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I take you're point about the Conservative Party's policies irl, but I still maintain that upholding the rule of law is a true conservative value.
They included it in their 5 British values. It is often cited as one of the positives of Empire. It has facilitated trade, commerce and underpins capitalism.
Imo it is a fantastic indicator of how unconservative Johnson's government was. It was pure right of might.
I'd also go so far as to say it is one of the clearest demarcations of the line between centre right and beyond. When you legislate to change facts to achieve a policy aim, that is firmly over the line.
hugo7-
Isn't it the shift from conservatism to populism?
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Well, my principal objection was to "rather than making more laws", which really hasn't been true for decades. The lack of respect for the actual law has taken a bit longer to develop, although the seeds were there in the 80s.
Imo it is a fantastic indicator of how unconservative Johnson's government was.
Unconservative in the old sense, but full of rabid Thatcherites (the only people left in the party who were still willing to work with Johnson). Before Thatcher, the Conservative party had been largely suspicious of ideology; she was an ideologue, and the fight between her ideological followers and the old pragmatists has been one of the principal themes of the last four and a half decades. Which @greentricky described succinctly.
greentricky
itsbruce
If this was ever true, it hasn't been for a long time. It's a bit like censorship, where left and right parties claim the other is more censorial because they call theirs "common sense" or "common decency" and the other's censorship.
The Thatcher government distrusted the legal system so much that laws telling judges what sentences they could apply to specific crimes became a major activity; more recent Tory governments have simply decided that the legal system is their enemy. Privatisation also meant that primary legislation was required to set standards and governance rules for things that had previously simply been governed.