BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN 

Britain has become too accustomed to cycles of Big Government splurge under Labour followed by Tory Governments cleaning up the mess – only for Labour to eventually get voted in and spend the country to oblivion again.

Now we have a chance to stop this senseless cycle.

Imagine if – instead of Labour coming to power after the Tories have swept up their mess – a new party came to power which continued with Tory economic realism but sought to implement a less stiff form of capitalism on the British people; a capitalism with a soul; a capitalism inspiring philanthrocapitalists to fork out for social projects; a capitalism which picked up those genuinely vulnerable people in British society who the Tories’ ideologies had failed to address; a suite of capitalist policies that inspired the centre-left in Britain to actually go out and vote for it.

We have a chance right now to kill off socialism in Britain. To end all the harm that it has done to the British economy. To end Labour’s conveyor belt of dependency – expectant victims hooked on welfare. To sort out the bottomless pit which is the inefficient NHS – not a national triumph, as Cameron called it, but a national embarrassment; a bloated, inefficient lure for admin jobsworths and waste; appallingly, the fifth largest employer on the globe.

Labour nowadays lives in la-la land. It has become a magnet for incompetents – the likes of Diane Abbot and Angela Rayner are surely the least gifted people ever to occupy the Opposition front benches, while Jeremy Corbyn and Jon McDonnell don’t even amount to useful idiots; they have about as much chance of getting into government as a rocking horse has of defecating.

As for the last remaining electable “Blairites” –Keir Starmer and Dan Jarvis are hardly incompetent but they are scarcely the miracle workers currently required to sew Labour back together again now it has come apart at so many seams.

The working class has been irreparably betrayed by Labour. What arrogant Labour did to the Co-operative Bank surely best sums up their taking the working class vote for granted.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats – down to 8 MP’s – are led by a talentless George-Formby-lookalike. Rather than get anywhere near government again, they seem more likely to provide the next seriously gross sex scandal in that weird Lib Dem tradition of perverts Cyril Smith, Mark Oaten and, allegedly, Baron Rennard.

Paddy Ashdown perfectly captured the contemporary relevance of the Lib Dems when he openly admitted that, post-Brexit, ‘I turned to my wife and said, it’s not our country any more’.

UKIP meanwhile still has a following. But one wonders how much longer a party that sacks its new leader every fortnight can struggle on?

The party is facing large debts, Marmite Farage is genuinely going to step down, UKIP has a fractured leadership and the Kippers have attracted some unprofessional sorts who – when they are not ranting on about gollywogs or claiming that widespread flooding across Britain was caused by the legalisation of gay marriage – seem to adopt the policy of right hook’em to any apparent resistance or threats.

As for the SNP, one wonders how long the independence excuse will wash with Scottish voters. Surely, they will wake up sooner or later – even those in a Buckie haze. Aside from the recent SNP intake looking as though they were randomly picked up from a bus stop in Barrhead and deposited in the Commons, as a party it cannot be too long before their dodgy links to extreme Islamism, Russia and Marxist activists are exposed. It’s rare for a month to pass when one of their number is not being charged for fraud.

The SNP don’t want the best for Scotland – they want Britain on its knees. Their performance in government – let’s face it, Scotland’s Government is half a London mayoralty at best – has been dire. Even with England’s ridiculous support of the SNP’s regressive socialist programme, Klebb is still making a frightful mess of things and her popularity drops every time she opens her wee Jimmy Krankie gob.

So, there is the need for a New Opposition – nationwide. And it doesn’t seem to be coming from the existing parties, although some of the personnel for such a new party could possibly come from existing parties on the one condition that they publicly denounced socialism and stood, come life or death, for the Union (personally I’d have them denounce fascism, libertarianism and plenty of other isms as well, but, hey, I’m a boring centrist).

The Conservative Party cleverly misuses its Conservative & Unionist title to suggest it unites the UK when the Union tag in its name is wholly due instead to the title of a political faction among the Liberal Party that opposed Home Rule for Ireland and later happened to ally with the Conservatives. The Tories have outlived every other major party in the world out of sheer instinct and spitzenfingergefühl. Most Tories face up to the reality that only a new party could compete across Scotland where the Tories are seen as a toxic English force.

As a Tory, I hate to say it but what Britain needs is a new party built around that 1997 centrist gusto of Tony Blair.

I do not for one minute suggest that a new party be built around the existing Tony Blair who has lost all attraction and whose recent demands for a second EU Referendum were welcomed by all Brexiteers because at that very moment they knew once and for all that the decision the British People had taken was truly irreversible.

Let us not forget that Tony Blair was highly electable. He won three elections, even surrounded by something of a rabble. Take Blair, ditch his faux socialism, remove the cynical immigration and warmongering aspects of his policies, renegotiate PFI, cut out that awful New Labour cronyism and get real with the NHS – you have an election-winning party, which could genuinely compete with the Tories, as well as complement the Tory efforts to build a sound economy when it is in power.

Who are the characters who would fill such a party?

There you face the biggest problem. The role of MP is not what it was. After the expenses scandal, repeat sex scandals involving the likes of “Let’s get this party started” Keith Vaz and the rise in the Commons of lacklustre individuals who would be mere tea deliverers in the private sector – think Cat Smith and Tom Watson – who would want to become an MP?

Nonetheless, the new party would be an endeavour worth undertaking. Labour would finally die a death and stop regressing Britain. The Lib Dems would be put out of their misery and could return to rambling in sandals with a bit of groping on the side. And UKIP could finally shut up shop and go down in history as purpose served.

Britain would have a chance to vomit out the “progressive” poison that has burdened it with red tape and damaged British society for so long now. Socialists creating layer upon layer of Big Government has cost us dear over the years.

The tragedy is this: imagine if such a pragmatic and centrist opposition had existed for the last one hundred years. Now imagine what Britain’s growth would have been over that time. Think of the calamities that could have been avoided. Think of the lack of requirement for welfare. Just imagine the progress that would have been achieved if the socialist do-gooders had not wormed their way into government, the BBC, universities, charities and quangos.

There is no point in regretting the past. It is time to build a new party now for the future to compete with – and build on – the sound, patriotic work of the long-surviving Tories.