Why I left the Tories and became a Lib Dem
Sir Keith Joseph with Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative Party conference in 1977
This article was originally published in Liberal Democrat Voice
I owe my life in Britain to a Tory MP. In 1957, newly elected Keith Joseph was instrumental in persuading the government to grant sanctuary to Jews fleeing Egypt following the Suez crisis, which included my father aged six.
My grandfather, a 32-year-old dentist at the time, was asked by Egyptian authorities why he was leaving the country. Predicting a surge in hostility towards non-Arabs inspired by President Nasser’s populist speeches, he responded “because you’re allowing me to”.
‘Conservative values’ had always rung true in my family. Hard work, self-sufficiency, aspiration. Nasser forcing my Grandad to ‘donate’ his assets to the government upon fleeing didn’t give him much faith in the nurturing power of the state. The ‘power of the individual’ mattered. Cameron’s modern diverse-looking Conservative Party appeared to be lightyears removed from the horrifying characters of Enoch Powell and Smethwick’s Pete Griffiths. Looking back at the Home Office’s hostile environment policy, I must have fallen for Cameron’s PR.
My personal political memory began with the 2008 financial crash and as I left for uni, Britain embarked on austerity measures that led to the largest squeeze in living standards since Napoleonic times. As an 18-year-old, Cameron’s argument made sense. If government budgets are like households, then in a crisis you need to cut spending. There’s no need to have greater involvement of the state in people’s lives, they’ll just make it worse.
With a privileged upbringing, it would be easy to scoff that I would never feel the brunt of austerity. But more than that, my sheltered upbringing made me think that poor government decisions affected ‘other’ people. Having been on all four anti-Brexit marches in London, it was noticeable how many admitted that “they never used to be political”. It was the first time a political change happened that they desperately didn’t want to happen.
No, it wasn’t Brexit that made me leave. But if Brexit were a protest vote, then what shocked me was the extent to which the social fabric of our country broke down because of austerity policies that I believed in. As a Remainer trying to forge a career in Brussels, Brexit was the first time that I felt that politics had affected me personally.
Having grown up hearing about the inspirational values of conservatism, Brexit has undoubtedly brought out the worst in the Conservative party. Nowhere more so than in Brussels, was I able to witness first-hand how the Tories represented the party of the politically minded but without any political convictions.
Sifting through Cameron’s biography feels like unearthing the trail of evidence that proved he was willing to do and/or say anything to meet his short-term goals. As part of his 2005 leadership campaign, he promised to pull Tory MEPs out of the European People’s Party (EPP) the largest and most influential voting bloc in Brussels. Why? To out-Eurosceptic his rival David Davis and win over Tories who believed he wasn’t tough enough on Europe.
In the book, there’s little mention of who Cameron had to share a bed with to set up a new group, the European Conservative and Reformists (ECR). His allegiance with Polish populists, Danish nationalists and at one stage even the Alternative für Deutschland shows yet again how the Tories were prepared to compromise on their core beliefs just to achieve dubious political ends.
It strikes me as odd that Syed Kamall, who proudly proclaimed that he was the most senior elected Muslim politician in Brussels, would then join forces and even sit as co-chair alongside a member of the far right Polish Law and Justice Party, whose leader once referred to Muslim migrants as carrying “all sorts of parasites and protozoa”.
The Tory party’s brand of superficial diversity to make a point that it’s not racist has resonated for decades as Home Secretaries Michael Howard and Priti Patel have both had to justify immigration laws that would have prevented their own parents from entering the country.
My own personal point of no return happened in the summer of 2018. Hungary’s Victor Orbán had steadily been eroding civil liberties and human rights to the extent that the European Parliament was prepared to trigger the ‘nuclear option’ under Article 7 of the Treaty on the EU, to suspend Hungary’s voting rights in the European Council and European Parliament. It passed resoundingly, 448-197 with 48 abstentions. But who voted against? Not just the old school far-right European fascists, that was to be expected, but the UK Conservative Party as well.
The excuse given by the party whip Dan Dalton was haunting. “This isn’t an EU competence and would make a martyr out of Orbán”. If there were ever a time for the Tories to be on the right side of history, it would be now. When challenged in the Commons, Theresa May claimed that this wasn’t under instruction from No.10 and that MEPs act of their volition. Her sheepish expression, even more so than usual, seemed to suggest that it probably wasn’t and that she had most likely forgotten that Tory MEPs even existed.
A regime which had actively sought to dehumanise ethnic minorities and suppress press freedom and any political dissent. A leader who had openly attacked liberal values and had called on latent antisemitic tropes of world domination to demonise George Soros. What would be the point of turning up to work and claiming you believe in progressive, liberal and democratic values if you’re not prepared to call this out? How could you have the gall to condemn the Labour Party of being antisemitic? The stark reality for the Tory delegation was that however much democracy backslided in Hungary, the message “it’s not democratic for the EU to interfere with national laws”, trumped anything else.
My balcony overlooking the Berlaymont building, the European Commission’s HQ in Brussels
At both a domestic and European level, the ‘politics of no conviction’ may reap short-term rewards but few longer-term solutions. The exemplar would be calling an in-out referendum based on a renegotiation with Europe to win over Eurosceptic support in the short term. It seems Cameron would say whatever it took to win an election. Under the daily parliamentary chaos of May, it seems his successor would say whatever needed to get to end of the day.
It’s no surprise that Dominic Cummings is the latest antihero to turn the Tory party into an electoral-winning machine. Cummings is the ultimate non-conviction ‘win-at-all-costs’ political figure. The Mourinho of British Politics. In Channel 4’s docudrama of the referendum campaign, Cumming’s character played by Benedict Cumberbatch has a ruthlessly efficient approach to winning over the “three million persuadables”. No one else and no morals matter. Cummings, obviously not even a Tory member, like Orbán is also prepared to dehumanise immigrants and trash the independence of the judiciary just to get the win.
The ‘no conviction philosophy' reached its apex in last year’s General Election. The precondition for being selected as a Conservative PPC was to swear to CCHQ that you would vote for any deal that Boris Johnson agrees with Brussels. Regardless of its content, no parliamentary scrutiny, just for the sake of getting it done. No, it wasn’t Brexit that made me leave the Tories. But Brexit has lifted off the mask of the party, unveiling an army of morally vacuous MPs with no political convictions.
In his memoires, Paddy Ashdown talks of how a local canvasser made him suddenly realise that he was a Liberal all along and that Liberalism was “an old coat that had been hanging in my cupboard… just waiting to be taken down and put on”. Perhaps Brexit made me put the jacket on. Yet it wasn’t just the fact that 17.4m people voted to leave the EU. As Tory MPs peddled half-truths on EU membership and outrageous hypocrisy on the merits of the Single Market, I realised that all I had to do was put on this coat and be proud of what I believe in.
The Lib Dems are the party that reflect my political convictions and the values which I cherish. Internationalism, respect for the constitution, institutions and experts, press freedom, the separation of powers and the ‘power of the individual’, all of which the Tories have thrown overboard to pick up speed and win.
Yes, they proposed an EU referendum in 2007, but you could never convince me that the Lib Dems would turn into the party of tub-thumping nationalism, airing their grievances on migrants or indiscriminately trashing supranational institutions for short-term political gain.
I believe the Lib Dem electoral failure had been borne out of poor tactical judgement on the campaign, rather than any moral failure. The triple whammy at Autumn conference of revoking Art 50, Jo Swinson declaring herself the next PM after refusing to collaborate with Corbyn, and Guy Verhofstadt coming on stage to talk about a ‘European Empire’ come to mind. In gunning for Tory voters scared off by Corbyn, Ed Davey’s pre-election pledge to bring back ‘fiscal rectitude’ seemed half-baked and destined to backfire.
COVID-19 has debunked the ‘balancing the budget’ mantra. The Treasury is prepared to spend ten times the amount saved through austerity on combatting a healthcare crisis. The cutting of public services and squeezing of living standards is ultimately pointless and socially destructive. Yet regardless of the actual figure spent, the pandemic has shown that the state can and should intervene for the good of the country.
From Jeremy Corbyn to Andrea Leadsom, the phrase “I’ve been on journey” has been used so often by the Left and the Right that it has lost all meaning. Yet, I haven’t actually been on one, I’ve only opened my front door and exposed myself to the elements. Call me centre-left, but Brexit has showed me what it’s like to have politics affect my life, when austerity had been plaguing the lives of millions for a decade. To quote feminist pioneer Carol Hanisch, “the personal is political”. Glossing over the personal effect of politics is what the fuels the ‘politics of no conviction’ and explains why the Conservative party has always been so successful.
Yet I am optimistic. The centre-left can succeed provided that both Labour and the Lib Dems work together to hold back the Tory electoral juggernaut, just as in 1997. This collaboration would be one of conviction destined to thwart any amoral single-issue around which the Tory party moulds itself.
In 1957, my Grandad saw Conservative values at their best. My family knew what the party could aspire to be. Being Jewish himself, perhaps Keith Joseph considered the Suez crisis to be one of great moral importance. Widely considered to be the intellectual father of Thatcherism, it’s telling that by the time Thatcher came around he realised that he had never truly been a Conservative at all. A man responsible for the politics of ‘no conviction’, it’s a shame he never put on that coat, opened the front door and revealed his true colours.