Harry Curtis is the Chairman of Stevenage Young Conservatives and County Council candidate for Bedwell.
For the last twenty years, Britain has been breaking down around us. The Westminster bubble has been in the eye of the storm.
Throughout the general election and the subsequent riots, we have let the left turn the words ‘nationalism’ and ‘patriotism’ into buzzwords to contort some people in our country into thinking of the Conservativ Party as ‘far-right’ or ‘racist’ when it indeed is nothing of the kind; and the betrayal of our nationalist and patriotic roots is the reason that we lost the election, and will be the reason we keep losing if it is not addressed.
I walk through the streets of Stevenage town centre and see homelessness. I walk through Stevenage Old Town and see homelessness. I walk past Bank tube station to get to work, and I see homelessness. Yet, we house illegal migrants in four-five-star hotels, and give them credit to spend as they wish.
Meanwhile, British veterans and elderly will starve or freeze from cutting the winter fuel allowance. Many will face having to choose to be cold or go hungry, and British homeless people will also starve and freeze. What is Conservative about that? This very issue of national pride and shying away from being loud and proud about a love for Britain that we all as citizens hold is why we lost.
It is foolish to think that we were removed by Labour or Reform. Instead, we were removed from government by near historically low turnout as British citizens didn’t vote because they no longer believed that their politicians truly wanted to make our country any better.
The riots that broke out across the country now are a result of decades of ignorance of immigration controls and unfit-for-purpose integration policies which every Conservative government since 2010 had promised to fix. David Cameron’s was the failed idea of a ‘Big Society’ and Boris Johnson’s was liberalising immigration further to historic highs.
However, comments like Robert Jenrick’s in saying that protestors chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ should be arrested does not solve the problem of a lack of nationalism in the slightest but only vilifies us even more. Many, many Muslims fought for us under the banners of the Empire and in the First and Second World Wars. Jenrick only refers to a loud minority of Muslims in the country.
Most Muslims are genuinely proud to identify themselves as British. I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with them as British citizens. But our ignorance of this truth is why Britain is breaking down around us. The integration policy of the past has effectively been to dump groups from minority religions together and hope that the rest falls into place, which has only devastated our country and our shared sense of nationalism. By isolating religions from each other we have only created more conflict. We have seen contemporarily in London and historically in Leicester.
Furthermore, whether you are a British Christian, Muslim, Jew, Sikh, or Hindu, what matters is that we are first and foremost British, what doesn’t and shouldn’t matter is what we look like. However, we must do well to remember that the reason why our country is as ethnically diverse as it is now is because of the breakdown of the British Empire whereby citizens of former colonies came to Britain because they were raised under British values, and were asked to help rebuild Britain.
Surely that makes said people from British colonies just as British as those us who are of the same generations who were already here? Surely, that is the ultimate message and power of nationalism within Britain, that although we may look different to each other we share a national identity of being British. But the left-wing media choose to ignore our similarities and focus on our differences to vilify us who dare to align ourselves with the right and center-right wing of politics.
However, we Conservatives must also hold ourselves to account with the socialists, as we have had fourteen years to recognise this, yet we done nothing to solve issues of integration and ethnic isolation within this country which subsequently left people wondering what we have given them to make them proud of our great nation.
This is why the next leader of our party must lead us back to our nationalist roots and give every British citizen a reason to be proud of our country. It is not too naïve to think that even participants of the dubbed ‘counter protests’ would disagree with us Conservatives that it is lunacy that people should be allowed to come to Britain on a rubber dinghy and be rewarded with free money, hotels and top of the range healthcare.
Making people proud of being British largely comes down to economics as well. We saw it in the 1970s whereby a Conservative Prime Minister who adopted free-market principles of low tax, and sensible deregulation won a hundred and forty-four seat majority on the economic principles of creating wealth, making work pay, and promoting private ownership.
Numerous people on the doorstep told me that the only prime minister they’d go on national service for was Margaret Thatcher. That is how we win elections, by being unafraid of being patriotic and standing up for every person who identifies themselves as British.
