Delingpole: Why I'm Not Voting Conservative on Thursday - Or, Indeed, Ever Again...

So the Tories have had exactly 11 years to undo all the damage of the Blair/Brown Labour years and to make Britain prosperous and free again. And what have they achieved that’s remotely conservative in that time? Nada. Zip. Zilch.

If the Conservatives do well in Thursday’s local elections it won’t be because they have done anything to deserve it. As it happens, these elections are taking place on the 11th anniversary of the Conservatives taking power from Labour back on May 6th, 2010.

Most of us, had we sat down with a notepad 11 years ago, could have come up with a wishlist for all the things we might have hoped a Conservative government would do. Probably, our lists would have looked quite similar.

Near the top would have been: Exit the European Union.

Brexit didn’t have a name back then. But we all knew roughly what it would look like: freedom from the regulations and constrictions of the sclerotic, corrupt and Socialistic (but I repeat myself) European superstate. No more stupid, timewasting directives imposed on us by crazy unelected officials in Brussels and then gold-plated by our own Deep State civil service. Instead, we’d be able once more to forge our own destiny — as we managed perfectly well for the two hundred or so years when we effectively invented Western Industrial Civilisation and when half the world’s atlas was coloured pink.

The rest of the list is pretty obvious too.

Control immigration, in part to ensure public services aren’t overwhelmed, but perhaps mainly to ensure our country maintains its character. Too many of the Soros types pushing the globalist open borders subscribe to the ‘magic soil’ theory that if you ship some fellow to Blighty he’ll become a model Englishman. No he won’t. Bitter experience over many years shows as often as not, he will strive daily to make it more like the place he came from. This is so obvious to me — and to all of you I’m sure — that it oughtn’t to need explaining. Yet it does.

Restore education — because without it, our country has no future. Bring back grammar schools; give more state schools the freedom to be like Katharine Birbalsingh’s Michaela School where children have to learn by heart uplifting patriotic poems, learn times tables, facts and dates, dress smartly, respect their teachers, be quiet in class. English should be about grammar and spelling and reading actual complete books. History should a celebration of great men (and women), a catalogue of battles and key events, and inspiration for future heroes — not a breast-beating whinge about the slave trade.

Stop sucking up to Big Business, Woke Corporations, and suchlike because they are scum, they have no loyalty to Britain — or the free market or the consumer — and certainly don’t deserve being propped up with taxpayers’ largesse on grands projets like, say, an expensive, massively overbudget new rail system which destroys the countryside and which no one needs. Do help small businesses — which are the backbone of the UK economy and are generally much less woke — by getting out of the way and letting them get on with the business of doing business. Cut red tape; cut taxes; watch the economy grow.

Maintain a strong Armed Forces — for protection, national pride, tradition — but don’t use them on foreign wars of intervention which cause far more harm than good.

Win the culture wars. Utterly destroy wokism wherever it rears its hideous head: no encouraging confused kids to get sex changes; no diversity quotas; no unconscious bias training anywhere where the taxpayer is paying for this crap; scorched earth policy (wreaked via Charity Commission) for any institutions — eg the National Trust — which abandon their core purpose and instead start dabbling in identity politics nonsense; sell off the BBC, burn down all its buildings, salt the earth and sprinkle it with holy water and garlic; make ‘taking the knee’ before sporting events an offence punishable by castration… That should do for starters.

When you say ‘Cut the Green Crap’, actually mean it: remove every bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifix from England’s green and pleasant land (see also: Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland); frack for shale gas. Go for energy which is abundant and cheap.

 Law and order

Obviously, that list isn’t exhaustive. But it’s a start — and it’s hardly unduly demanding, I’d suggest. I mean: small government, personal responsibility, low taxes, equality of opportunity not outcome, tradition, patriotism, cultural cohesion — these aren’t exactly radical positions for a conservative to take, are they? They’re pretty much Conservatism 101.

Yet scanning the list above — or consulting your own, no doubt similar, lists — can you find any item, anywhere, where the Conservatives have delivered? I can’t.

When the Conservatives began their latest spell in office under David Cameron, it was just about possible to excuse their crapness with the fact that they were in coalition with the grisly Lib Dems.

But then — much to Cameron’s surprise — the Conservatives won a solo victory and STILL they carried on as if Nick Clegg were deputy prime minister and they had to ‘balance’ the Cabinet with squishy social-democratic poltroons. That’s because, as Cameron himself tacitly admitted, he was not himself a conservative. Rather he fancied himself as the ‘Heir to Blair’ — ie to a creature so insidiously leftwing that even to this day, if you believe Peter Hitchens — and on this occasion, I think I do — he remains a closet Trotskyite subversive.

Then Theresa May replaced Cameron and, if anything, she was even worse. (As well you might expect of a woman who had once declared that the Conservatives were the ‘Nasty Party’ — and so set out to cleanse it of every last vestige of conservatism.)

Then bumbling, useless, priapic, and corrupt Boris Johnson replaced May — and turned out to be worst still.

Here Britain stands after 11 years of Conservative rule: in thrall to the unions and to the grotesque cult of NHS worship; massively in debt owing to huge government overspending; an education system in ruins; a shredded Armed Forces in thrall to the woke agenda, with regiments cut to the bone, but burdened with hugely vulnerable white elephants like that silly giant aircraft carrier; Conservative MPs pushing the idiotic ‘Equality’ agenda as hard as if they were Labour MPs; fast decreasing freedom of speech; police who are only interested in fighting two types of crime — thought crime (or hurty words on the internet) and harmless, otherwise law-abiding, people breaching draconian and pointless Covid regulations; fiscal responsibility completely out of the window; the biggest tax burden since the 1960s; white elephant projects like HS2 out of control; rubber boats arriving daily from Europe full of immigrants who are instantly put up in nice hotels and will never be deported; bloody bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes everywhere, despoiling the land, ruining every sea view; an imminent ban on petrol cars; the entire nation under virtual house arrest, banned from travelling abroad…

Vote Conservative; Get the Ruination of Britain.

It’s not a mistake I shall ever make at the ballot box. But I fear it may be too late. The damage is done.

James Delingpole