Tories must be less strident
From Stuart Baran
Sir: Simon Heffer tells us that what the Conservative party now needs, above all, is ‘stability’ (‘The way ahead for Conservatives’, 7 May). But it cannot have escaped his notice that the level of success we have enjoyed in the last decade has been all too ‘stable’, and that this is in no small part down to the influence of those who, like him, insist on seeing modernisation as an evil. Whilst Heffer and his friends resist change, Mr Blair is left grinning ever more manically. Mr Heffer gives him the ammunition to paint politics as a choice between those who believe the vulnerable should be helped, and those who would rather ignore them.
Heffer accuses the so-called Notting Hill Set of ‘inexperience and arrogance’, buttheir sort of Conservatism is surely about allowing people greater control over their lives and not simply offering them the ‘freedom’ to agree with Simon Heffer. Only when the Tories adopt a more liberal, less strident tone can we hope to evict the sorry cabal of window-dressers who now ‘govern’ our country.
Stuart Baran
Jesus College, Oxford
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