How to Retake the Moral High Ground

April 2011

Over the years, too many charities have stopped looking to individuals and communities for their funding and have become dependent upon direct government grants. This has produced corrupting creep in charities' purposes. In steady steps, made each time another politician-pleasing grant application is submitted, the mission of many charities has come to resemble that of the state. We have state-succoured children's charities that are silent about the importance of the two-parent family. Drugs charities that embrace harm-reduction programmes — such as those based on methodone — rather than programmes that help addicts become drug-free. Once Christian-based charities are required to leave their religious basis behind, meaning they have lost their salty distinctiveness as the state squeezes them into conformity.

Cameron should be revolutionising the funding of charities so that they look to the moral diversity of society for their money rather than the political suffocation of the state. We will then see hundreds of poverty-fighting laboratories emerge — many will fail but many will succeed and these successes can become the model for progress in tackling some of society's most intractable ills.

At times Cameron has been careless with the need for compassionate conservatism to be morally serious. Perhaps in search of a quick headline he embraced Phil Redmond for the Liverpool launch of the Big Society. Redmond is a popular TV writer but his drama output has been socially permissive. At the same time, Cameron has failed to protect the independence of religious organisations, even though Christian charities in particular are central to many of the most transformational forms of poverty-fighting.

Cameron is at his best when he makes social conservatism fashionable. His policy before the election on marriage typified this. He promised to recognise marriage in the tax system, but he didn't stop there. He promised that same-sex couples should also receive the same tax allowance — turning a potentially old-fashioned-sounding policy into something very modern.

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Compassionate Conservatism

The Conservative Party

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Clara X

April 8th, 2011
4:04 PM

Longer comment here: http://feminismfortories.wordpress.com/

Clara X

April 8th, 2011
3:04 PM

The question of what our Conservative values are is difficult partly because Conservatives tend to think of themselves as pragmatic, following the evidence of “what works” rather than ideological instinct. Because “what works” differs between individuals, Conservatives strongly support individual choice. However, a bigger issue than the definition of Conservative values is the frequent conflating of values and morals. Values are one thing, morals quite another. A value expresses a goal worth pursuing. A value can reflect changing circumstances, can incorporate differences of opinion. A value is flexible rather than prescriptive. A value can fit to encompass the choices individuals make. A moral indicates something which “ought” to be done, something which is “right” or even “good”. At their heart, morals rely on being pinned to absolutes, whether humanist, scientific or religious. Morality assumes a norm to be conformed to, a perfect answer to strive towards. Morality is dogmatic, it separates and alienates Yes, the Conservative Party needs to emphasis values. But talking about morals will undermine Compassionate Conservatism. It will take us back towards morals based on dogma instead of values based on individual free choice.

Peel

April 4th, 2011
9:04 AM

The present government has decided to adopt all the ideology of Blair, Blunkett, Brown, with cuts. Ideologically this is a LibDem administration, as Clegg is revealing on Tuesday with an agenda of social engineering only predicted by Orwell. Posh public schoolboys like Clegg, Cameron, Osborne, who have never had a proper job, never scrimped and saved to send their children to decent schools, are perhaps more dangerous than Brown - at least he put his cards on the table and voters were clear about what they were in for. Now the scrimper and saver class are hated by the Tories, 'the bourgeoisie': if you are rich and poor and a minority with a favoured status, you are a winner. Thatcher's revolution is destroyed. We all know it. Never ever trust the Tories again. To my surprise, Peter Hitchens is the pundit who really did get it right about the role of Cameron's Tories as a deceiving siren voice of false reassuranace to the common sense tradition. The state is now allergic to the bourgeoisie, we seem to be in soft marxian world, by stealth, and soon won't be allowed to boot out what we don't want, after May 5.

Anonymous

April 1st, 2011
4:04 PM

Here, in a nutshell, is the answer to why any Tory ‘win’ (under the current leadership) against Labour will be shortlived. A Conservative party that accepts Labour’s moral premise will always lose. In any conflict of ideas, the side with the most consistent philosophy will win. To successfully challenge the moral morass of dependency, state handouts, and the idea that the state has the right to the fruits of your labour (no pun intended), a rational opposition needs to build on the political legacy of the great Lady T, who also emphasised values: the values of individual initiative, achievement and responsibility; that we are not ‘our brothers’ keepers’, that we reject the collectivist big government solutions, both in their Labour and watered down ‘compassionate conservative’ variants; that the state should not nanny people from cradle to grave. There’s a reason why Margaret Thatcher never lost a general election, and why Cameroon failed to win a majority. Someone should tell Mr Montgomerie that a political party, if it is to have a future, must not only reflect the electorate - it needs to lead it.

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