I’m a centre right conservative. I believe in freedom of speech, freedom of thought, a state that is big enough to deal with the stuff that the state needs to deal with but no so large that it micromanages everything and everyone. I don’t believe that the State should manage as well as fund stuff like healthcare due to inherent conflicts of interest in such a situation. I’m a believer in the nation state as opposed to internationalism as the nation state is probably the best way to protect the rights of those living within its borders although I also concede that there have been times when the nation state has not protected everyone within its bounds. However I also believe in treating people with respect when it is deserved no matter who or what that person might be. I believe in equal rights for men and women, that lesbian, gay and bisexual people should not be discriminated against because of who they are and that we should judge people by the content of their character rather than their skin tone.

But I have to recognise that my own side contains lunatics who not only damage the image of conservatism but also put off those who are originally from the left but also believe the same things as I do regarding liberty, free speech and the right of individuals and their families to make the best decisions for them. The Q Anon fraggles, those who believe that women should be back to being confined to the kitchen, that abortion should be banned and not safe, legal, rare and carried out as early in a pregnancy as possible, or that we should return to 1950’s modes of dress and behaviour, they put people off of conservatism just as much as the Maoist extremists of the left put normal people off of all left wingery.

We as conservatives have to recognise that we have our fraggles just as much as the Left have theirs and that our fraggles may be preventing people who want to cross the aisle from embracing moderate conservatism. Douglas Murray has explored this issue of the sort of off putting extremists in an article for Unherd magazine. Although much of what he says about the off putting domination of right leaning organisations by those with strong religious leanings applies mostly to the USA, some of what he has said could just as easily apply to the UK but with the names and type of extremism changed.

Mr Murray said:

All political and social movements have their own oddities and obsessions. Many of the obsessions of the American Right, however, are too illiberal to possibly win over anyone but that type of person who jumps political sides, boots and all, because they favour the political certainty of its all-encompassing ideological home. Why won’t thoughtful ex-liberals consider joining the Right? Well, perhaps it has something to do with the type of conservative they’d be associated with.

What liberal or former liberal would want to find themselves in an ideological movement in which opposition to the right to abortion, opposition to no-fault divorce, and a nostalgia for the era before the invention of the pill are commonplace? This isn’t to say that the conservative movement in America should not make these arguments. They can make them as much as they want. But they can hardly be surprised if others outside of their flock refuse to join them as a consequence.

Mr Murray makes a good point here. I would no more want to cross over to a left that still clung to the failed ideas of Marx than a liberal would want to cross to a conservative field that held the sort of views Mr Murray outlined above. Mr Murray then went on to point out that some, maybe too many, conservative political entities seem to be dominated by very conservative Roman Catholicism and he said that the US National Conservative Conference was dominated by Catholic social doctrine. I agree with Mr Murray when he says that this may play well with conservative activists but not so well outside this group.

Mr Murray makes some very good points in this article and he makes the very valid observation that if conservatives are not attracting former liberals then the blame cannot always be laid at the feet of liberals. We as conservatives should also understand that if we harbour lunatics or religious extremists and do not properly challenge them then we can’t attract those for whom religious extremism or the ‘back to the fifties’ types are anathema.