Where now for social conservatives after the euthanasia vote?

A day at the Social Democratic Party Conference

I can’t describe the anger I feel or my sense of impending doom for the future of this country following Friday’s vote in favour of the ‘Assisted Dying’ (aka euthanasia) Bill in the House of Commons. Really excellent arguments were made against it, and yet the tranche of MPs who are new to their role seemed impervious to the clear dangers towards the vulnerable and to our social fabric. Despite their immaturity in Parliament they felt confident enough to vote 63% in favour, while more experienced MPs voted 54% against. I am very worried what this new intake will inflict on us in the future given such dystopian ethics. For example, new Labour MP Cat Eccles told Sky News that the real problem with coercion is that relatives might persuade their dying loved ones against suicide. Yes, really.

Yuan Yi Zhu, a legal academic who has been a great advocate for the vulnerable during the campaign, warned in The Spectator that history will not be kind to these homewreckers of our nation’s morality: “Often during the assisted dying debate it became apparent that the bill’s supporters had no idea about its shortcomings. Many did not appear to have actually read the bill.”

Some campaigners are trying to raise hopes that the legislation could still be defeated, but I feel pessimistic.

The only good things I can say are that during the campaign, I was inspired by some of the excellent people who fought valiantly against it, such as MPs Danny Kruger and Rachael Maskell, and the many Christian and disabled rights organisations who have fought euthanasia for a long time. I also regenerated respect for the old/hard left, because the likes of Dianne Abbott and Richard Burgon spoke eloquently against this tragic legislation. Finally, what has happened will likely mobilise many of us into action to support the vulnerable and dying. Other than these chinks of positivity, I feel bleak despair.

Another effect may be to increase involvement in politics. The voting patterns ensured that I will never vote either Labour (234 in favour, 147 against) or Reform (three in favour, two against) while the current personnel and their ‘culture of death’ worldview are in charge. The only party that redeemed itself was the Conservatives (23 in favour and 92 against), yet many, like leader Kemi Badenoch, agree in principle with assisted suicide, and only disagreed with this Bill’s details or its timing.

Essentially the battle is with social liberals who believe that personal choice and autonomy is a more important principle than communitarian ideals such as not encouraging granny to commit suicide. Hence why those who voted against the Bill were a strange coalition of “Old” socialist Labour and socially conservative Tories - though both these groups are minorities in their own parties.

A grudging return to politics?

I can’t witness this travesty without getting involved in politics in some way once again, even if it’s just through an unenthusiastic membership of a political party. The last (and only) time I was a member was 2018 when I joined the Tories purely due to my horror at the prospect of a supporter of both Hamas and Marx (Jeremy Corbyn) running our country. I stayed in hope of supporting the more socially conservative wing of the party - probably a naive goal. I left in 2021 in protest at the damage Tory housing policy was (and still is) doing to my local area.

Social conservatives of the post war years have long mourned the many liberal changes politicians have inflicted on this country, from no-fault divorce and legal abortion to a welfare system that rewards family breakup, the negative consequences of which have taken decades to become clear. They despair that the two main parties have been captured by a socially liberal autocracy, and no attempts to try to change it have succeeded. But then the general public haven’t been too interested in restricting divorce, limiting sexual freedoms or putting the nuclear family at the centre of policy making, either.

Another reason why now might be a good idea to get involved in politics is that there are fresh signs of interest in socially conservatism again, as the extremes of liberalism play out, such as aggressive ‘trans’ activism leading to sex offenders with penises being put into woman’s prisons with predictable results, and alarming sexualised content making its way into many schools, such as instructions on how to masturbate. (Yes, really.) This social shift comes especially from Gen Z, as shown in my report on young pro-life Catholics, and though they are still in a minority, they have the essential awareness that the sexual revolution has mostly been a disaster for people in the West. There is also more sympathy in our immigrant populations who tend to be religious. For example, 41% of Londoners believe abortion should be illegal in almost all circumstances, yet the country overall supports early term abortion in a 2019 survey.

The options for social conservatives

As I see it, there are two options. The first is to join the Conservative Party and try to make it worthy of its name. This has been tried by many over the years, including people with much more influence and talent than I, who mostly failed. Yet, at least the party has a few MPs with those instincts still, though many were booted out in the last election. For example, in Yorkshire for one term we had Miriam Cates and Nick Fletcher, both in traditionally Labour seats and elected via the Boris Johnson support in 2019. Some of that ilk are still in Parliament, such as Kruger, whose recent book ‘Covenant: the new politics of home, neighbourhood and nation’ was a reiteration of socially conservative principles mild enough for moderns to tolerate.

My brief time in the party, however, suggested that there is little I could do as a member other than lend my vote to more socially conservative candidates when leaders and local politicians are elected. I made attempts to join up with other social conservatives in the party and failed, possibly because there just aren’t that many. While the Conservative Party will likely get my vote in the next election purely in order to try and get rid of this Labour government and their grim reaper instincts, I could never be enthusiastic about the party as it stands and while it continues to be the very opposite of conservative in practice, socially and economically.

Is the SDP a reasonable choice?

The other option is to join a smaller party. However, all such political parties I have ever engaged with have been amateur and full of cranks, and a fair few are quite racist. The only possibility I can see is the Social Democratic Party. I have followed its fortunes online for some time, and so asked to attend the members’ conference last Saturday. Leader William Clouston’s oft-repeated summary of the SDP’s politics resonates with many: while the Tories treat the UK like a business, and Labour treats it like a charity - the SDP considers it our home. This neatly sums up my problem with the materialism of the two main parties.

So on Saturday I traipsed over the Pennines to Manchester, which I always do reluctantly like any true Yorkshirewoman, to their small gathering, which shockingly only provided tea and coffee in the morning. Although you could tell the SDP is run on a shoe-string, and in order to ever be electable it would need more professionals involved and have a lot more income, there were fewer outright eccentrics than I have encountered in other parties, at least of the worrying kind. There were a lot of ordinary people with local accents (yay), including in the more senior positions, which might be an advantage in a country that is pretty sick of professional politicos. The party has won a few councillors in South Leeds due to their just being good local councillors and genuine locals.

The SDP seem to be a group of people that is disillusioned with standard politics enough to try and create an alternative to the social and economic liberalism of the past 50 years. This makes them “anti-woke,” so in this way they are similar to Reform, which they spent some time comparing and contrasting themselves with.

Reform might be socially conservative in that way, but in all other areas they are social liberals and economic free marketeers - hence the odious support for euthanasia. The SDP, by contrast, is economically leftish and socially conservative in a way that is more “Old Labour” - which is how a few speakers nostalgically described themselves.

I’ll mention some of their 2024 manifesto policies that fit these labels shortly. But first, I’ll explain why the SDP might be too left wing for me as it currently stands. The first is that the economic left had its heyday at a time when there was much less bureaucracy and regulation and a very different economy. I believe the current system is unmanageable and we need a real bonfire of regulations and reduction in bureaucrats. The problem is, I wouldn’t trust most of the free market ideologues in the Tories and Reform to do this well and to reinstate good legislation that prioritises our communities. (I might make an exception with those who have explicitly outlined their moral positions such as the lovable antique Jacob Rees-Mogg, but I don’t think there are too many of them)

Another is just that I am sceptical of putting power in the State’s hands, especially in our rapidly mutating technological age with all its strange ideological movements. During my period of turning from liberal leftie to social conservative, I passed through a more libertarian phase. This wasn’t due to any particular affinity to socially or economically liberal policies. It was because I realised in my old worldview, I had treated the State in the same way the people of old had treated their families and their God. As I began to question my beliefs, I realised that the State was not a very good or effective way to provide a safety net, nor the only way that compassion can be mediated through an organisation. It is inefficient, amoral, or it seeks to impose its dubious secular morals on you. It has also contributed to social ills such as the breakdown of the family. It promises to look after you but its heart is cold. In the old days, it was our flesh and blood relatives who were responsible for taking care of us if we were sick or vulnerable. So however difficult the relationships, the fact that people needed each other helped them to stick together.

Let’s consider the care of the elderly. In the past, older people in the family were usually cared for at home. After feminism became more powerful there wasn’t anyone at home anymore, so the elderly were housed in nursing homes instead. This is very expensive, it creates work that is difficult, which I know from experience having done it myself for several years at various points in my life. Few people are good at it, which we can witness in the appalling scandals of mistreatment of our precious older generation. And few people born in the UK want to do it, as we can witness through the current need to import people from other countries to meet the severe shortage of staff in the care sector. Now, there are many societal reasons contributing to this change, more than I’ve discussed. But is it good? Is it sustainable? I would argue not, and it contributes to isolation, loneliness and the breakdown of the family.

Having said that, there are plenty of policies in this year’s election manifesto from the SDP that I think are interesting to social conservatives and Christians tired of the political status quo. Although, so far they have not published policy on abortion or euthanasia - though leader Clouston did publicly criticise the euthanasia Bill.

What follows is a small fraction of the SDP’s very detailed 2024 election manifesto.

The introductory letter states:

“A constant theme of SDP thinking is that most of our difficulties have cultural roots - indifference, complacency and lack of confidence.”

As a Christian social conservative who is sceptical of the State, I also perceive many of our social problems to be more to do with culture than with any social variables that can be manipulated by government funding. However I think the primary cause of negative cultural change is the decline in Christian faith and values - which is the problem of the Church rather than the State. However it’s a general principle I have sympathy with.

Here are some of the policies and their aims: lower pornography use and access by children; restrict their smartphone use; restrict online gambling advertising; reduce limits to free speech to that which clearly incites terrorism or crime; abolish long term employment and mandate involvement in civic improvement projects; restrict welfare access to recent citizens; segregate biological sex in sport, women’s refuges and prisons; raise defence expenditure; restrict foreign ownership of UK infrastructure; restrict cannabis use; support homeschooling and non-academic education; many policies to dramatically reduce immigration (a subject I’ll refrain from commenting on at present); support small farms; limit buy-to-let mortgages and build social housing.

The most interesting policies to me are those that aim to restore the family and local community. The overall principle is: “Government must defend and support traditional family life whenever possible, particularly in welfare and economic policy, education and housing. We will shelter British families from the economic and social pressures fracturing our society and seek to rebuild a prosperous and happier nation with policies that place the family at the heart of national life”.

The manifesto states it will change tax, benefits and housing policy to support young families, specifically mentioning marriage in some cases, which is summarised by:

“Government policy in all domains will be subject to the basic test as to whether it is supportive of the family as the foundation of society.”

The general timbre of these pro-family policies is excellent. I’m not so sure about the idea of mandating access to working from home for 3 days a week for people with dependent children - home care is a full time job, so either the employer or the child might lose out here. I would prefer to see innovative ways to support parents taking care of their young children rather than nurseries - such as helping older parents restart a career, increasing tax breaks for young families with one income, making part-time work easier, and so on.

My previously mentioned concern for better care of our elderly is addressed by two particularly interesting ideas:

“A public volunteer service for aged care will be established. Those over 65 who volunteer for front line roles in the public aged care sector will receive credits toward the costs of their own aged care, at the rate of £10,000 for each year of full-time service. In effect, this will reduce the upper limit on costs a person can be asked to pay toward his or her social care under the October 2023 cap.”

“Families who accommodate a parent over 80 years old in the same dwelling will be entitled to deduct 100% of the cost of state-funded aged care services from taxation.”

Then, for social and health care in this country, as well as the wellbeing of these sectors in other countries, especially the developing world, the next policy seems an excellent goal:

“The NHS will train British citizens to fully satisfy its workforce requirements and end the practice of large-scale importation of doctors, nurses and other clinicians from developing countries. Specialist clinical universities will be established to achieve this.”

Wider political concerns

While family and community relationships are my biggest concern, there are a number of other policy areas worth noting for regular readers.

“The Human Rights Act will be replaced by a new Bill of Rights drawing upon the British tradition of liberty, free speech and free association and incorporating established principles such as habeas corpus and the rule of law.”

This in effect would scrap the European-imposed human rights laws and allow the UK to choose its own. Other policies make it clear that it will withdraw from current legislation that prevents the country from restricting the very high levels of immigration, which is one of the SDP’s main policy objectives. (Immigration a very important subject that needs careful reflection and analysis: I will hopefully write more about it soon).

“All specialist ‘Equity, Diversity and Inclusion’ roles throughout the public sector will be abolished.”

This no doubt appeals to all who are alarmed at the extremes of the “woke” revolution, which seems to be enacted in our public services by very highly paid executives. The recent case of nurses in Darlington being forced to undress in front of a half-naked man, supported by Christian Concern, is one of many dubious consequences of this expenditure. There are also policies about reviewing public sector funded bodies for efficiency and public support, as well as encouraging the political independence of state organisations.

“We will specifically target an increase in manufacturing as a proportion of GDP, a reduction in the UK’s trade deficit and new industrial development in the UK regions.”

There are a number of policies to stimulate UK manufacturing, preferring UK-made goods for government suppliers, and introducing a “Buy British Bill”. This “Old Labour” approach is probably wise in a global landscape that looks increasingly dangerous, though I’m sure some economists would be sceptical. However they also uphold fiscal responsibility with restrictions on government debt and public expenditure.

“Any residential property unoccupied for more than 183 days per annum will be subject to a vacant residential property tax levied at 1% of the property’s capital value, with all revenues from this levy flowing to the local council.”

This would be music to the ears of residents in the small Yorkshire market towns and villages that I love, whose communities have been damaged by the rich buying up a holiday home that they rarely inhabit. This is one of a number of policies that target modern bogeymen for ordinary folk, such as taxes on online sales to fund town centre regeneration.

“We accept the broad scientific consensus that fossil fuels are contributing to climate change and that we need to reduce our aggregate usage of them; however, we do not support unrealistic objectives such as “Net Zero” which lead to an unbalanced and costly energy regime in the UK without materially impacting global warming.”

Overall, the environmental policy appears more weighted towards nature preservation which is my preference, and a more balanced approach to climate change. The party supports fracking and nuclear energy, which might put off some environmentalists. There are some ‘localist’ ideas here and there, which again, is interesting to me.

So, the SDP is certainly an interesting option, though any kind of real political power is a distant daydream, and the “chicken and egg” problem of funding and professionalism is a tricky one to crack. What do you think?

Does anyone have any other suggestions for social conservatives in UK politics, other than joining the Tories or the SDP? I’d be glad to hear them…