What is the basis of your insinuation that they don’t really mean it?

I was quite impressed by Liam Fox on radio 4 this morning defending the importance of families.

Labour was a party whose policies were artificial constructs based on opinions on what might - or might not - be good for society. These theories - for that is all they are - are forced from above onto the people below.

Conservatism by definition accepts what people themselves choose as the good life and, in its purist form, seeks only to support these choices. Therefore it’s a bottom-up philosophy.

A conservative world-view cannot be conservative unless, for example, it:

values national sovereignty;

acknowledges family as the foundation of civil society and heterosexual marriage as the foundation of family;

believes there is clear right and wrong and seeks to punish the latter;

believes private enterpise - not just in business but in all aspects of life - provides, on the whole, better outcomes than government action can;

refutes the idea that there can be equal outcomes from unequal inputs.

I think if a person seriously argued against the few examples I’ve just mentioned then I would suggest they aren’t thinking what we’re thinking (to coin the phrase).

It is from our basic values that our policies are derived. There could be much debate over policy but there should be very little over values. If we can’t agree our basic values then we aren’t really much of a political party, are we?

Tony Blair joined a Labour party with a philosophy he quite clearly disagreed with. Why else would he have created ‘New Labour’?Would it have been better for Labour if he had not been allowed to join?