Why Tories should read Toynbee

By Natan Doron / @natandoron and Olly Parker / @ollyparkers

ConservativeHome launched a bizarre attack yesterday suggesting that the majority of the Labour commentariat are blinded by hatred. It may just be a comment piece, but the associated graphic suggests this could be a theme they intend to return to in the coming weeks. Matthew Barrett claims to have spent an entire “working day” researching recent examples of left-wing hatred. A leisurely few seconds of Google work yielded: “Is Brown bonkers“; “Labour has used the benefits system ruthlessly for social engineering” and the charming “Ed Balls thinks nothing of stomping on the rights of Christian, Jewish or Muslim parents“. This suggests the right can certainly hold their own when it comes to a spot of vitriol.

The article essentially aims to paint a series of key left-wing commentators, some quite moderate, as mere “Tory haters”. There is an important consequence here; if you tell your base that there is no point in listening to anything the left-wing has to say, you are telling your supporters any criticism they make is unjustified. This will see your supporters become increasingly removed from the centre ground, eventually taking the party leadership with them. If the Tory debate becomes about ignoring a woman who is consistently voted the most influential columnist in the UK then surely it is only the Tory Party that will suffer?

If, for example, the right-wing commentariat had listened to some of the warnings left-wing journalists have been making about the NHS reforms – “large vested interests of all political stripes are against”, “radical reform and 4% per year efficiency savings are near impossible” – then maybe there would have been a more conciliatory response from the Tory right as opposed to the table banging that was widely reported after a meeting of the Tory backbench 1922 committee. Maybe, just maybe, those polling numbers on a key issue for the public wouldn’t have been quite so disastrous.

To be fair to Barrett, he concedes that not all Labour-leaning writers are frothing at the mouth with hatred. But without acknowledging that similar zealots and scare-mongers exist on the Tory right, Barrett’s article can only be seen as a thinly veiled attempt to shift party political discourse to the right. The fact is the public long for a party that, at the very least, has the appearance of listening to the country as a whole. Perhaps the issue is that Tory party grandees, brought up under Thatcherite dogma, never really cared about listening to the whole country, just enough of it to get elected. This was enough in the 80s but it isn’t now. It is the reason they are now stuck between rigid ideology and a whole list of embarrassing U-turns; not only in coalition but with a leadership constantly fending off attacks from all wings of the party.

Internal Labour discussion is often about resonating with the centre-ground vs. staying true to our values. It is a constant back-and-forth between ideology and winning the next election. It is healthy for both party and the left in general. If the Tory discussion becomes about ignoring debate on the left, including moderate views, then it’s they who will end up alienating voters and losing the next election.