the reactionary left which cements them in place and leaves people to rot in order to control their lives. He also identified the core issue beneath all these ailments as

a society that is in danger of losing its sense of personal responsibility, social responsibility, common decency and, yes, even public morality.

And then he stepped deliberately into the morality minefield:

We as a society have been far too sensitive. In order to avoid injury to people's feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgemental, we have failed to say what needs to be said. We have seen a decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, deferring gratification instead of instant gratification.

Instead we prefer moral neutrality, a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong behaviour. Bad. Good. Right. Wrong. These are words that our political system and our public sector scarcely dare use any more... Refusing to use these words -- right and wrong -- means a denial of personal responsibility and the concept of a moral choice...

There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth anymore about what is good and bad, right and wrong. That is why children are growing up without boundaries, thinking they can do as they please, and why no adult will intervene to stop them - including, often, their parents. If we are going to get anywhere near solving some of these problems, that has to stop.

Amen to that, comrade! Why, though, this sudden and very deliberate change of approach? Two reasons. First, he is picking up on a change in the public mood – one of widespread utter dismay at the prevailing amorality and nihilism which is now promoted by the Gramscian left. A propos, an interesting article by James MacMillan in the Telegraph identifies this frustrated social conservatism on the part of Catholics in particular in the crucial by-election constituency of Glasgow East as a key factor behind the disillusionment with the Labour government:

Any Labour leader from now on will have to tick all the boxes of radical social experiment. The traditional family and education, sexual mores, artistic aspirations, religious belief -- all must now be seen as coercive strategies of the powerful and reactionary, designed to enforce conformity and slavish obedience. This is why I lapsed from the cause.

The recent parliamentary votes that defeated amendments to ban human-animal embryos, the creation of ‘saviour siblings’, and to reduce the abortion time limit did not go down well in places such as Glasgow East. The votes of Labour MPs reflected the party's one-sided approach to these issues and their hostility towards many in Scotland who are concerned about the dignity of human life, at all stages.

Second, Cameron is aware that he needs to show he is not merely a shallow opportunist who is unavoidably benefiting from Labour’s death agony, but stands for Principles and hard-nosed Beliefs.

As it happens, I have been banging on for the past two decades about our de-moralised society, the way morality has been turned into a dirty word through non-judgmentalism and moral relativism which have inverted right and wrong, good and bad, truth and lies, and the terrible damage to individuals and society which has resulted from the collapse of moral responsibility. The Tories seem at last to be singing my song. So I should be cheering; right?

Will David Cameron now say it is morally wrong to brand as homophobic anyone who objects to the use of Britain’s public parks for gay sex, or wrong to prevent Christians from serving on adoption panels if they object to gay adoption? Will he say that it is wrong to sack someone when they are provoked into an ironic rejoinder to a racially loaded insult and falsely branded a racist as a result – as happened recently to Boris’s aide James McGrath, to which event Tory HQ is not known to have objected? Will he say that it is wrong to rig rape law and cripple economic life by falsely claiming systematic male victimisation of women?

Is he really prepared, in other words, to face down the whole totalitarian apparatus of cultural Marxism -- aka political correctness -- to which he has paid such assiduous lip-service since becoming party leader in order to ‘decontaminate the brand’? Is he now prepared to acknowledge that while 'decontaminating' the Tory party these values have contaminated British society? Is he going to come out against what James MacMillan calls the

recreational individualism and lifestyle liberalism

which currently unites Islington and Notting Hill?

And will he also say it is morally wrong to demonise America and Israel and to appease Iran? Will he say it is morally wrong to undermine the defence of Britain against the threat of an attack unprecedented in its scale and nature by falsely claiming that ancient British values are at risk from counter-terrorism measures? (The fact that Baroness Manningham-Buller, who so lamentably presided over the abject failure by MI5 to recognise the threat of Islamic terrorism in Britain until it was too late and by all accounts even now fails to understand the full nature of this threat, has today added her voice to the chorus against 42 days, merely confirms the point). Will he say it is morally wrong to destroy national self-government through our continued unreformed membership of an EU committed to do precisely that?

When he does, I’ll know that we do really have here – to coin a phrase -- a change we can believe in.