Jason McCartney Responds

Last week I penned (keyboarded ?) an open letter to my local prospective Conservative Party candidate about the destruction of our liberties by ZaNu Labour.

I look to the Conservatives for a coherent, planned and co-ordinated set of measures to restore habeas corpus and the right to trial by jury, protect free speech, prevent us being watched at every turn and basically ensure we are treated as if we lived in something other than a Communist dictatorship. I find it deeply depressing that no such vision appears to exist within Camp Dave, but I thought I'd write to the bloke who could be my next MP to see what he thinks.

Earlier this week I had a reply. What follows is a slightly abridged version of what he wrote. Initially I was going to leave the first paragraph out but then decided to include it because it was a nice touch and showed that he'd taken the trouble to visit the blog.

Gosh, where do I start. Firstly thanks for getting in touch but I do have to ask, politely of course, where have you been the past few years? Maybe following AFC Wimbledon's glorious charge up the non league pyramid - the Blue Square Premier beckons. Your boys have been getting some great crowds. I remember the old Dons winning 4-0 in an FA Cup tie at Huddersfield in the late 1990s, I think Efan Ekoku scored a couple. I guess we may well be united in hoping Huddersfield Town take all 3 points at the MK Dons tomorrow night?

Back to the last couple of years. I'll make an early party political point but one which I'm very proud of. It's been the Conservatives under successive Shadow Home Secretaries (Davis, Grieve and now Grayling) who have stood up for liberty and freedom for law abiding citizens.

We fought tooth and nail against Gordon Brown's draconian extension of 42 days detention which was more about trying to make the opposition appear to be soft on terrorism rather than tackling it effectively.

We've been opposing the most intrusive and potentially costly ID card system in the world. You and I will end up being fined for losing our cards or leaving them at home whilst the organised criminals and terrorists forge and steal false identities. Would you trust this government with your AFC Wimbledon membership number let alone your DNA or biometric data?

We welcome CCTV in strategically placed crime hot spots but not to the extent that there's now a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens in the UK. I studied Orwell's 1984 for O level back in 1984 and Big Brother is well and truly watching now and not the Channel 4 variety.

We have been opposing proposals for council paid snoopers to spy on our lifestyles, the rubbish in our wheelie bins and which school catchment area we're in. We have been gobsmacked by a governing party that lays out the red carpet for the premier of China allowing foreign security thugs to stifle lawful protest on our streets.

We have spoken up for freedom of speech whilst Labour strongmen throw out pensioners who dare to voice concerns at their party conference whilst the likes of Abu Hamza are left to incite violence and hatred.

Much of this occupies precious police time at a time when some crime, not all before Jacqui gets on the phone from her main home wherever that may be, is going up. Year on year in January, robberies involving knives or sharp instruments increased by 18%, domestic burglaries rose 4% and police-recorded drug offences increased by 9%. That's before we even talk about the 70 young people murdered violently on our streets last year.

Many surveys recently show that the number one issue for law abiding folk is the recession and it's consequences but our ability to prosper and enjoy what I hope will be a Conservative led recovery will only be viable if we have our individual freedoms.

I hope that answers some of your questions,

King regards,
Jason

So, what did I think ? Well firstly and most crucially we've since agreed that the 4-0 Wimbledon win simply didn't happen - he must be confusing us with somebody else.

I'm not sure it would be fair to describe it entirely as a typical politician's response; I think it's a little too human for that. But, and it's a big "but", there is a great deal of what I believe really hacks off the public about politicians in here; namely an attempt to rip the opposition apart and very little about what his own party would do. This is in part symptomatic of the politicians' tendency to think that the quickest route to a vote is a negative one but also, it seems to me, a sign of a wider malaise in the Conservative Party when it comes to fighting for our freedom.

It's easy to fight when you're in Opposition; you just stand up and say "We don't agree". It's when you're in government, when you've got to put what you believe in to practice, when BBC News interviews every State-employed, Nanny-loving do-gooder it can lay its hands on, and when you've actually got something to lose, that the real passion and drive is needed. That's when you're tested to the limit. Many fail at that point, and I worry that Dave will fail there too.

I challenged Jason McCartney to say what the Conservatives would do - how they would find and stay on the long and demanding road back to freedom ? But his reply lacks that vision. Reasonable, you might say, for someone who has never even been an MP ? Perhaps, but if the Conservatives cared anything like as much as we need them to care about restoring our liberties, I'd have expected them to furnish their candidates with some sort of plan, a roadmap, which they could use to reassure us. Something, anything, that says how they're planning to reverse these years of socialism.

He seems like a nice guy. I'm sure he'd try and help me out with a constituency problem. He may make a very good MP. But is he, and is his party, capable of delivering on what we need most; the greatest sustained period of personal liberation this country has ever seen ?

Sadly, I doubt it.