The most important General Election for a generation

The Stakes could hardly be higher…

We are having a General Election. I am assuming this has not escaped anyone’s attention.

This is not an election the Conservative Party wanted. We wanted to deliver Brexit, fulfil the mandate of the British people expressed in the 2016 referendum to leave the European Union, and get on and deliver on an important domestic policy agenda, addressing the important questions that face the United Kingdom. But it was not to be. For the last three years, we have been afflicted with an increasingly addled and ineffectual Parliament. Around 80% of MPs elected at the 2017 General Election were elected on manifesto commitments to deliver on the referendum result. Yet, repeatedly, Parliament failed to find a way forward. Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement was rejected by Parliament three times. Despite voting down the deal, however, Parliament also voted against allowing the Government to take the UK out of the EU without a deal. They voted against a deal, they voted against no deal, they voted against a second referendum, they voted repeatedly against a General Election. Parliament was paralysed, unwilling to make a decision. It also passed the so-called ‘Benn Act’ (quite rightly christened the ‘Surrender Act’), attempting to hamstring the negotiations with Brussels by forcing the Government to seek an extension to the Article 50 process.

When Boris Johnson succeeded Mrs May as Prime Minister, he set out a bold domestic agenda – announcing 20,000 more police officers for our streets, more money for the NHS and hospital upgrades, action on social care, action on education – but, in order to pursue it, he first had to get Brexit done. He was told it was impossible, repeatedly. The EU would never reopen the negotiations, they would never remove the Northern Ireland backstop because there was allegedly ‘no alternative to the backstop’, etc, etc. It would never happen; couldn’t be done! But he did it! He did reopen the negotiations, he did secure a new deal minus the backstop, he did negotiate a much-improved deal. Not perfect, by any means. Any negotiation requires a degree of compromise on both sides and Brexiteers like me were never going to get the entirety of what we would have liked. But Boris’ deal is one we can live with, that gets us out of the EU, delivers on the referendum and paves the way to the trade negotiations and an independent UK, back in charge of our laws, borders, money and with an independent trade policy. The Prime Minister put that deal to Parliament and it passed! But, once again, our dissembling MPs fudged it. They refused to pass the timetable motion that would have enabled us to Brexit on 31st October and instead triggered the Surrender Act and forced the Prime Minister to seek a second extension from Brussels. The can has been kicked down the road once again, with the new deadline now being 31st January 2020.

When the history of all this comes to be written, scholars of political history will marvel at the dysfunctional 2017-19 Parliament. I truly believe it will justly be remembered to history as the ‘Zombie Parliament’. This was the ‘Walking Dead’ of parliaments. Surely the most reprobate House since the ‘Long Parliament’ dissolved by Oliver Cromwell. It has been painful to watch.

So, to be clear, this General Election has been called for one very simple reason: to remove the Zombie Parliament and usher in a new parliament, with a Conservative majority ready and willing to pass Boris Johnson’s oven-ready deal, get Brexit done by 31st January, and move on to unleash Great Britain’s enormous global potential and start to address your urgent domestic priorities. The Labour Party have betrayed their leave-voting electorate and sought to block Brexit in Parliament. The Liberal Democrats are now openly pledged to ignore the referendum and stop Brexit. Most of the two dozen or so Conservative MPs who reneged on their promise to deliver Brexit have lost the Tory whip and either defected to the Lib Dems (the ‘Illiberal Undemocrats’, as I call them) or stood down. EVERY Conservative candidate – including John Baron, Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Basildon and Billericay – is committed to backing Boris’ deal. What we need now is a strong Conservative majority to Get Brexit Done and enable us to move onto other things. ‘What other things?’, I hear you ask. Well, let me tell you:

A Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn would be a disaster for our economy. As the late economist F. A. Hayek once said, “If socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists”. If you care about jobs, caring for the least well off, funding the NHS, supporting British business, reducing the deficit, paying for education, the Conservative Party are the only party that can be trusted with the economy. The Conservatives have presided over an amazing economic recovery, following the train-wreck we inherited from the last Labour Government – and the failed economic policies of Gordon Brown would look like a teddy-bear’s picnic compared to the Marxist horrors that John McDonnell would inflict upon this nation. His plans for skyrocketing debt, rising taxes, asset-seizures and nationalisation of industries, mimicing the failed socialist policies of the 1970s, would cripple this country for a generation.

It cannot be stressed enough how dangerous Mr Corbyn is – both to our national security and to our economy. He is a lifelong left-wing firebrand who was elected Labour leader almost by accident. His own parliamentary party has tried to remove him and the Labour Party at large has been infiltrated by a hardcore of extreme left-wing, anti-Semitic, Momentum thugs. Mr Corbyn is a man who has spent his entire 30-year political career living in an absurd Islington echo chamber, adhering to an ideology that has failed every time and everywhere it has been tried. Fundamentally, this is a guy who has always sided with this country’s enemies; who supported the IRA and fraternised with an assortment of terrorists, praises dictators, acts as an apologist for oppressive leftist regimes, refuses to sing our national anthem and wants to disband our army. The thought of him walking into 10 Downing Street makes my blood run cold. Enacting failed policies like price controls and giving Nicola Sturgeon a second indy ref and scrapping Trident are, frankly, the least of our worries. The anti-Semitism within the Labour Party alone, that has caused it to be only the second party after the BNP to be formally investigated for racism, makes many Jewish people I know (many of them lifelong Labour voters) genuinely afraid at the prospect of a Corbyn government.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of naff caricatures about the Conservatives but I think it bears pointing out that we have delivered both of the UK’s two female prime ministers (Labour haven’t even had a female leader!) and currently has the most diverse Cabinet in history, including a Muslim Chancellor, a Home Secretary of Indian descent, a black Party Chairman, legalised gay marriage, passed equal pay legislation, massively expanded renewable energy and reduced the UK’s carbon footprint. So those Tory caricatures rarely withstand objective scrutiny.

Since coming into power in 2010, unemployment has plummeted from 8% to 3.8% (one of the lowest in Europe). The budget deficit is down from 10% to 2% of GDP. NHS spending has gone up in real terms year on year. More people are in full-time employment than at any other point in our history and tax-free earnings have been hiked from £6,475 to £12,500, helping those on low incomes keep more of their own hard-earned cash. Labour are going into yet another election screeching about nefarious imagined Tory plots to ‘privatise the NHS’. It is plainly a lie and always been a lie, every time Labour have said it. They are narrow ideologues, who seek at every election to weaponise the NHS but the Conservatives have run the NHS for most of its existence and yet it remains free and available at the point of use, on the basis of need and not the ability to pay, and always will. Frankly, were that not the case, it would be the end of the Conservative Party electorally. It simply isn’t going to happen.

They call us ‘pro-business’. I’ll take that! Because Conservatives are pro-business and pro-jobs! Our stance has been enormously effective, and this is why unemployment is at a 45-year low. We have made the UK one of the most attractive places in the world for companies and investors to make a profit. We get attacked for cutting business taxes but France adopted Labour’s approach and they have seen tax revenues plummet despite higher tax rates, as their wealth-creators (the ‘millionaires’ that Mr Corbyn so despises) have fled France at a faster rate than anywhere else on the planet, leading to a jump in unemployment and an exit of businesses and investment. Contrariwise, the Conservatives cut business taxes in the UK and what did we see? Tax receipts have gone up! The top 1% of taxpayers – the super-rich – now pay 27% of all Income Tax received, while 43% of adults in the UK have been taken out of Income Tax altogether.

Labour claim to be the party for working people but have abandoned their traditional core voters in favour of pandering to ‘woke’ Islington intellectuals and their militant trade union paymasters. This is causing many aspirant ex-Labour voters to reject their politics of envy – and petty, vindictive, self-defeating policies like abolishing private schools – and switch instead to the Conservatives; the party of opportunity and social mobility.

I will be voting Conservative to Get Brexit Done and deliver on an exciting domestic agenda. We must stop a Corbyn-led Labour government from bankrupting the country with their turbocharged ’70s socialism and continued Brexit chaos, destroying business, jobs and investment. I’ll be Backing Boris to grow the economy, create jobs, invest in the NHS, get tough on crime, and set the UK on a positive trajectory, once again as a free and independent trading nation.