Across the free world, those of us who define ourselves politically as conservatives share common values.
These include: a love of liberty; a belief in the importance of the family as a building block for society; pride in our nation; distrust of unnecessary state intervention in our lives; and an expectation that our police and armed forces will protect us from harm and defend our borders.
As I head to Washington, D.C., this week to address the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), I am concerned that these values are being undermined in the United States of America – thanks to left-wing ideas propagated across American cities and in the Biden White House.
Indeed, in too much of the free world, the left has been in charge for too long and the results are all too plain to see.
After some of the most wicked and evil acts imaginable were committed by Hamas, we have had the shocking sight of people marching on the streets protesting in favor of those terrorists, waving their flags and chanting their slogans.
Schools, university campuses and corporate boardrooms have become increasingly infected with the dogma of wokeism, whether that be the promotion of extreme identity politics, the obsession with zealous degrowth environmentalism or the pushing of so-called trans ideology that defies human biology.
And national borders are not only no longer respected, but they are no longer properly patrolled by the authorities to protect us from those with malign intentions seeking to penetrate them.
Even in Britain – one of the few countries in the West with conservatives still in power – the left has successfully weaponized the courts as activist lawyers prevent the government from deporting illegal immigrants.
It is not enough simply to will conservative policies – we need to battle the malign ideas of the left. This means an end to triangulation and splitting the difference which leads to the appeasement of extremists.
I have come to the conclusion that the West is doomed unless conservatives win again and are prepared to take on the institutions that have been captured by the left.
It’s why my forthcoming book, reflecting on my decade serving in (and latterly presiding over) the British government and setting out the lessons we all need to learn, is called "Ten Years to Save the West."
And we should be under no illusion that restoring conservative common sense back into government and ripping up the woke agenda is going to be anything less than a serious struggle to free ourselves from the shackles of the global left.
Because the left doesn’t just fight at the ballot box and seek a mandate for their agenda when it is election time; their agents are only too active in public and private institutions and what we have come to know as the administrative state and the deep state.
I saw this for myself first hand as they sabotaged my efforts in Britain to cut taxes, reduce the size of government and restore democratic accountability.
So I come with a warning to America, in particular aimed at my friends and allies in the Republican Party – the sister party of the British Conservatives. This is not a normal political battle that we need to fight.
WOKE CULTURE HAS PUSHED THIS MOM TOO FAR
We need to channel the energy, the idealism and the determination of the Founding Fathers, the Chartists – and all of those who over the centuries have fought for popular democracy.
Our opponents, those advocates of the supposedly settled orthodoxy, will do all they can to prevent the cozy status quo from being overturned.
And not only will the left-wing elites work with their counterparts in nations like the U.S. and the U.K. – but they will be aided and abetted by our enemies in China, Iran and Russia, all of whom would like nothing more than to see Western societies undermined from within.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
This is why we need to see conservatives elected to office at every opportunity.
And in a vital election year for the U.S., it is why we don't just need a conservative in the White House. We need one who is able to take on the deep rot of the deep state and lead the free world.