Letters

Our ‘decadent’ society

As Conservative MPs elected at this year’s general election we represent a new generation unencumbered by the political baggage of the past. In this spirit we enthusiastically endorse the rejection articulated by John Hayes (‘Muslims are right about Britain’, 6 August) of the liberal establishment’s assumptions about our society. For too long politicians of the centre and centre-Left — including some who curiously wear the badge of Conservatism — have ignored the common-sense opinions of the hard-working, patriotic majority of Britons who retain their belief in traditional values. In a recent Centre for Social Justice pamphlet, Iain Duncan Smith suggests that ‘it is noteworthy — even remarkable — that [what he calls] Britain’s conservative majority has persisted in the face of a largely hostile broadcast media and hesitant Church leaders’.

Some liberals remain in denial, unwilling to face the decadent consequences of years of their ideas being put into practice. But whether it is lawlessness, family breakdown, the menace of drugs, binge-drinking, teenage pregnancies or merely the coarse brutishness which, as Mr Hayes suggests, has infested popular culture, the results of years of woolly-minded liberal thinking (with the licentiousness it has created) are plain to see. Conservatives can choose either to help prop up the failed ideas of the liberal elite, or answer the people’s plea for certainty, order and decency. Choosing the latter is the key to success.
Brian Binley MP, Peter Bone MP, David Burrowes MP, Philip Davies MP, Robert Goodwill MP, Mark Harper MP

John Hayes’s article on Britain’s ‘decadent culture’ is a prime example of the half-baked authoritarianism that characterises the statist Right. He talks of the need for a ‘moral and cultural renaissance’, yet does not have the courage to spell out how it would be implemented. Would he ban homosexuality, screenings of Big Brother, and all the other things he — subjectively — finds so abhorrent? Where’s the beef, John? At least we know where the illiberal Blairite Left stands in relation to censorship, banning smoking and hunting, and bringing in identity cards, etc.