Away with consensus
Sir: The next election will not be won because certain characters have come in from the cold — Mr Heath, for example, is still remembered as the architect of electoral disaster. The return of Enoch Powell to the fold might be more decisive, but even that apparently unlikely event would take second place to the real issue at stake.
The Tory Party has got to take its courage in both hands and present to the electorate clear, unequivocal and even radical policies that mark a clean break from the kind of vague panaceas that too often echo Lib-Lab notions of the trendy kind. There must be an end to that absurd and electorally disastrous search for the mythical middle ground, a fatal phantom that still haunts the so-called Tory progressive mind — with its fondness for bleating endlessly about the need for 'moderation'. Again and again over too many years one has heard genuine Tory supporters express their disillusionment at the apparent lack of real difference in attitude and policies in vital spheres between the major parties, so that a vote cast has too often seemed an exercise in futility.
Educational policy is one glaring example. Instead of admitting that the unthinking leap into comprehensive schooling has been a ghastly error that has ruined educational standards, we still hear it being blandly asserted that the Conservatives are the friends of non-selective schooling. This they unwisely supported earlier when they believed it was educationally progressive instead of just an egalitarian ploy to sacrifice schooling to doctrinaire notions, quite unconcerned with standards.
The next election — or indeed any such contest — is not going to be won by a blind continuance of trendy wishy-washy adherence to policies, indistinguishable in the main from those offered by other parties, and which have brought us to our present wretched state.
J. H. K. Lockhart 21B King's Avenue, London W5
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