The Conservative government will need to run against its own record to prevent the Labour Party from ousting it in the next election, a Tory MP said.
Danny Kruger, MP for Devizes and co-chair of the New Conservatives group, said he’s “not confident” the ruling party can avoid a defeat because the “difficult” task will involve “demonstrable commitments” including the “painful ... recognition of our own mistakes and how we haven’t delivered for people.”
The former prime minister’s aide also said he believes a “radical reform” of institutions is needed for the government to regain the public’s trust.
Mr. Kruger was elected to the House of Commons in 2016, but he has been active in the political scene long before becoming an MP, having worked for former prime ministers David Cameron and Boris Johnson, as the chief speechwriter for the former and political adviser for the latter.
Commenting on the record of the Conservative governments in the past 13 years, Mr. Kruger said while the “positives” included fixing public finances after the 2008 financial crisis, reforming education and welfare, and getting Brexit done, “we have neglected a whole bunch of things that we should have done.”
He believes the Conservatives shouldn’t have accepted “the whole human rights settlement” in the Equality Act 2010 and “should have turned the taps of immigration off much sooner” instead of having “opened them in recent years even further.”
“There’s a whole bunch of economic changes that we haven’t made, we haven’t until very recently started to try and level up the economy. And we’ve abandoned a whole bunch of cultural questions and things have got worse on our watch, and particularly in this whole question of sex and gender,” he said.
“We can make excuses, but really, it’s true to say, ‘On our watch, things have got worse, but under Labour they would have been so much worse, and under Labour next time they will get a lot worse,’” he stated.
Speaking about more recent governments, Mr. Kruger said the 2019 election offered “a glimpse” of a national political movement led by “very able and brilliant” Mr. Johnson, but the former prime minister failed on COVID-19 and on reforming Whitehall, which he said was “the real mission” Mr. Johnson was elected to do.
“The real mandate that I think we had in 2019, was to fix the system and fix the economy as well in the interests of people far away from the financial centres of southeast England.”
About the government’s response to COVID-19, which was declared by ministers before getting waved through in Parliament, Mr. Kruger said,“ I personally feel ashamed of the behaviour of Parliament through COVID, including my own role in it.”
Home, Neighbourhood, and Nation
While there are many “immediate and obvious” problems “in terms of the state of our society, the precariousness of so many of our institutions and the systems that we depend on,” Mr. Kruger said he believes the real problem lies “beneath the surface of our immediate presenting challenges.”Namely, it’s “a cultural mistake” of prioritising “the immediate and the personal over the long term and the relational,” he said.
To capitalise on the opportunities of modern society and to withstand threats, “I do think we need to recover some of the foundational principles of our society” which is “the principle that we depend on each other, and that we exist in our relationships, and in the institutions which sustain a healthy and successful society,” Mr. Kruger said.
“And the essential institutions are our families, are the homes that we’re attached to, our neighbourhoods, and our nations. And those three as it were tiers of human association, the home, the neighbourhood, and the nation, feel to me the essential building blocks of a good society,” he said.
“We have been at the work of dismantling the home, the neighbourhood, and the nation over recent decades. And I think correcting course on those issues is the beginning of the recovery that we need.”
Mr. Kruger said the idea that “the only way to live is to live as a sort of proud independence, fully capable, fully competent, an independent adult, rather than someone who’s frail and in need” is “very destructive,” blaming it for the rise of euthanasia.
He also defended his speech in May at the National Conservative that said the “normative” family—the mother and father sticking together for the sake of the children—is the only basis for a safe and functioning society.
Downing Street later distanced itself from the remarks, which were among those labelled anti-LGBT.
Asked about his thoughts, Mr. Kruger said he regretted No. 10’s behaviour, adding that he doesn’t believe anyone would disagree with him if “they’re honest enough to understand what [he] was saying.”
The speech was not saying a married mother and father is “the only model for family life,” he said. “but I do think it’s the basis of society.”
“If we don’t have a society in which most people aspire to and, one hopes, succeed in sticking with the other parent of their children and bringing their kids up together, societies that don’t have that don’t prosper,” he added.
Mr. Kruger said he regrets the fact divorce has been made easier, the “abandoning any notion of what the marriage vows represent” and the taxation and welfare system is “disincentivizing marriage essentially and disincentivizing the whole business of family life.”
While he doesn’t believe it’s the government and the lawmakers’ job to “prescribe behaviour to people,” Mr. Kruger said, “what we can do is to create the conditions in which people are more likely to behave well towards one another, and which is what people want to do.”
“Most people want to get married, and most people want to look after their elderly parents. Most people want to have a life that is connected to their local community. Most people want to love their country and to serve it. So you know, patriotic, community-minded, family-oriented people are what we want. And that’s what most people want to be,” he said.
“I think that creating the conditions in which it’s more attractive for people to behave in those ways, is an appropriate mission of government.”
