Britons should stop “obsessing” over pronouns and “decolonising” the school curriculum, the Conservative Party chairman has urged – as he decried the “painful woke psychodrama” of activists across the West.
Oliver Dowden warned that institutional Left-wing ideology risked a collapse in resolve, as he became the first Tory chairman to make a speech in Washington for more than two decades.
Speaking at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative policy think tank which enjoyed a close relationship with Margaret Thatcher, he noted the UK and US are where the so-called “woke agenda” is being “pursued the most aggressively”.
“A West confident in its values would not be obsessing over pronouns or attempting to decolonise mathematics,” Mr Dowden said. “Rather difficult, you might think, when the numerals we use are Arabic, but I’ll leave that for others to explain.
“One of the perversities of this world view is that the imperial West is always at fault, even if it is standing up for a nation that experienced the horrors of life under an actual evil empire within living memory. And yet, day by day, that world view gains traction in elite circles.
“If all we hear is that our societies are monstrous, unjust and oppressive, why on earth would anyone fight to sustain them?”
Pledge to stop harassment on university campuses
Mr Dowden pledged that the Government “will stop the sinister phenomenon of academics or students who offend Left-wing orthodoxies being censored or harassed” amid the spread of cancel culture on university campuses.
It comes ahead of new guidance that will be issued later this week by Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, to safeguard political independence in schools and ensure the “balanced presentation of opposing views”.
Mr Dowden added: “We conservatives are on the side of people who believe that we are a force for good in the world. The US and the UK may certainly be very different societies, but we are joined by the same fundamental values.
“Neither of us can afford the luxury of indulging in this painful woke psychodrama. It will take courage to resist it, too many people have already fallen for the dismal argument that standing up for freedom is reactionary or that somehow it’s kind or virtuous to submit to these self-righteous dogmas.”
Call to ‘rein in the size of the state’
The Tory chairman proceeded to quote a speech given by Baroness Thatcher at the Heritage Foundation in 1997, when she pleaded with America to join British leaders in making the “case for Western unity”.
In a subsequent question and answer session, Mr Dowden described himself as “unashamedly a child of Thatcher”, having attended a partially-selective comprehensive school.
And in echoes of Steve Barclay’s pledge to return to low-tax conservatism, Mr Dowden said: “It has to be the case, and you hear [this] from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, that we have reached a high watermark of the size of the state.
“We now need to embark on the course of making sure we rein in the size of the state which in turn allows us to cut taxes. Those are the basic conservative principles and I think people see a return to those in the coming years from the Government.”
