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OPINION, INTERVIEWS & FEATURES
Daniel Kamaluddin (Year 10) dissects the dilemma of those who find themselves without a political team to call their own
LOOKING FOR A POLITICAL HOME
It has gone from calling for a comprehensive review into the racial problems within the criminal justice system to trying to wage a cheap race-charged culture war, just to fire up its base. It has gone from a party of pro-business common sense to the party of Brexit-at-all-costs economic suicide. The dangerous trend towards social conservatism, coupled with a tendency towards the use of executive power in the last few years, is of concern to many people in the largely socially liberal southern base of the party, including myself. At the point where the government decided to expel people like Philip Hammond and Amber Rudd, the very generation who had brought back the party from the political wilderness in 2010, I realised I could identify with the party no more. Why, then, I hear you ask, didn’t I just vote for Labour on my mock ballot? I did consider it, but the truth is, Corbyn’s extreme economic policies made him all but unelectable in my eyes. (I would, in contrast, have happily voted for Tony Blair three times over.) In my view, both Labour and the Conservatives need to listen less to their party members and to pay more attention to what I believe constitutes the majority of people in this country: those of us who stand in the political centre. Next time, Boris Johnson won’t be facing someone who is anywhere near as radical as Jeremy Corbyn, and if he wants to win another election he had better start learning to listen. I am angry at the lack of any real centrist alternative to the two-party system. At a time when the price of inaction is so high, it is inexcusable for voters in one of the oldest democracies to find themselves having to hold their nose at the polling station, if, indeed, they choose to vote at all.
Let me take you back to election day 2019 (although I imagine you’d prefer I didn’t). It was a bright but cold December morning, and I was sitting on a plastic classroom chair, twirling my hair in my fingers and biting nervously on the tip of a pencil. The clock told me that there were two minutes until the end of form-time, and I had been staring at my ballot paper for seven minutes, procrastinating over my decision. I should be clear that, on account of my age, this was only a mock election. I knew that my vote didn’t really matter, but the question of which principles I was prepared to give my backing to was genuinely important to me. I had read the manifesto summaries, watched every debate and engaged in vigorous discussions with friends and mock candidates. Despite all this, I still struggled to make my decision. In the end I voted Liberal Democrat, in part because of my belief in liberalism and democracy. We have been told for the past few years that our political landscape is more polarised than ever and that we are living in unprecedented times, which I’m sure is at least in part a product of our sensationalist media, but I am convinced there is something more going on. The truth is that for most of my life thus far I have proudly declared myself a supporter of the Conservative party. Why? Because I genuinely bought in to, and to a significant extent continue to believe in, the Ken Clarke Conservative economic policy, which recognises both the importance of state intervention in avoiding the dangers of an unrestricted market, and the importance of the social security safety net. But since David Cameron’s resignation in 2016, the Conservative party has, in my eyes, undergone an alarming shift.
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