There is a problem with your recommendations for the Tories – firstly, they have no conservative principles to argue for anymore. Secondly, knowing this, and remembering their utterly abysmal record when it comes to keeping electoral promise, nobody will believe them.

In twelve years they reneged on everything except the promise to hold the EU referendum, which they then spent years trying to wriggle out of, and they’ve enacted about two-thirds of Brexit. Every other promise was a deliberate lie.

Therefore, promises will not be enough – there must be action. They’ve got eighteen months. Better get on with it.

Not buying it. The Tories are losing people like me, who stayed with them in 1997, a period when not a few MPs on the payroll were outright corrupt, selling themselves to the highest bidder to promote causes in government circles as the party headed for a huge defeat. We could just about put up with that, but we cannot put up with the complete nullity they have become in a very short space of time. They were at the wheel when fate presented this country with the greatest challenge since WWII, and instead of rising to this challenge with independent thinking and gumption, they have been found wanting.

“They have chased focus groups and polls until they have come out of the rabbit hole believing in nothing.”

This is the core problem with the Conservative movement across the west. They don’t believe in anything. The GOP has won some battles by opposing hardcore wokeism, but Trump has hurt their brand.

The Tories in Britain and Canada are pathetic. You can’t distinguish between them and Liberals and Labour. Making a half-hearted, occasional attempt at outrage only makes them look weak.

At least the GOP has Desantis. He has shown that actions speak louder than words. He turned a purple state deep red by standing up for the working and middle class. Conservatives everywhere need to take note.

Interesting perspective but it lacks engagement with the crucial question of our time: do you believe in, and align with, the globalist, utopian narrative of “transformative” policies to “reimagine” society, economy, and politics for a “sustainable” and more “equitable” future in which man has become not only the master of the natural environment, but over his own psychology and genetically in-built tendency towards competition with others – and all of the creative and destructive forces that it unleashes?

None of that is conservative. It’s radically “progressive”, following a eugenicist line well-trodden by the Huxleys, HG Wells, Bernard Shaw and others. But nominal conservatives, in the UK and elsewhere, detached from both present-day reality and historical understanding, seem totally oblivious to this and so enthusiastically jump aboard.

Naturally, like all attempts to buck human nature and defy physical limits (twentieth century Europe offers some obvious examples), these plans won’t work and they will do more harm than good – the only question is when it will come to be commonly acknowledged that they are failing and harmful. Once that tipping point is reached all of these politicians and parties – right, left, or centre – associated will become throughly discredited and unelectable.

And what then? The scope for the most virulent authoritarian populism – of hard left or hard right varieties – that would deconstruct liberal democracy itself should be obvious. As should (and the two are not mutually exclusive) be the possibility of foreign occupation, perhaps militarily or more likely, today’s world, through the subtler means of information control.

Actual conservatives and actual progressives alike, if they have any integrity or honour or care about the country that they are going to bequeath their children, must now find the humility and courage to think again, stand up to be counted, and get off the globalist juggernaut that is accelerating off a cliff.

“Will conservatism survive 2023” presupposes the Tories are conservative, which they clearly ain’t regardless of the party name. They are a Blue Blairite party competing with a Red Blairite party.
Closest thing to an actual conservative party in UK politics right now is Reform UK.

“…and by shedding the chaos and dishonesty of some of its recent incarnations…”
I loved this summary, because it is so right. That is exactly what the Conservatives must do to succeed – but I believe they are quite incapable of doing it – which is why I want to see them lose big in 2024 and go out of business. We need the resulting vacuum for something better to fill.
As long as any dregs of the miserable Left/liberal/Metropolitan sneering class remain in the party, the Conservatives are doomed to remain forever “Starmer lite”, which is what they have become. Those Leftists need to have the honesty to find their place in politics instead of being a toxic cancer in the Conservative party. And they won’t do it – they don’t have the guts. So they need to be cleansed by the fire of destructive defeat.
I don’t know what will remain, but anything is better than two almost identical weak, dishonest, parties dancing on the head of a pin, chasing what liberal/metropolitan focus-groups tell them is their electorate.
They are wrong. The British people are better than this, and we deserve better than this.

Dear Mr Oxley,
Your idealism (which does you credit) fails to perceive the elephants in the room.

Our country now, like other western societies, is in a state of extreme spiritual decay.

This expresses itself politically as acute laziness and cowardice on the part of most members of the public, no less than in their MPs.

(Emotionally it is seen in the popularity of ‘partnerships’ rather than marriage.)

Most people are not willing to make any effort concerning their representation in Parliament; so they just keep seesawing away at choosing first one of the two main legacy parties, then the other, though it has very long been seen and known that both Labour and the Conservatives offer nothing of major import which the electorate actually wants.

The dreadful fruit of this inertia will probably continue till either there is a complete economic collapse (highly likely, soon) or the United Kingdom becomes first a Third World country (this is already well on the way) and then a failed state.

Offering advice to any of the parties currently in the House of Commons credits them with all sorts of qualities they do not possess: a tendency to do any real thinking, to care about principles and issues, courage and virtue.

Its simple. The Tories have utterly failed to deliver on almost everything. To win the next election they need to
-stop the dingies crossing the Channel, and immediately deport everyone that arrives like that, plus the 40,000 they have in hotels. If that means withdrawing fromt he ECHR and the UN Refugee Treaty, and abolishing the Supreme court, then so be it.
-stop messing about with Northern ireland. Tell the Eu what the deal is and if they disagree, walk away and ignore them,
-Hammer the energy companies with a punative windfall tax on all profits over and above 2019 levels.
-Face down the greedy unions and change the law so they cant use striking to try and bring down a government
-Cease all benefits to households with incomes of more than £75k . If yoyu cant live on £75k then you need Home economics lessons, not taxpayers money.
Unless some or all of these are seen to have occurred , the Tories are toast at the next election.

The author’s diagnosis for fixing conservativism is for conservatives to be less conservatism, seemingly failing to notice that they have already tried this. Ceding ground on same sex marriage, immigration and other cultural issues should make obvious that this was a failure. By trying to please everyone the right pleased noone. Victims of its own folly in failing to stem the flow of university graduates and ethnic minorities, the right’s answer should be to fall victim to its own Vatican II? Madness. Conservatism, like wider liberalism, is a dying stagnant beast. Put it out of its misery and move on.

Conservatism having something to do with representing the wishes of the people rather than representing oligopolistic corporations seems to be one of the big issues

Contrary to the author’s opening statement, 2022 was a year to remember for the Right in Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Denmark and it looks like 2023 will be a good year in NZ too.
Perhaps the difference between these countries and Britain is that they have right-wing parties that actually espouse right-wing policies.

Short answer, the Conservative party will not survive. However, most people in UK are conservative by nature, so conservatism will survive. The pity is that the People are not really represented in Parliament. The Party system is a big con trick. They represent the party elite, globalists and the establishment.
“Equally, they are finding their support in diminishing demographics — older, whiter, and less well-educated than the rest of the population.”
Actually, the older, whiter people are the most educated, by life and experience. Today’s generationn just think they know better, when in fact they know nothing due to having minds that exclude any thoughts different to their own.

Interesting article, although I think it missed one important aspect – perhaps the most important – that underpins conservative political power: culture. Socially conservative culture is at least informed by, if not led by religion. ‘Our’ religion is in steep decline. IMO this is the real reason for the mess the Conservatives are in: they are struggling for political principles because they (and we) no longer hold the unifying moral principles of their/our grandfathers, which were essentially from Christianity.
You’re welcome to argue that this is a good thing, but I’m not sure it’s useful to believe that and still think you’re a conservative. What exactly are you seeking to conserve, and why?
The author has written an accurate article, but he shows his blind spot in the above regard by suggesting that the new conservatism “… can bring with it an expansive view of the family, one that sees gay marriage as a win for tradition rather than a kick against it.”
Again, you’re more than welcome to hold this position, but it’s not conservative; it’s liberal and progressive. Social conservatives think the position is absurd. You might as well say that the new conservatism “should welcome Trans ideology as a win for traditional gender roles rather than a kick against them”.
Saying this sort of thing may or may not win across floating voters whose principles are essentially liberal or progressive (personally I doubt it – in the UK at least, such people increasingly and instinctively despise the Tories). But social conservatives will just laugh. (Privately, of course: it’s dangerous – if not practically illegal – to laugh at this stuff publicly).

The Tories’ natural base of social conservatives is shrunken and the Tories don’t want to represent them anyway. The culture wars have been broadly lost. The Tories know this and so have become progressives who only believe in banking: good riddance to them. The rest of us need to accept that the prevailing culture of individualism and competing interest groups, sans traditional moral principles, simply leads to a scrap for power. Personally I expect this will lead to increased levels of civil unrest/violence between groups, the only alternative to which will be some form of centralised tyranny.
(Symptomatic of the latter, the police in Britain recently arrested a woman on suspicion of silently praying, without any exterior sign, on a public street. Literally a Thought Crime. This ought to worry everyone).
The future? Violence or tyranny or both, folks. And probably poverty for most of us, either way.

There is no salvation in democracy.