{"id":44120,"date":"2019-01-28T07:46:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T07:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=44120"},"modified":"2019-01-28T07:46:05","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T07:46:05","slug":"the-demise-of-the-conservative-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2019\/01\/28\/the-demise-of-the-conservative-party\/","title":{"rendered":"The demise of the Conservative Party"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew d\u2019Ancona has an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/jan\/27\/tory-values-conservative-party-repellent-brexit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">article worth reading<\/a> in the Guardian. As a former Spectator editor he is naturally a right winger. And as he puts it (amongst several exceptionally well crafted paragraphs):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The whole point of Conservatism is not to submit to the siren call of teleology: the belief that history has an implacable direction. In a crisis of this nature, the proper role of Tories should be to cut through the infantile rhetoric, robotic platitudes and <a class=\"u-underline\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vogon\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">Vogon insistence<\/a> that \u201cresistance is useless!\u201d, and show true statesmanship. Instead, we see \u2014 with some outstanding exceptions \u2014 a party cravenly fetishising the 2016 referendum as if no further expression of popular opinion on Brexit were possible; behaving as if the only thing that matters is to get out of the EU by 29 March, regardless of the overwhelming empirical evidence that there is no viable deal, and that a <a class=\"u-underline\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2019\/jan\/26\/brexit-british-firms-mass-exodus-no-deal\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">no-deal exit<\/a> would be a total catastrophe (necessitating, among many other unpleasant measures, a framework for martial law).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>His argument is straightforward. Whoever and whatever drives the Tories now it is not the sentiment and philosophy that drove it for decades and even centuries. This is a party at odds with itself, dying as to what it was from within. At cost to us all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew d\u2019Ancona has an article worth reading in the Guardian. As a former Spectator editor he is naturally a right winger. And as he puts<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2019\/01\/28\/the-demise-of-the-conservative-party\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}