Tim Montgomerie

Which way is right: Tories should seek truth, not comfort

How can the Conservatives win the next election?

The below is a response to a piece by Spectator columnist Matthew Parris

‘If you look for truth,’ counselled C.S. Lewis, ‘you may find comfort in the end.’ If, however, you look for comfort ‘you will not get either comfort or truth’. A patriotic politician should reflect on Lewis’s wisdom. In good times almost anyone can succeed in politics but in tough times voters expect more. Voters don’t look to elect politicians, but statesmen, and they can usually smell the difference between the two.

Statesmen don’t begin every day wondering how they can win power; they begin by thinking about how they can serve their country. They ask themselves about the challenges facing the nation and they wonder what the country needs its government to do. Only then, as secondary questions, do the political and tactical questions kick in.

Looking at today’s Britain, the challenges are obvious. We must live within our means so that we can continue to enjoy good public services without having to bear impossible levels of tax. To underpin tomorrow’s jobs and prosperity we need extra airport capacity, world-class universities and a new generation of energy plants. We need to loosen our relationship with a European continent that is atrophying democratically and economically. We need fewer working-age people on benefits and more homes for first-time buyers. We must restart social mobility and end the sense that life chances are set the moment you are born.

Voters, of course, don’t want to be frightened. A political party that tried to address every problem all at once is unlikely to get elected. The British people have never had an appetite for revolutionary change. What a prospective prime minister needs to communicate, however, is that he or she has a credible plan to address enough of the nation’s challenges to make it all worthwhile.

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