Twelve Years of Tory

Photo by Metin Ozer on Unsplash

The Conservative party has been in power for over twelve years. Tory governments have steered the country through thick and thin: from the triumphant 2012 Olympic games, to the tragic passing of our longest serving and greatly missed monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.

Under the Conservatives, the United Kingdom has faced unprecedented challenges with war in Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic, the scale of which have not been seen since the Second World War. But the Tories have also created their own problems. The party has embroiled our country in excessive economic turmoil, and extrapolated its internal divisions over membership of the European Union to a national level. While it would be foolish to say that twelve years of tory did not bring some advantages, a legally binding net zero target and the levelling up fund to name but a few, it would be equally foolish to say that the Conservative party is not responsible for the divided country that we live in today–one of crumbling public services, real terms pay cuts and an economy that is lacking vigour.

During her historically short time in office, Prime Minister Liz Truss established three priorities in her party conference speech, namely: “growth, growth, growth.” 

These ‘three’ priorities for the economy show that Truss’s heart was in the right place–afterall, Britain has been suffering from low growth for the past fifteen years. But her government’s infamous mini budget proved disastrous–doing too much too quickly, destroying confidence in the financial markets and ruining the Tory’s credibility as a party of stability. 

Such a promise also seems out of place. Why, after twelve years of tory government, has the United Kingdom been stagnating economically? This is not a new issue, and successive Conservative governments have had years of opportunity to solve Britain’s systemic growth problem. Even accounting for the turmoil of Covid-19, war in Ukraine, and globally increasing food and energy prices, the United Kingdom is still falling drastically behind our western neighbours.

An OECD forecast from June this year, just before Truss’ kamikaze budget, predicted that UK growth would grind to a halt in 2023–with the exception of Russia, a country facing world-wide economic sanctions, Britain was expected to be the worst for growth in the G20. And now, just a few months later, the threat of recession is increasingly grave.

Both Truss and her successor, Rishi Sunak, have made pledges as if their party were freshly elected, and yet the Conservatives have been in power for well over a decade.

‘Twelve years of tory’ has run our country into the ground: a lack of ambition, and successive governments distracted by Brussels–the very thing that Brexit promised to be rid of–has meant the Conservatives dropping the ball. 

The party has been so consumed by its delivery of Brexit, a predominantly party political issue which much of the electorate cared little for before the referendum, that it has overlooked its responsibilities to the British people. 

For Cameron, the Brexit referendum was the only way to gain the support of his divided party; for May, it was a noose around her neck which prevented her establishing her true mark on the United Kingdom; and for Johnson it was a window of opportunity through which he could fulfil his life-long ambition: holding the office of Prime Minister. Brexit, an issue which began within the tory party, has ended in a country of social, economic and political turmoil.

Our NHS currently faces staff shortages equivalent to the population of Newcastle; asylum seekers are being treated like prisoners; and our housing system has become unfit for purpose. For a child to die from poor quality housing in a so-called first world country is truly abhorrent. 

The United Kingdom has regressed to the dark ages–we face a lack of ingenuity, growing poverty and unsanitary living conditions. The Conservative party needs to take responsibility for its failures.

Regardless of whether or not you support Brexit, you cannot deny that the Conservatives obsession with leaving the European Union has come at the detriment of our public services and, further still, our country’s standing in the world. The party has let us down; if it hopes to maintain its stay in government at the next election, it will have to do more than steady the ship.

Rishi Sunak pledges his government is one of integrity and accountability, but after ‘twelve years of tory’, these words appear to have lost their meaning.

Not only have recent governments overlooked their duties to the people of the United Kingdom, they have also set a depressingly-low standard for those who occupy high office. From allegations of bullying, to the illegal proroguing of parliament, Conservative governments have undermined the responsibilities of government in more than one respect.

David Cameron oversaw lobbying at a scale previously unimaginable, while Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak broke the very legal guidance that their government implemented. Misleading parliament has also become increasingly common under Conservative leadership, while politicians’ choice of words has become ever-more harmful and divisive.

The tories must take responsibility for their inability to steer the ship, their unhealthy obession with Brexit, and their gross incompetency in running our public services. 

There is no doubt that the British public is more deserving. The only question, however, is whether twelve years of Labour would have fared any better.