While Americans lit up their skies on July 4 to celebrate independence from the British Parliament, many UK politicians wept upon realizing their own newfound independence — having lost their seats in the most disastrous election for Conservatives in decades.
Rishi Sunak’s famous gamble — calling an early election despite trailing in the polls — did not pay off. Fourteen years of what many regard as Tory failures on key issues could not be solved with a few weeks of campaign propaganda.
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While inaction on illegal immigration played a central role in garnering frustrations among the base, social conservatives expressed bitter regret about a so-called “Conservative” government which has presided over a “woke” march through the institutions, a cultural war on the meaning of “woman,” a shut down on free speech, and some of the most poisonous, ideological school curriculums we’ve ever seen. With a new rival, Reform, offering a Right-wing alternative on the political stage, the Tories hemorrhaged votes from disappointed conservatives, splitting the Right of the political spectrum and handing victory to the Labour Party.
The post-match analysis has been muddled. Some Conservatives have understood the need to roll back on “woke” and return to genuine conservative principles. Many others insist the solution is to become even more liberally milquetoast.
Former Energy Minister Lord Callanan has pushed for “a liberal, mainstream, centre-right Conservative Party that’s socially liberal but economically conservative.”
Former MP Rory Stewart joined the chorus with an urgent party appeal to “move back to the center” and “reject the fantasies of the Faragist Right.” The best way to win back your losses, is of course, to insult and shun them.
The schism of the British Right exposes a more universal friction in conservatism. Those who stand unified on economic approach — a low-tax, limited-interference government — are splintered into “conservative” and “progressive” camps on the social issues that hit society hardest.
For social conservatives, strong family units and community structures enhance human flourishing. Social progressives, on the other hand — forming a new, “Godless” Right — abhor the “outdated” notion of a nuclear family, instead preferring to champion individual freedoms. In the UK, where the progressive side of the Tories has reigned, the government took a hammer to the societal institutions which have historically done the most to serve the vulnerable. The cost hasn’t only been mounting socially but economically too.
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The Church
Historically, Christianity was responsible for hospitals, schools, and care for the poor. Even in modern times, where so much of this ground has been ceded to the State, the Church still offers a healing balm to our nation’s pandemic of loneliness. 1 in 3 UK households are now single-occupant. Over half of those over50 experience loneliness most of or all the time. Religious communities have so much to offer an atomized and purposeless generation. Yet the government has undermined Christianity time and again. The Tories dismissed the right to worship during the pandemic by keeping church doors closed for longer than necessary. And they installed a series of public order laws which demonized and criminalized Christian expression — including, famously, praying in the privacy of one’s own mind.
Marriage
Take another foundational social institution: marriage. According to the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics, getting married makes people happier with their lives than earning big salaries does, and married people report higher life satisfaction than singles or cohabiting couples. Children who live with married parents report better mental health. Fathers in the home are one of the strongest safeguards against adolescent poverty and crime. Women who are married are significantly less likely to be the victims of violent crime. Men who are married are less likely to perpetrate violent crimes.
Yet the past two decades of rule by social progressives has pulled the family structure apart. Nothing has been done to stall or reverse the plummeting marriage rate, with the tax system offering almost no benefit to those who wed. On the contrary, no-fault divorce was introduced under Tory rule.
Parenthood
Parenthood has suffered too. While our birth rate plummets — now just 50% of what it was in the 1960s — the progressives have only worsened the decline, with maternity policies limited to pushing women back into the workplace as soon as possible after birth, rather than supporting and honoring mothers’ work in raising their children. Half of women now don’t have children before the age of 30 — some out of choice, yet many because today’s social circumstances simply don’t allow for it.
Mental Health
As marriage, faith and family crumble in neglect, the results are tragic. We are a nation battling the greatest mental health crisis in recorded history. More than 130,000 British dads have no contact at all with their children, fueling poorer mental health among our next generation, and feeding into a growing gang culture. Our welfare structures groan under the weight of an aging population with no family around them. Last year, 9,000 people were found at least a week after they’d died alone.
Where the Church and family support has been destroyed, the state has had to expand. The London School of Economics estimates that our mental health crisis cost the UK economy at least £118 billion a year. 1 in 5 GP appointments are now taken up by people who are lonely, or are seeking life advice. As crime soars due to fatherlessness, state-funded social workers, police officers, prison services and more are in high demand. The list goes on.
Attempting to appeal to progressive fads has seen the Tories compromise on basic principles throughout their recent time in power. The social arguments against “woke” have not been enough to persuade them otherwise. But the economic arguments are stark — and so are the latest election results.
Now is the time to get back to basics. A Conservative party which supports faith, family and community has a future. A country which lacks these structures does not.
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Lois McLatchie Miller (@LoisMcLatch) is a Scottish commentator and Senior Legal Communications Officer for Alliance Defending Freedom UK.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
