A One Nation Conservative Party Cannot Afford to be the Nasty Party – Spectator Blogs

Jon Cruddas reviews Britannia Unchained in the Guardian today. As you might expect he is not overly impressed by the manifesto penned by a fistful of the Tory party’s “rising stars”. But Cruddas is always worth paying attention to. Anyway, his article reminded me that I’d been meaning to write something about Isabel Hardman’s revealing interview with Chris Skidmore (one of the Famous Five responsible for Britannia Unchained) that Coffee House published last week.

Skidmore told Isabel that:

‘The Conservative party has always had this fear of being seen as the so-called Nasty Party. I totally discount that. The fact is you have [in different parts of the world] governments on completely different parts of the political spectrum being bold, accepting the challenges of the future and meeting them head on.’

Bold is one of those words, like radical, that reformers and pundits love not wisely but too well. It sounds so much better and so much more exciting than cautious, incremental change.