This could just as easily be from the US right
When politicians address them with questions such as
"How do we repair the economy?", "How do we reform our educational system?", "How do we ensure a fair deal for pensioners?",
there is one word in all such questions that stands out for them, and that word is "we". Who are we, what holds us together, and how do we stay together so as to bear our burdens as a community?
For conservatism is about national identity. It is only in the context of a first-person plural that the questions – economic questions included – make sense, or open themselves to democratic argument.
Our situation today mirrors that faced by Burke. Now, as then,
abstract ideas and utopian schemes threaten to displace practical wisdom from the political process. Instead of the common law of England we have
the abstract idea of human rights, slapped upon us by European courts whose judges care nothing for our unique social fabric. Instead of our inherited freedoms
we have laws forbidding "hate speech" and discrimination that can be used to control what we say and what we do in ever more intrusive ways. The primary institutions of civil society – marriage and the family – have no clear endorsement from our new political class. Most importantly,
our parliament has, without consulting the people, handed over sovereignty to Europe, thereby losing control of our borders and our collective assets, the welfare state included.
Nevertheless, it seems unaware that
in the hearts of conservative voters,
social continuity and national identity take precedence over all other issues. Only now, when
wave after wave of immigrants seek the benefit of our hard-won assets and freedoms, do the people fully grasp what loss of sovereignty means. And still the party hesitates to reverse the policies that brought us to this pass, while the old guard of Europeanists defend those policies in economic terms, seemingly unaware that
the question is not about economics at all.
In other matters, too, it is not the economic cost that concerns the conservative voter but the nation and our attachment to it. Not understanding this,
the government has embarked on a politically disastrous environmental programme. For two centuries the English countryside has been an icon of national identity and the loved reminder of our island home. Yet the government is bent on
littering the hills with wind turbines and the valleys with high speed railways. Conservative voters tend to believe that the "climate change" agenda has been foisted upon us by an unaccountable lobby of politicised intellectuals. But the government has yet to agree with them, and meanwhile is prepared to sacrifice the landscape if that helps to keep the lobbyists quiet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/11/identity-family-marriage-conservative-values-betrayed
It sure seems that conservatives in every country read from exactly the same script. It is eerie who similar this sounds to what we hear from republicans every day here.
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