Albie Amankona: If Tory moderates are serious then ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ must die

Albie Amankona is a broadcaster, financial analyst, vice-chair of LGBT+ Conservatives, and co-founder of Conservatives Against Racism.

Ruth Davidson and Andy Street are right: there are millions of “politically homeless” voters who feel unrepresented, disconnected and unconvinced that British politics is capable of governing competently. Their new project to win those voters back to the centre-right is therefore a necessary intervention.

But if this moderate movement is to be taken seriously, if it is about delivery rather than posture, then it must kill “socially liberal, fiscally conservative”.

That slogan no longer describes a governing philosophy. It disguises the central failure of modern One Nation conservatism: a preference for tone over outcomes.

Street and Davidson talk about competence, place, civic pride and bread-and-butter economics. All welcome. But competence without clarity is fragile. Civic pride without common culture and customs is hollow. The “politically homeless” voters Street and Davidson want to attract are not looking for atmospherics. They are looking for solutions to problems they can feel.

Nowhere is this clearer than immigration and integration. These cannot be parked in the name of civic harmony. A genuinely restrictive immigration policy and a muscular integration strategy are not optional extras. They are the foundation of any place-based conservatism. You cannot talk credibly about wages, housing, public services or social cohesion while refusing to confront the single pressure voters most clearly identify.

Here is the irony, the “wet” moderates delivered more right-wing outcomes than the faux “dry” hardliners who followed them.

Net migration was lowest this century from the actions of “moderate” home secretaries like Theresa May and James Cleverly. By contrast, the Johnson era’s self-styled culture warriors presided over record-high immigration after Brexit. The Boriswave was a direct result of policy choices made under Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, and Suella Braverman. Damian Green did more to cut migration than Robert Jenrick.

The same inversion applies on spending. The period of greatest fiscal restraint came under “moderate” chancellors and prime Ministers like David Cameron and George Osborne. With welfare cuts too deep even for veteran right-winger, Iain Duncan Smith. They weren’t perfect, but they were materially more fiscally conservative and more right-wing in outcomes than what followed.

The post-Boris Johnson Tory administrations, enthusiastically cheer-led by many of today’s Reform defectors, did not govern as dry Thatcherites. They cosplayed as them. On immigration, spending and the size of the state, the Cameron-era leadership was more right-wing on virtually every measurable metric.

Yet One Nation conservatism refuses to own its right-wing history, paralysed by a fear of sounding “mean” or “cruel”. That confusion is sustained by continued reliance on “socially liberal, fiscally conservative”, a slogan that made sense two decades ago but is now obsolete.

The culture war it was designed to defuse is over. Four female leaders. Two non-white leaders. Equal marriage settled law. The British conservative movement, Reform UK included, is now tolerant by default: multiracial, secular, gender-agnostic and gay-friendly.

Today, “social liberalism” no longer means tolerance. It denotes an institutional ideology that treats disagreement as harm, enforcement as cruelty and group identity as a substitute for merit. It is expressed through anti-meritocratic DEI bureaucracies, race and gender essentialism, the policing of language and thought, fictional net zero economics, and an intolerance of dissent dressed up as compassion. One Nation conservatism has been slow and timid in confronting this, defaulting to the defence of institutions that are now openly hostile to conservative instincts.

Voters did not defect because language was insufficiently kind. They defected because outcomes were incoherent. Rhetoric dialled up but immigration surged, bureaucracies ballooned, net zero drifted into fantasy, and the justice system forgot the “justice” part. Post-Brexit vibes politics produced delivery failure.

Davidson and Street are right to stress civic pride and cohesion. However, cohesion is not generated by reassurance. It requires rules, expectations and enforcement. Integration is not a polite request. It is a requirement.

May, hardly a populist, argued for leaving the ECHR while Lee Anderson was still a Labour councillor. Borders, law and sovereignty are not culture-war distractions – they are the preconditions for a free society.

In three consecutive leadership contests, One Nation candidates failed to reach the final two. That is not bad luck or factional bias. It is a rejection of moderation without muscle.

If Street and Davidson want their project to succeed, they must say clearly what they are prepared to abandon. Killing “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” is necessary but not sufficient. What replaces it must be more than a change in language. It has to be a set of choices.

Clear positions on the questions that decide whether a governing philosophy exists at all. What does a genuinely restrictive immigration policy look like in practice? What does enforcement mean? What institutions need shrinking rather than managing? Where does the state step back, and where does it enforce?

What does “fiscally conservative” mean in a world of debt dependency, ageing populations and rising defence costs. What gets cut, what gets reformed, and what is protected? How is planning liberalised in practice, and homes actually built? How is infrastructure delivered without chronic overspend and pointless overbuild?

What integration actually requires? What the obligations of citizenship are? What the state will no longer tolerate? Until those questions are answered, One Nation conservatism remains a temperament rather than a governing philosophy. Pleasant, well-meaning, but electorally weightless.

If Street and Davidson’s new centrist conservative clan is to be taken seriously, “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” must die. What replaces it must be pragmatic, radical and unapologetically conservative