Conserve My Heart

Ayn Rand is considered one of the founding philosophers of modern conservatism, her ideas of a small state, protection of civil liberties and a free market were, until quite recently, what conservatives around the world stood for. She was also a lover of cats and contributed to a cat-related magazine in 1966;

“You ask whether I own cats or simply enjoy them, or both. The answer is: both. I love cats in general and own two in particular. Youask: “We are assuming that you have an interest in cats, or was your subscription strictly objective?” –“My subscription was strictly objective because I have an interest in cats. I can demonstrate objectively that cats are of great value, and the charterissue of Cat Fancy magazine can serve as part of the evidence.” As the decade concludes in a rather epic fashion with a general election, I think it is time to reflect on thejourney that made me a conservative, a journey that has been about one decade long. So, I will tell you how I ended up at the count on the 12th of December hoping for a Conservative majority government.

I first got into politics around 10 years ago at the 2010 general election. At that time I was just interested to see how things were progressing, I didn't have any strong feelings either way, I was just curious to see who the Prime Minister would be after the election and it turned out that it took 5 days for us to finally have a change of government. This was unusual considering thatfor most of my life there had been a Labour government and you either had a Prime Minister with a majority in the House of Commons or you did not. But we were in the position of having one that did not have a majority in the House of Commons for 5 days so I wondered how things would progress. I was somewhat disappointed that it was resolved so quickly with the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition but I just left it at that for the next year or so before getting back into it.

Like most young people my age, I'd experimented with the ideas Socialism. This started when I was buying a Mars bar with one of my friends after lunch at the Abertay University shop, near my old high school. I noticed the price of a Mars bar had gone up from 70p to 80p which was quite annoying considering I hadn't budgeted for spending the extra 10p. I asked my friend why the prices had gone up and he said it was because of capitalism. So I immediately concluded from that; capitalism was a bad system and that we should change the system so that putting up the price of a Mars bar is illegal. Although, that overlooked many of the factors of Socialism, for example, the fact that socialists would probably tax the Mars bar and thus make it more expensive, as they are planning to do with the sugar tax,but it was a simplistic worldview. I just thought that everything should be fixed in a way that was affordable for everyone else. I do still believe everything should be affordablefor anyone who wants it but I don't think the government makes things any better. I also noticed a lot of anger around me towards public spending cuts which many believed were making things less affordable for the poor. I also thought the coalition government was illegitimate since it hadn't been voted in with the majority and I was also angry about the tuition feerise even though it didn't affect me.

It wasn't until about a year later that I started learning about the rise of communism in history and about the Cold War that ensued after it. I did a lot of research into the history of the Soviet Union from the 1917 revolution to the start and finish of the Cold War as part of my ‘Intermediate 2’ history course. Part of that course was a trip to Berlin where we saw what remained of the Berlin wall and I noticed thaton one side of what was once the wall looked far better and developed; there were skyscrapers, office buildings and affluent houses on that side. On the other, I noticed it was flat concrete there wasn't much to see. I went into the communist museum thereand learned a bit about what life was like under communism with the secret police, grey concrete buildings and people often didn't have enough to eat, the shops were empty and the fridges were empty. People had to get by on the most basic of things necessary to survive and not anymore. When I returned home, I watched a documentary about the rise of Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s: it was called ‘The Night the Government Fell’ and I saw that before the rise of Mrs Thatcher the country was in dire straits; the dead were left unburied there was a three day week for electricity and everybody seemed to be going on strike. After the vote of no confidence where James Callaghan’s government lost by one vote thanks to the Scottish Nationalist Party. A fact they try so hard to forget, Mrs Thatcher was elected into power in 1979 and brought radical new ideas to the country: ideas of free markets and property ownership, they had been dormant for about 80 years in the country's thinking, since the rise of the welfare state and the ‘something must be done’ mentality which created a culture of government intervention.

This also began my desire for Britain to leave the European Union, I saw the EU as something that Mrs Thatcher had opposed inher later years for the reason that it imposed the bureaucracy that she had worked so hard to roll back. The EU does not give people control over their own lives it is governed by an unelected commission who's final word is law and a parliament that can do little moresay yes to a piece of legislation that the Commission proposes or say no to it and send it back to the commission ending up with a slightly watered-down version which they will probably vote yes to in the end. I did not consider this a model for democracyand certainly not compatible with British ideals of parliamentary supremacy. When David Cameron announced the referendum about this time I was very much in support of it going ahead.

The Scottish Independence referendum was when I first became politically active. In August that year, I decided to do my first bits of political volunteering; I got involved in the ‘Vote No’ campaign, ironically enough many of the activists I worked with were Labour supporters and members. Although the party now does not support the union and seems to be becoming sympathetic to a second referendum. I was passionate that Scotland must remain within the United Kingdom and that's something I believed ever since I became politically aware. The main reason I believed it was not because of so-called ‘project fear’, I always thought we should be more positive about the union, I wanted it because I saw no reason why two nations that shared so much in common; speak the same language, watch the same television programmes, work for the same companies and fought side by side in two world wars should be torn asunder. I also found it hypocritical that the SNP wanted an independent Scotland to be in the EU despite saying that the purpose of independence was for Scotland to have the governments that we voted for. Why then would we be in the EU, where a government that we didn't vote for could override a government that we did?It seemed quite strange to me.

I finally joined the Conservative Party officially on the 1st of January 2015 but I had reservations about doing it in the past because many of my family were against them and there was little chance at that time of them winning in Scotland. When the election came that same year it was a disappointment, the Conservatives did not make much headway on the one seat they had gained in the previous election, however the SNP dominated taking 56 seats and so it's was understandable when all the mainstream UK parties lost all but one of their seats. It was that same year that I started university and became involved with the Aberdeen University Conservative and Unionist Association, an organisation that would dominate most of my time there.

My Conservative beliefs were further reinforced when the referendum was announced in 2016. I always believed that Britain should leave the EU but I knew that there may be some economic damage in doing so, therefore I decided to wait for David Cameron to return from Brussels with his renegotiation. I thought that it might put us in a better position in Europe but it turned out it was thin gruel,as Jacob Rees Mogg so well described it. I made up my mind that I was going to campaign for ‘Leave’ and got involved in active politics again. I can understand why the Brexit issue divided the Conservative Party and people who identified as Conservatives around the country: it is because a conservative case can be made for both staying in and leaving. The case for staying in would be that most Conservatives believe strongly in free trade and the EU is a vehicle of free trade in the continent of Europe. Conservatives also believe in a strong economy and staying in the EU would arguably strengthen that but it's more traditional Conservatives who value such things as national sovereignty and judicial independence from the EU who would vote leave. I always saw Brexit as a means to an end; the EU is, in my opinion, holding us back from our economic potential without EU rules and regulations which were designed for a different set of circumstances on the continent, then we could prosper. We could be Singapore without the sunshine; cut taxes, red tape regulations and create a more patriotic conservative country and, not only, that but have a chance to reintegrate with the Commonwealth. The nations we so, in my view, wrongly abandoned to be part of the European project which was never designed with us in mind, to begin with: You're better to stay with our own family of nations and that is Commonwealth. I met many lifelong friends over this campaign. I was pleased with the result but I never believed that Theresa May was the right person to implement it. I thought she was tooclose to the remaining camp to implement an effective Brexit.

Another reason why I am a conservative is because I believe British liberties and rights and the glorious revolution of 1689, both the people of Scotland and England established that there are certain inalienable rights that the state can not infringe upon,such as the right to freedom of speech and the right to elect parliaments to represent us. These principles I hold dear and I believed were being eroded by the liberal left. A good example of this is campus hate speech policies. It seems the left is now against having a debate. If they fear it may offendcertain groups of people,whether it does or doesn't is not important to them, it is just whether they perceive that it might be offensive. There is no excuse to sacrifice our hard-earned freedoms. If somebody wants to express unsavoury views then they have every right to and if somebody wants to express contrary views they too have a right to. That is how a democracy works. The other reason I was so against the liberal left is because in the aftermath of the referendum. Until roughly a few weeks ago, when they were soundly defeated in an election, they were open about wanting to overturn the results of a democratic referendum; they did not respect democracy when it didn't go their way. They wanted either a second referendum, where they banked we would vote to remain, have a Brexit in name only deal or just revoke ‘Article 50’ altogether as Jo Swinson proposed. These ideas go against what was decided in 2016 and that is why the people voted for the Conservative Party because they stood up for democracy.

I did continue to campaign for the Conservative Party,having friends who stood for council elections in 2017when the general election was called, whilstI thought it was the wrong decision. I believed Theresa May had a majority and she should not push her luck by holding an election. She should have used the majority she had to try and get Brexit done. Unfortunately, this did not happen. She sacrificed her majority in a futile attempt to increase it and, in normal circumstances, the Prime Minister who had done this would have no choice but to resign. Theresa May did not and that was another bad mistake.The results in Scotland were good. It was good to finally have some Conservative representation North of the border, including a ‘Brexiteer’ Member of Parliamentin Aberdeen South.

When the Brexit deal came in November 2018,I decided it may be time to leave theConservativeParty. I could not support this deal and I thought it was time for Mrs May to go when the vote of no confidence was called forher. I decided that if the party voted against her continuing as a leader then I would stay but if the party voted to keep her then I would have to leave. I left. If you are part of a team whoseleader you don’t support,then you should not be part of that team. This goes for many people in the Labour Party as well.

I set on a new path as an independent conservative. I still believed that we needed to leave the EU either with a good deal or with no deal, as Theresa May herself had said. We need to cut taxes and we needed to fight the battle for free speech, something that I felt the Conservative Party was not doing as well as it could be. I campaigned and voted for the Brexit Party at the European elections and I have no regrets about doing so. I believe that at the time, they were the only people who had a proper ‘Brexit’ in mind. This did trigger the leadership election of 2019 and I did feel some sympathy for Theresa May when she resigned knowing she could have spared herself all this if she just resigned 2 years earlier and the country would have been spared 2 years of uncertainty. When Boris Johnson came to the leadership I did view him with some scepticism. I wasn't sure if, having voted for Theresa May's deal on the 3rd time of asking, that he would try and negotiate a new deal or just recycle herold deal. When he won the premiership and did come back with a new and improved deal, I decided this was the best chance to get Brexit done so that's why I campaigned, again, for the Conservatives Party in the general election of 2019. While we did suffer losses in Scotland, we have a huge majority now in the UK parliament and we can finally get moving againingetting Brexit over the line.

The 2019 election may also be a turning point in the political philosophy ofthe Conservative Party: we may be moving away from Ayn Rand's limited state ideology. This is understandable,given that the majority was largely won by working-class voters, who favour more state intervention, but we should not forget that they will benefit from more freedom to create their own businesses and keep more of what they earn. That is how you raise people up and not drag them down to the lowest common denominator. The fight for free speech must not be forgotten either. Many conservative voters did so because they were fed up of being called racist, sexist, homophobic and so on, just for expressing commonly held beliefs. We must continue the fightback against the criminalisation of speech. I, writing for this magazine,and anyone else who publicly expresses their opinions areall in danger unless we live in a truly free society.

Composed by,

Derek Gardiner, Postgraduate of Law