« December 2004 | Main | June 2005 »

May 05, 2005

Small government+freedom+low tax=vote Tory

I heartily recommend today's leader from the Daily Telegraph in which they set out some of the reasons why you should seriously consider voting Conservative today.

Though, like me, they are disappointed in the Tory Party of late - a party that sometimes seems to be as adrift as the US Republican Party in the mid-90s - they, like me, recognise the danger of allowing the Labour Party another five years in government:

More insidious stealth taxes, the rapid erosion of long-held civil liberties, the expansion of the "nanny state", more pandering to the EU grandees and an unconstitutional mid-term transfer of power to Gordon Brown are what you can expect from the left if, as expected, Labour secure another term. ID cards - an anathema in British society, the European Constitution, increasingly deadly hospital wards, bureaucratic red tape hamstringing business and a police force too distracted by paperwork to actually catch criminals are what you're asking for if you support Blair for five more years...

The Tories on the other hand - though their policies have been watered down after two successive General Election defeats - have backed off from their support of ID cards, promise a small reduction in the tax burden on Britons, are predominantly Eurosceptic, and will likely do a better job of managing the public sector (they certainly couldn't do a worse job than the current government has over the last eight years). Their promises on immigration reform are welcome and their plans for expanding school and healthcare choice are laudable - despite the fact that their campaign has hardly touched on the latter. As the Telegraph leader says:

We cannot pretend that we have been altogether happy with the Conservatives' campaign. It started well, with its emphasis on the need to keep taxes down (although even the Tories plan to increase public spending by nearly as much as Labour). But the campaign has concentrated too much on side-issues. We wish that Michael Howard had said more about his well thought-out plans for cutting red tape and giving parents and patients greater choice in education and health. The best that can be said for Mr Howard is that his instincts are good - a great deal more than can be said for Mr Blair, Mr Brown or Mr Kennedy. Like us, he wants smaller government, greater personal choice and (eventually) lower taxes.

Despite the mistakes in the campaign, including the stupid focus on Blair's actions before the Iraq War - a war that both they and I support - this election is way too important for the future of the country to allow the party's campaigning misteps to turn people away from voting Conservative, or indeed, from voting at all.

Other newspapers have urged their readers to vote tactically in this election, so as to try to produce a hung parliament, or to return Labour with a reduced majority. That sounds like stupid advice to us. We urge all our readers, in every constituency, to vote for the party they want to win.

We hope that they will vote Conservative.

As do I!

Posted by gcurtis at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)