Real conservatism is already popular

Britain needs a national mission for growth and resilience, not libertarian ideology

Towering columns

In The Times, William Hague identifies “five rules” for Conservatives, insisting the party must adapt to new times and new circumstances.

Now the challenge is to extend conservatism to today’s young people — certainly to save them from closed minds and fragmented identities, but also to give them a stake in homes, communities, enterprises and the United Kingdom.

The fourth golden rule is to realise when there is a completely new situation. Political ideas can get stuck, through pride in being consistent. But just as Thatcher was different from Baldwin, we cannot live for ever on Thatcher. The world is changing more rapidly than ever before and conservatism will only survive by changing with it. If new technologies, in social media and industrially produced food, are causing mental and physical harm to vast numbers of people, conservatives cannot just shout “nanny state” at every attempt to protect them. And if the massive new opportunities to lead in AI, biotech and science require government investment in skills and facilities, conservatives have to overcome their caution over industrial strategies. The best recent work on conservatism, The Case for Conservatism by Nick Timothy and Gavin Rice, called rightly for an active state.

The right in British politics is at least having a more vigorous debate about ideas than the left, where the main idea is to be ruthless about getting into power. But that raises a fifth rule, which is not about political ideas but is a simple truth about how democracy works. There can be popular conservatives, new conservatives, national conservatives, one nation conservatives and many others, but unless the voters can discern one united set of conservatives a lot of this debate will be academic. The fifth rule is that in every period of popular conservatism in British history, the party has stuck together at election time.

Also in The Times, Juliet Samuel laments the culture of complacency and groupthink that prevails among British scientists.

Unfortunately, the love-in with China is not the only form of rot that is plaguing science. There is also its enthusiastic embrace of extreme progressive ideologies, in which research is seen to be an activity that should happen in the service of “social justice”. As university administrators have embraced the all-encompassing ideology of victim “intersectionality”, science has been caught in the net. Bizarre political language (in which women become “bodies with vaginas”, as The Lancet infamously put it in 2021), un-meritocratic hiring practices, race workshops in place of lab work and the slow icing out of colleagues who don’t conform to the prevailing fashions are all diluting the claims of scientists to be the Olympian guardians of truth.

…Whereas in Germany and the US, science quickly began to inform industrial production in vital fields such as metallurgy, engineering and chemicals more than a century ago, it took British societies and universities decades to establish similar research institutes. Our scientists preferred to think of themselves as metaphysical philosophers, with the dirty work of production and commercialisation left to lesser mortals.

Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that there were a startling number of British scientists among the lab leak deniers. Gone are the days when our researchers claim to have nothing to do with practical or political matters. But the airy culture of superiority remains; the notion that if scientists deign to involve themselves in politics, it must be inherently for the good of science and humanity. This attitude did not work out well for the church and it is not serving the interests of true scientific endeavour either.

In The Telegraph, Nick Timothy says those campaigning against Government policy on asylum are putting an obsession with diversity ahead of liberal values.

No sooner had the details of the case emerged than commentators and politicians lined up to insist that Ezedi’s immigration status had nothing to do with what happened. One barrister insisted that “acid attacks are crimes of misogyny… culture-war point-scoring won’t stop acid attacks – tackling cultures of misogyny will”. While nobody denies the existence of misogyny in Britain, the trouble with this argument is that uncontrolled immigration means we are importing misogynistic cultures – from places exactly like Ezedi’s home country.

Such denialism and displacement activity is now common among liberals when the reality of clashing cultures challenges their assumption that competing values and rights are easily reconciled and that radical diversity – in truth a serious challenge for us to overcome – is simply an unquestionable good.

Those who in other circumstances rail against sexism, homophobia and racism often look the other way when the perpetrators are themselves minorities, or when a growing social problem is driven by entrenched attitudes in specific communities. The principle of the particular is suborned to the broader, unthinking belief in radical diversity for its own sake. And so liberal universalism gives way to cultural relativism, and liberalism ends up devouring itself.

Also in The Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that chronic under-investment is the major cause of Britain’s poor productivity, compounded by historic austerity decisions.

The London School of Economics has just published a report proposing much the same sum as Labour, arguing that an extra 1pc of GDP in public spending will lever twice as much again in private investment, enough to set off a sustained “growth acceleration”. “The name of the game is leveraging private assets. You need some public money to show that the Government has skin in the game,” said Dimitri Zenghelis, the lead author and former Treasury official.

This is what it will take to lift the UK out of its bad equilibrium: stagnant productivity; a chronic trade deficit and reliance on foreign capital to cover the breach; and a collapse in the country’s net international investment position. Successive British governments have slashed public investment during recessions, the worst thing to do in every respect. Economic slack turbo-charges the fiscal multiplier during downturns. OECD high-flyers like Korea and the Nordics stay the course through thick and thin.

The Conservatives repeated this pro-cyclical error during the Osborne austerity from 2010 onwards, with an added twist from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), an engine for tail-chasing contractionary policies during bad times. This is a self-defeating strategy that leads to a higher debt-to-GDP ratio in the end through the denominator effect. Britain missed a chance to rebuild its decayed infrastructure at a time of abundant global capital and near zero-rates. The LSE says it will be harder today but not as hard as puritans claim. Inflation and real interest rates will revert to very low levels as the shock fades from Covid and Putin’s war. “It is far from clear that the era of secular stagnation is entirely behind us,” it said.

Public and private capital formation in Britain has lagged the G7 average by 4.7 percentage points of GDP on average over three decades, barely matching Italy even during the eurozone debt crisis. Global best practice is a public sector net investment (PSNI) above 3pc of GDP. Britain has rarely been anywhere close. It was 1.9pc in 2022-2023 and will – after a brief rise – decline to 1.8pc by 2027-2028 under current plans.

On his Substack, Post-liberal Pete analyses the global decline in fertility and its transformative consequences for British society.

A rapidly ageing population has obvious implications for the public finances. The state pension is the largest single item of welfare spending in the UK (£104.86bn in 2021/22) and makes up 42% of the total welfare spend. The Times reports that ‘the cost to the taxpayer of funding university tuition is 8% of the amount spent on state pensions every year (£10 billion compared to £124 billion).’

Whilst the OBR estimates that ‘the ageing of the population, and the associated rise in age-related spending, puts steady upward pressure on public spending and would see public debt more than double to over 250 per cent of GDP by 2070 if no further fiscal action is taken.’ Low fertility has huge implications for public policy in general, as indicated by academic research which estimates that ‘if fertility levels in the UK do not change for the remainder of this century, the nation’s immigration ratio will need to rise to 37% by 2083 to maintain a sufficient working-age population.’

Ageing societies also risk calcifying into gerontocracies with rapidly increasing levels of intergenerational inequality. As an article in The Times put it, ‘a country with fewer children inevitably allocates more resources and more power to older people.’ Whilst CapX reports that in the UK ‘one in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner….already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth.’

For The Critic, Yuan Yi Zhu says the Supreme Court has Americanised the British constitution.

Writing after the Supreme Court gave its outrageous judgment in Miller II in 2019, Lord Pannick QC enthusiastically declared that “the Supreme Court has come of age as a constitutional court”, which of course had been the hope all along for many of the project’s supporters, even if they would not always admit it, perhaps not even to themselves. True, the seeds for the unchecked expansion of judicial power in the United Kingdom had been planted well before the Supreme Court’s opening in 2009. But the removal of the highest appellate court to a separate building, the isolation of its inmates from the Westminster political process, the creation of new ceremonials, titles, and above all, the all-important “supreme” in the new court’s name — all of this cannot have failed to influence judicial behaviour.

When Baroness Hale interviewed for the presidency of the Supreme Court, she declared to the panel, “I am world famous.” It is simply impossible to imagine the earlier generation of law lords, ensconced in the deliberate anonymity of the Appellate Committee, uttering such a thing, much less advance it as a self-compliment. The Supreme Court now had a public profile, and with it came the desire for the spotlight, spider brooches and all.

In any case, if those who stubbornly insist the Supreme Court is exactly like the old Appellate Committee are correct, then there can be no objection to moving it back to the House of Lords since it would make no difference whatsoever. It would be simple enough. The Supreme Court gift shop will be the first to go, with its Supreme Court-branded teddy bears and its unsold copies of the laudatory coffee table book about the building’s architecture. Baroness Hale’s leek-themed carpet, a 1970s style fever dream, will be next, revealing the sturdy floors underneath.

Wonky thinking

Policy Exchange published Closing the Back Door: Rediscovering Northern Ireland’s Role in British National Security, by Marcus Solarz Hendriks and Harry Halem. Britain must re-establish a fully-fledged security presence in Northern Ireland, they argue, as the Republic of Ireland’s defence and security capabilities are inadequate to meet present threats.

The Republic of Ireland’s (ROI) avowed neutrality, chronically insufficient Defence Forces, and porous security state render it an unreliable strategic ally. The UK’s northwestern exposure is compounded by the lack of assistance from the ROI. For decades, Irish defence spending has fallen well below 1% of GDP, producing a Defence Forces which is under-equipped, under-sized and under-staffed. In any case, commitment to its policy of neutrality precludes the ROI from engaging seriously with the UK on security issues, either bilaterally or as part of NATO.

In an age of growing geopolitical threats, this gap in the UK’s northwestern defences now directly endangers its national security. Negotiated amidst intractable political violence in Ireland, and in the post-Cold War period of relative peace, the full implications of the military draw-down in Northern Ireland were concealed. The return of an aggressive Russia, actively waging war in Europe, has placed renewed strategic importance on the UK’s north and northwestern flanks.

As Russia’s maritime doctrine shifted in 2022 to prioritise the Arctic and Atlantic, it is incumbent upon the UK to fortify its northwestern naval and air patrol presence. Major transatlantic undersea fibre-optic cables run through the Western Approaches, upon which the digital security of the UK and its partners – including the ROI – depend. Meanwhile, Russia has advanced its sub-surface capabilities and – as the recent uptick in reported sightings illustrates – is exploring ways to target western critical undersea infrastructure around the UK, and further north. To coordinate our collective response with our partners, we must respond in turn with a greater Royal Navy and RAF presence in the region.

As well as proving a menace in the maritime domain, Russia – alongside China and Iran – seeks to degrade the UK and its allies through unconventional means. Cyber warfare, institutional espionage, and educational and economic infiltration are all subthreshold methods employed by these authoritarian regimes to destabilise the West.

The combination of ROI’s flimsy security and intelligence apparatus, unwillingness to acknowledge these threats, and soft border with Northern Ireland poses a grave back-door security risk to the UK. Adversaries are certain to target the ROI, due to its close integration into transatlantic economic and digital systems, membership of the EU, and self-imposed exclusion from multilateral security frameworks. There is already strong evidence of a subversive and illegal Russian, Chinese and Iranian presence across Irish society and sensitive institutions.

Although the ROI has embarked on a reform of its Defence Forces and security apparatus in recent years, the outcome is destined to fall short of requirements, due to a persistent lack of financial and political commitment. The entire Defence Forces, and security and intelligence apparatus, is being built almost from scratch. With defence spending to increase by only 50% by 2028, and the stubborn shibboleth of neutrality still acting as a brake on ambition, the ROI is not set to become a capable security partner any time soon.

As it stands, Sinn Féin is expected to win the ROI’s next election in 2025, a party which will be no friend to British interests. Sinn Féin’s long history of Anglophobia, and conflict with the British state and security services – as well as its opposition to NATO, Russian sympathies, and general anti-Western sympathies – will obstruct any meaningful recalibration of security arrangements with the UK. If Sinn Féin wins in 2025, the UK is therefore looking at many more years of an uncooperative, and likely hostile, neighbour in the face of growing external threats.

Northern Ireland is therefore the key to addressing the UK’s security concerns. Resurrecting the RAF and Royal Navy presence in Northern Ireland will bolster our forward presence for maritime patrol operations around our coastline, as well as into the GIUK Gap and beyond. In light of Russian aggression, recent government strategic documents have flagged our stretched naval and air capabilities in the north. Northern Ireland can therefore strengthen our strategic options in the region, whilst alleviating the burden on other bases, such as HMNB Clyde and RAF Lossiemouth.

Shifting the paradigm of British-Irish relations – by breaking the longstanding link between a British Northern Ireland military presence, and Ireland’s historically fraught past – will enable the UK to create the environment for an equitable and effective security relationship between the ROI and the UK. The ROI is at severe risk of being compromised from within by hostile actors, perils which were illustrated by the massive Russian cyber-attack on the Irish health service in 2021. Geographical proximity, and the soft border, mean that Irish vulnerabilities are British vulnerabilities. Having signalled its renewed strategic focus on Northern Ireland, the UK can make known its interests – and willingness to assist, in an equitable manner – in the ROI’s security problems.

Book of the week

We recommend Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century by historian E.H.H. Green. The author reviews the development of Conservative ideas from the Edwardian era through to Thatcherism and the Conservative Party’s complex relationship with ideology.

This conception of Conservatism as a form of ‘non ideology’ was strange. To begin with it assumed that in some way the Conservative party was fundamentally different in its basic structure to the Liberals, Labour, or indeed any other political party in Britain or elsewhere, a position that is very difficult to sustain. Furthermore, there is the point that a distrust of an ‘intellectual’ approach to politics, or a definition of oneself as ‘non-ideological’, are important ideological statements which express a distinctive Conservative view about the nature of and proper approach to politics. Equally important, however, is the fact that although Conservatives may have largely (but not entirely) eschewed formal statements of political belief, such statements are not the be-all and end-all of political ideas. Beyond the territory of formal statements lies a hinterland of rhetoric, values, and received ideas, which may be expressed in day-to-day political argument, speeches, correspondence, and legislative acts. ‘Great thinkers and their texts’ may not be as frequently referred to by Conservatives as by their political opponents, but Conservatives do possess, indeed must possess, an ideological map of the world which enables them to identify objects of approval and disapproval, friend and foe. If politics is essentially about defining and finding solutions to a set of problems, then Conservative politicians have to find ways of exploring and solving problems in a way that is recognizably Conservative to an audience of adherents and potential adherents, and it is difficult to achieve this unless there exists a frame of reference which identifies what the term Conservative means…

…Ideology, as it is for all political parties, is central to the history of the Conservative party. It may be that the Conservatives produce fewer ‘great texts’ (although they produce and refer to more than is frequently assumed), but if one sets aside the formal, ‘canonical’ notion of the forms of expression of political thought and examines speeches, policymaking discussions, exchanges of views and opinions in correspondence, and the construction of and response to legislation, the Conservatives’ engagement with ideas is clear, rich, varied, and extensive. Politics is about argument, and arguments are about ideas. Politicians acting within an elective system of government seek to persuade people to give them power, and to achieve this end will deploy those arguments they feel will be most effective in terms of persuading their audience. But this raises a number of important questions. First, why do politicians choose some arguments over others? Second, how do politicians define their audience and how does the audience define itself?

Third, what are the dynamics of the relationship between the selection of argument and the nature of the audience? Any attempt to answer these questions immediately brings out the centrality of ideas and ideological assumptions in the political process. When politicians select a particular argument or range of arguments they are necessarily making a judgement, holding a view, expressing an idea as to why the form and content of one argument will serve their purposes better than another. Their selection in turn depends upon their perception of what their audience will respond to best, and this implies that they have ideas about the nature of their audience. But although politicians must have ideas as to how best to appeal to or even construct their audience, the audience is not simply a passive receptor of ideas: an audience may be indifferent to or may even reject a political argument. Here it is crucial to recognize that at no point do politicians and their audiences exist and operate in a historical vacuum. One does not have to accept Gilbert and Sullivan’s aphorism that every child is born a ‘little Liberal’ or a ‘little Conservative’ to acknowledge that in any historical period there are political traditions, political identities, and political allegiances of long standing. In short, there always exists a range of assumptions amongst politicians and their audiences alike as to what it means to be a member or supporter of a particular political party, and this places constraints upon the range of arguments a politician can deploy. To take a simple example, some Edwardian Conservatives could have argued that the best way to alleviate poverty and social distress was for the government to introduce a strongly progressive fiscal structure, and redistribute wealth to the poor in the form of social reforms. However, they could not have done this and claimed to be Conservative. Such an argument would have lacked any verisimilitude in terms of ideas as to what constituted a recognizably Conservative answer to the particular problem in question. However, such constraints are not completely rigid. Some arguments will in some circumstances be deemed unacceptable, but it is self–evidently the case that politicians in the same party can advance differing arguments and ideas as to what constitutes the best expression of their party’s beliefs, values, and interests.

Quick links

The OECD predicted the UK will grow at as fast a pace or faster than Germany and Italy in 2024 and 2025.

Labour scaled back its plan to spend £28 billion a year on net zero investment.

Labour pledged a new race relations bill.

The number of long-term sick in the UK is 200,000 greater than previously thought.

Polling found that 56% of voters say it is difficult to find an NHS dentist in their area.

David Miles, an executive member of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), said the Government should seek to reduce the welfare bill rather than relying on migration to increase the tax base.

The debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to be over 95%.

Just 27% of under-45s said they would comply if conscription were introduced, with 47% saying they would accept a punishment instead.

Only 31% of those planning to vote for Reform UK say they would back the Tories if there was no Reform candidate in their constituency.

UK brick deliveries, a useful data proxy for housebuilding, were 36.5% lower in December 2023 than in December 2022.

President Biden confused Mexico with Egypt in press conference following a special counsel report that raised his “significant limitations in his memory”.

Liz Truss shared her ideas about how to make the Conservatives popular.