Mitchell Foyle-York-York is a freelance writer and works for the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation.
Following the 2024 general election defeat figures from across the Party, as well as the media and internet circles, stressed the need for the Tories to undergo a period of soul-searching. Robert Jenrick, who is currently standing in the leadership race, wrote for ConservativeHome that the Party needed to empower its membership in order to “rebuild the Conservative Party as a mass movement.”
These notions of rebuilding and soul-searching have dominated discussion on the right both inside and outside of the Conservative Party. The reason is rather simple: the Party no longer has any clear values, and needs desperately to discover and build proper philosophical and political foundations to regain direction.
But this being said, as the Tories look up to find high and lofty ideals, they must not lose sight of what is going on down here on planet Earth. The Conservative Party must soul search – but they cannot risk navel-gazing. In this process of soul searching, the Tories simply must remember their failures on a more material level.
In 2015, when I was just seventeen years old, I suffered what can only be described as a mental breakdown. I had left school early, was quite severely ill, and very quickly became too sick to re-enter employment. I suffered from severe depression and anxiety, and on a handful of occasions even suffered a handful of “mild” visual hallucinations.
My doctor very quickly declared me too sick to work, and I was referred by him to receive Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). It was during this time, when I was at my most sick and vulnerable, that I experienced first-hand the sheer brutality of David Cameron’s and George Osborne’s austerity measures.
I can vividly recall one instance where I was forced to travel via train to from High Wycombe to Aylesbury in order to attend an “assessment centre” for my ESA. I was examined, or rather interrogated, by a bureaucrat who very clearly had no medical background, challenging a decision made by a qualified doctor. I no longer felt like a vulnerable member of the community that needed caring for, but like a suspected crook on trial in some sort of kangaroo court.
I passed the assessment, but I was left feeling rejected by society and the government. At the worst point in my life, I felt as though not only my health and sanity was abandoning me, but also my government, community, and the very future itself. I look at the state of the country all these years later and wonder: what was all this suffering, all these austerity sacrifices, actually for?
It is because of my experience that, despite my staunch small-c conservative values, I have never felt compelled to vote for a Conservative Party candidate at an election.
Suffering a severe health episode does two things to you politically and personally. The first aspect is more selfish. I rather miraculously recovered from my illness almost as quickly as it had come on. But one is left with a continuous question mark that hovers over one’s life like an anvil on a frayed thread: what if I get sick again?
People with my sort of health history, of which there are thousands (if not millions), need reassurance that we and our loved ones will actually be cared for should we relapse into debilitation.
The second thing that happens is less selfish. You can’t help but think about all the people who are currently going through what you went through.
Even as I write this, there will be thousands of people up and down the country who are too sick, be it physically or mentally, to fend for themselves. I know their pain, both physically and emotionally. They need a strong safety net to aid them in their recovery, as well as reassurance that society actually does care about them.
My case is just one of many, and we need not only look to the more extreme failures of healthcare and the welfare state to see the socio-economic disaster of the last fourteen-years of Tory government. From stagnating wages, to a severe lack of housing, the crumbling of every public institution, declining social mobility, to the cost-of-living crisis, many people in this country (especially young people) feel as though things have materially declined.
It does not take much soul searching to realise when you have outright neglected the institutions and everyday economic lives of the people you were elected to serve. When the next Tory leader puts his/her head in the clouds in search of this elusive guiding philosophy, they would do well to ensure that their feet are not crushing the towns and villages below in the process.
I am by no means a materialist, but it is foolish to pretend that the basic material conditions of people’s lives are insignificant. When it comes to the welfare state, running public services and institutions, and the cost of living, it would be a good idea for the Conservative Party to go back to basics.
It does not take a great amount of philosophical soul searching to realise that better administrating public services, and showing more compassion for those who might need a bit of help, may have been a good idea.
By all means, the Conservative Party must do some soul searching as it seeks to reestablish itself. It is ultimately philosophical values that inform policy and how we care for those most in need of aid and assistance, be it via the state or local community. But during that process, the Tories ought not to fall into the trap of getting lost in philosophical navel-gazing.
As discussions whirl around the Party and the media as to how to counteract the “woke” infiltration, whether Liz Truss was conspired against by some sort of “blob” establishment, whether the Party should be liberal or post-liberal, it might be a good idea for the Party to find the time to think about some of the core Christian principles that conservatism in this country is supposed to uphold: charity, compassion, and most importantly of all, love.
The last Conservative government abandoned the poor and vulnerable, and no amount of philosophising will save the Party unless it discovers a sense of duty and compassion for the very people they seek to serve in Parliament.
