The Guardian reports on ‘Activate‘, the new conservative group which draws inspiration from Labour, as it tries to engage young people in politics, suggesting that the launch on social media has been widely mocked. (open link for Activate’s Twitter account)
Source: Activate: Tories mimic Momentum with grassroots campaign | Politics | The Guardian
Momentum is driven by passionate Far Left activists for whom the end justifies the means. For them the Labour Party is a stepping stone to revolution. Clearly, Momentum is much more than a political process.
The weakness of the Activate initiative is that there’s currently no overall recognizable brand of British conservatism. [see my blog of the UK Conservative Party’s 2017 Manifesto]. The New Right seem out of fashion – Conservative MPs who are not ready to embrace radicalism fall back of traditional conservatism with its privileges and lazy stereotypes for whom there are magical doors to career opportunities – the antithesis of meritocracy.
Young people need to believe that the Conservative Party is more about high-achievement and meritocracy than nepotism.
There are still young people in the UK who believe in advanced education, hard-work, achievement, individualism, risk-taking and small government. These are the political values of people like my fellow blogger, John Gelmini and myself. Sadly, the UK Conservative Party seems now more associated to those who leverage privilege and inherited wealth, rather than individual achievement. To capture young people’s vote, policies need to be imaginative in terms of housing, education and upskilling – this will be challenging with an increasing number of jobs being replaced by technology.
The people to whom Activate should appeal will have already put in place personal contingency plans to move overseas if Jeremy Corbyn’s Far Left Labour Government wins the next election. So not only will we have more socialism but with the high achievers gone, the lazzy and the scroungers will be more evident.
Thoughts?
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