The Tory party needs a moral mission

Over the past couple of years I have spoken intently on why policy matters. It is simply not enough to create vibes. You have to win credibility. You have to build a reputation for seriousness - and if you do, people will give you a second look. You will win people's respect. There is a hunger for a political party that knows what the hell it's doing.

Two years on from making these points, we can now see what happens when a party doesn't have policies. Reform may be leading in the polls but it's entirely illusory. Everyone who has looked closely at Reform knows it is a profoundly unserious party. Those poll leads could easily evaporate. Its lack of seriousness will make the difference at the next election. It's the thing that will hold them back more than any other factor.

Meanwhile, things are quietly happening in the Tory party. Kemi Badenoch is putting her people to work. We do not yet know what her policy commission will produce, but something is crystallising. All the Tory thinkers (there are still a few around) are all in the same ballpark and they're almost over the target. If they put solid policy on the table, there is life in the old dog yet. They will earn themselves a second chance.

But policy on its own is not enough. It still has to be born of a guiding philosophy. I've said this many times. Any leader needs an intellectual framework of basic principles. Robert Jenrick clearly understands this. This is what produces coherent, consistent and technically functional policy.

But policy and intellectual direction is still not enough. It also requires a moral framework. I think, perhaps more than anything, this is the missing ingredient that has brought about the disintegration of conservatism. Policy without a moral framework is technocracy. Great leaders are not elected because they are competent wonks. Policy competence gives them weight for sure, but if we look at Britain's most consequential prime ministers, they were each on a moral crusade. They did what they did because they believed it was morally correct.

Take Margaret Thatcher. She was not a proponent of free markets because she she was a learned economic technician. She made the moral argument for self-reliance, freedom of choice, and low taxes. There was an intellectual underpinning that won the support of serious people, but it was the moral case for economic liberty that resonated with voters.

Much of our current predicament can be explained by bad policy and inept administration, but more than anything, it is explained by a moral retreat on core points of principle. Conservatives surrendered to the left on moral issues - and subsequently ceded moral authority to technocracy and progressivism - all for the sake of not wanting to be seen as the "nasty party".

But as real conservative knows, the nice thing to do is not always the moral thing to do. Happy clappy permissive liberal values are all about being nice, or at least being seen to be nice. Being generous with benefits may be the nice thing to do, but it is not the correct thing to do. Undermining individual resilience and encouraging dependency is morally incorrect.

As such, a party can make the case for welfare reform as a matter of balancing the books, but that seldom wins the argument over a good sob story. It doesn't appeal on an emotional level. But morality does. Conservatism is about having the self-confidence and faith in one's own values to be the one who says no to spoiled children and assert moral authority. It's a question of instinctively knowing what is right - because you trust your moral foundation.

The reason "woke" ideology has taken such a firm grip of our politics and institutions, is because the right have surrendered to it at every turn. It was more socially convenient than taking a moral stance. On moral issues, the right caved in to cowardice. It all went wrong when conservatives decided being liked was more important than being right. As Mrs Thatcher herself once said, "If you just set out to be liked, you will be prepared to compromise on anything at anytime, and would achieve nothing".

If the Tories can find a sense of moral purpose, with a clear moral framework, there is a path back to power. On that basis, it can outclass Reform, because there is no moral foundation to populism. Populism tells people whatever they want to hear, and will tell people anything at any time if there's a vote in it. In that, there is a fundamental dishonesty. It can fool some of the people, some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

Technical competence is one thing, and that can get you so far, but what's desperately missing from our politics is moral leadership. Westminster itself, as we saw last week, has become a moral vacuum. The more politics surrenders to the socially convenient, weak liberal position, the more people are demoralised and the more decrepit the state becomes.

The voting public will never look to the likes of Nigel Farage for moral leadership. Such is far beyond his capabilities. They look to him for entertainment. Farage is the court jester who illuminates the stagnation of our political class. But that in itself is an invitation to a political party to step forward and be better than the dross - to set an example and speak in a language voters understand.

Voters do not like to to be hectored or lectured. They will take no moral sermons from politicians, especially not from this crop. What they want to see is that they are understood and heard. They want to see their own moral values reflected in their politicians. They want to know that their leaders get it.

There is a reason the dinghy crisis, more than anything, is a flashpoint in our politics. It is an insult to our intelligence, it takes advantage of our generosity, and it takes us for fools. The left tell us that immigration cheats are refugees. We know this is a lie. We are told we have a moral obligation to them when we categorically don't. It tramples on our sense of fairness. It abuses our trust. Dinghy migrants are not hated because they are black or foreign. They are hated because they are queue jumpers who hold our laws in contempt.

Yet somehow, we are held hostage to a different moral framework that says rapists and paedophiles cannot be deported, and regardless of democratic will, the morality of the bureaucracy, underpinned by the ECHR, subordinates our own. This is not just concern over who we are letting in, and on what basis, or a feeling that others are getting something we're not. Fundamentally, this is a moral issue.

The collapse of the social contract is something that happens when there is vast divergence between the morality of the public and that their politicians. This we can see with our own eyes. Policy can repair potholes and improve schools and roads, but only moral leadership can repair the fabric of a nation. Moral leadership is when we stop turning a blind eye to the small things - just as Jenrick shows us by stopping fare dodgers. Acts of real justice are the foundation for rebuilding a functioning society. It is moral choices that stop decay in its tracks, and that starts with drawing a line in the sand.