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Labour Party Too: How the Conservatives Lost Their Soul After Cameron

by Ram ben Ze'ev


Labour Party Too: How the Conservatives Lost Their Soul After Cameron
Labour Party Too: How the Conservatives Lost Their Soul After Cameron

It is often said that a nation gets the government it deserves. But what happens when a political party ceases to deserve its own name?


From my perspective, the last truly convincing conservative to lead the Conservative Party was David Cameron.


One need not have agreed with all his policies — I didn’t — to acknowledge that he embodied the essential characteristics of a conservative leader: restraint, pragmatism, economic stewardship, and a cautious respect for tradition alongside measured reform. But more importantly, he understood Britain's place in the world and the consequences of cutting ourselves off from it.



Cameron campaigned — rightly — against Brexit. It wasn’t merely a policy preference. It was the formal and logical stance of the Conservative Party at the time. The party of Thatcher and Macmillan had always, with some internal friction, understood that Britain's prosperity depended not on isolationism but on global engagement — and yes, that included the European Union.


The 2016 referendum — a reckless capitulation to a loud minority within the party and to the populist press — changed all that. It was an ill‑conceived gamble, put to a public insufficiently briefed and deliberately misled. Sixteen-year-olds — many of whom would bear the long-term consequences of the vote — were excluded. Over one million EU citizens living, working, and paying tax in the UK were denied a voice. And so, a narrow and confused majority was manufactured.


David Cameron, to his credit, did the honourable thing. He resigned. He recognised that the result, however flawed, required leadership committed to delivering what he himself believed was a national mistake. That single act marked the final breath of genuine Conservative leadership in Britain.


What has followed since is a grotesque masquerade. A Conservative Party in name only.


Politically, economically, and philosophically, the post-Brexit Conservative Party has been acting not as a centre-right force for responsible governance but as a populist imitation of the Labour Party — a Labour Party Too.



Economic mismanagement, central planning dressed up as nationalism, reckless spending coupled with performative patriotism, and a culture war masquerading as policy — these are not the tenets of conservatism. They are the tell-tale symptoms of ideological drift and political cowardice. Brexit was sold as a “return to sovereignty,” but what we received was a slow, painfully slow form of national suicide — bureaucratic barriers, weakened trade, and the loss of young talent that once flowed freely across borders.


And yet the masquerade continues. Leadership after leadership has failed to reverse course.


Each promises some new version of “true Brexit,” a fantasy destination on a journey that leads only deeper into isolation and economic stagnation. The Conservative Party now exists in service of a myth — that Brexit was the will of the people, that it was cleanly won, and that it can somehow be made to work if only the right slogan is found.


But here is the truth, plain and unwelcome as it may be: A party that defends borders at the cost of prosperity is not conservative. A party that waves the Union Jack while dismantling the union's economic future is not conservative. A party that sacrifices expertise for populism, evidence for emotion, and long-term national interest for short-term applause — is not conservative.



It is time to call things by their real names. The Conservative Party, post‑Cameron, is not conservative. It is a populist, nationalistic, backward‑looking, internally divided outfit that has more in common with mid‑90s Labour than with any recognisable right-of-centre tradition. It is, in every meaningful way, a Labour Party Too.


If this nation is to recover — economically, diplomatically, and politically — it will not be through allegiance to labels. It will be through honesty, clarity, and courage. And perhaps, just perhaps, through the formation of something genuinely conservative once again.


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