Tory pessimist
Sir: Ferdinand Mount (31 December) argues that the electoral tide 'is running too strongly in the Tories' favour to be turned back.' He continues by suggesting that merely through 'turning the volume up' with regard to enouncing policy, Mrs Thatcher is all but assured of office. Would that it were so simple.
Even if Mrs Thatcher were to win the next general election (indeed a doubtful prognostication), there is no reason to suppose that her Government would proceed effectively 'in the direction of the free market.' As it is, the Conservative leadership has failed to elucidate upon any real 'direction' of policy for the economy — except for the vapid and largely meaningless Right Approach to the Economy.
The 'pessimist school' —very much larger, I have discovered, than Mr Mount imagines — views with increasing trepidation the present situation within the Shadow Cabinet. The hopeful signs of a new approach to old problems are now fast withering away as the front bench drifts towards an amorphous, 'moderate' Toryism which carries precious little attraction, I find, for existing Conservative voters, let alone new converts. Mrs Thatcher appears to have 'unlearnt' some Tory fundamentals remarkably fast.
Mrs Thatcher's New Year message was familiarly insipid and thus patently insufficient.
Simon-John Coates Chairman, Great Dunmow and District Young Conservatives, 7 Westbury House, Stortford Road, Great Dunmow, Essex
Previous page
