On conservatism and the Conservatives
The Conservative Party cannot take its correct role as custodian when it prefers to be auctioneer, flogging the nation’s assets to the highest bidder and encouraging hyenas to pick at the unsold lots.
Imagine for a second you find yourself alone in strange land. You do not know the language, and from what you can tell, some of the natives are speaking Chinese, others something that sounds like Arabic, and yet others are talking a Slavic tongue. The people’s mannerisms and gestures all appear different from each other’s and are alien to you. The buildings are of forms and materials that you have never seen, and there appears to be no unifying style of architecture. The cities are arranged so strangely that you feel as though you are inside an optical illusion. The food is weird, with mysterious smells, ingredients, colours and textures. You certainly have no way to comprehend this land’s governance or law, communities or neighbourhoods, morality or manners, art or industry, or what’s likely to lead to success or failure in your new life – and you find it difficult to understand how the residents do, either, so different is each individual’s language, wont and behaviour from the others.
In such a place, in such circumstances, you would spend most of your time fumbling from one interaction to the next, making mistake after mistake, probably breaking laws and taboos, upsetting or offending the residents, and almost certainly lonely and discombobulated. The higher reaches of Maslow’s pyramid of needs – finding love and companionship, gaining prestige and fulfilling your potential – would be far beyond your grasp.
Our shared culture is important and worth preserving. The books we read and music we hear, games we play and nursery rhymes we sing, beer we drink and pubs we visit; our history, stories, and language; our great triumphs and wretched defeats; our political system and law are cumulatively a brightly shining beacon our subconsciouses use to guide our actions and behaviour. They provide the shared context and understanding we need to trust one another and live generously with our neighbours.
This is true of all cultures, but Britain has been particularly blessed. It would be easy to contrast our culture to those of, say, Afghanistan or Myanmar, and conclude we are grateful to be a son or daughter of Britain. Yet we should feel lucky compared with even other developed nations. The Common Law is the expression of the traditions, experiences and attitudes of the people, rather than the application of abstract philosophy. Jury trials put the accused’s fate in the hands of his peers, not a career magistrate or judge who may fall under the influence of the political agenda. The beautiful, mercurial and ominously powerful grey waters that surround our island have for centuries protected us from a world in which shifting borders, annexations, relentlessly simmering ancient enmities, and the immediate and tangible effects of realpolitik are the usual state of national existence. This has made room for a society in which trust could flourish, gentility prevail and ancient traditions continue, free from the invasions, occupations, revolutions or external domination that characterise the history of less fortunate nations.
Edmund Burke said that the social contract was not so much between the government and the people, but the obligation of those living to those who came before them and those yet to be born. We inherited from our fathers everything we see, touch, smell and experience; every rocky cove, verdant field, ribbon of sand, and rugged fell; every spire, building, monument and street; every word, law, legal precent and form of governance. They may not be perfect, but the essence of conservativism must surely be a respect for the work of our fathers and the humility to realise we might not know better. The conservative therefore sees himself less as a master of his nation than its custodian, husbanding its culture, institutions and land – restoring and trimming, fertilising and pruning – so that his children might enjoy an inheritance as rich as his.
The Conservative Party does none of these things. Instead of defending Britain against the revolutionaries who have devastated our delicate cultural ecosystem, it has copied their policies and methods in the belief that doing so would help it secure power over the ruins. Since Margaret Thatcher’s leadership, the party has become hopelessly besotted by a laissez faire capitalism that consigns an economy to constant flux through rapid cycles of destruction and creation, making it impossible for communities to endure and, in creating huge winners and masses of losers, breaking the bonds of shared experience. The Conservative Party cannot take its correct role as custodian when it prefers to be auctioneer, flogging the nation’s assets to the highest bidder and encouraging hyenas to pick at the unsold lots.
It is difficult to understand how the conservatives who still, unfathomably, account for the majority of the party’s membership can suffer the humiliation. Yet they ask for it. They have been tricked by the use of the word ‘conservative’, when the Conservative Party is no more conservative than the German Democratic Republic was democratic. Their fear of the increasingly hysterical Labour Party has blinded them to the reality that their own tribal leadership is now little different in action. They wilfully refuse to see the truth and lack the wit to find the alternative. They are dupes for a conference speech and mugs for an election slogan. Thus, with their votes, time and money, they prop up a party of liberalism, vandalism and indifference. And by never giving the suckers an even break, the Conservative Party has vacuumed up their support and has thus become the main bulwark against the arrival of a resonant voice for social conservatism in British politics.
