Why Write a Politics Blog?
the serious bit

As I mentioned in the welcome to this blog, I’ve been a lifelong Conservative. Yet for much of my early life, I was what you might call a “lapsed Tory.” Deep down, I believed in the values, the personal responsibility, the respect for tradition, the quiet pride in our country but for years, I treated politics like background noise. My teenage life was a blur of motorbikes, girls, music and parties. I spent evenings with the engine of my bike rumbling under my hands, or laughing with friends over a pint of whatever we could get our hands on, while politics drifted past me, distant and irrelevant. Voting? Ha. The idea of putting that little cross on a piece of paper seemed almost laughable. I knew what I believed… I just didn’t care enough to act on it.

 

Everything changed when I was 20 and Margaret Thatcher was in her third year in No10 and the Falklands War was on every news channel and on the front page of every newspaper. I remember it clearly: sitting in front of the TV, a beer in hand and seeing her stride across the screen, sharp and uncompromising. I couldn’t look away. There was something magnetic about her, this unshakeable sense of purpose, this certainty that the choices she made mattered in ways I hadn’t yet imagined. I leaned forward, almost whispering to myself, “That’s how it’s done.” For the first time, politics wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t some distant adult preoccupation. It was immediate, it was real, and it was powerful.

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I began noticing things I had ignored before: the debates in the newspapers, the arguments between my parents, when they spoke, the subtle shifts in the streets and shops around me. It fascinated me. I wanted to understand it, not just observe it. And while my teenage distractions continued there were still bikes to ride, parties to attend, girls to chase, the seed had been planted. Thatcher’s conviction ignited a spark that had been smoldering quietly all along.

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For years after that, my Conservative ideals lay dormant, like a bike left in a garage, engine silent but ready. I argued with friends in pubs, I nodded along in conversations, I even sneered at the policies I disagreed with but I didn’t voice them and I didn’t vote. I didn’t do the one simple thing that would have aligned my actions with my beliefs.

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Looking back, I see now that my journey wasn’t about suddenly discovering Conservative principles, they were always there, quietly guiding me. It was about awakening to their importance, about learning that conviction without engagement is like a bike engine full of fuel but never started. My teenage distractions didn’t disappear overnight, but that spark lit a fire that has never gone out. Thatcher had shown me the power of purpose, and the late ’90s taught me the power of action, albeit, not mine. Together, they shaped the Conservative I am today.

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 It wasn’t until 1998, a year after Tony Blair swept into power, that those dormant values began to stir once more. The years that followed were marked by a series of transformative and, at times, troubling policies: a decade of increasingly open borders, controversial military interventions justified by misleading claims about weapons of mass destruction, and the systematic misuse of intelligence to advance political agendas. Many of us at the time, myself included, could already foresee the disastrous consequences these decisions would have on the country. Looking back now, it offers little comfort, even after all these years, to be able to say, with a sense of grim vindication, “I told you so.” The damage had been done, and hindsight, however accurate, cannot undo it.

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