The Conservative Reader
Issue VI: What Rishi thinks - and the case for optimism and pessimism on his premiership; Why its not pro-growth to support low-skilled migration; and why feminism's next phase will be conservative.
We think conservatives need to talk more and get better at sharing ideas. So we are starting this newsletter so we can share with you the best newspaper columns, policy reports and books that will stimulate thinking and promote new ways of doing things.
We will send an email out every Friday lunchtime, so please do look out for it. And expect plenty of content about the things we think make conservatism such a compelling body of thought: identity and belonging, community and commitment, market economics, national resilience and good government.
Best wishes, Nick and Will
Towering columns
Miriam Cates makes the optimistic case for Rishi Sunak completing the realignment for Unherd …
Sunak is the heir of neither Blair nor Cameron; he is instead a much more nuanced politician who is far more in tune with the populist realignment — and therefore with the views of ordinary voters and popular opinion — than many commentators assume. And the political reality is that Sunak will have to lean into this realignment because it is the only way that the Conservative Party can avoid wipe-out at the next general election.
The Brexit referendum in 2016, and Conservative ‘Red Wall’ victories in 2017 and 2019, were a reaction to the failures of the political and economic system of the last 30 years. For decades, successive governments in Westminster and Brussels exalted London and ignored the regions, accepted staggering levels of low-skilled immigration, favoured graduates while manufacturing jobs declined, and collaborated in an assault on British culture by the illiberal Left.
… while John Gray makes the pessimistic case for either of the main parties satisfying the electorate for the New Statesman:
The historic role of the Conservatives in British politics is almost certainly over. For generations it dominated by accommodating a broad spectrum of ideas in changing coalitions that reflected the country it ruled. Today it is a theatre of rancorous warfare and spent ideologies.
But Labour, too, will struggle to survive a full term in office. The fiscal orthodoxy to which it is committed will be deeply unsettling for voters and destabilising for the party itself. Spending cuts and freezes will mean lower real incomes for millions of public sector workers and strikes will continue and spread, while the semblance of unity Starmer has imposed on the party will begin to crack. As the Tories have demonstrated, a huge majority does not preclude chaos in government. Confronted with multiplying crises, a Labour landslide could soon be followed by immobility and powerlessness.
Sarah O’Connor on whether low skilled migration is really a route to higher productivity in the Financial Times:
The question of whether Britain should become more open to low-paid migrant workers is trickier. It’s clear that a number of sectors that had relied on EU workers under freedom of movement are now struggling with labour shortages, from hospitality to food and drink manufacturing. In a sense, that was the point of the government’s policy — to put those employers under pressure to do something differently. It’s also hard to disentangle the effect of Brexit from other factors such as the pandemic, which has caused labour shortages in countries all around the world.
I think it’s clear that in some occupations, local workers have benefited from the end of freedom of movement. Many HGV drivers, for example, have seen pay rises in the range of 10 to 20 per cent since they found themselves in short supply, unions say. Brexit wasn’t the only cause of the shortage, but for many years migration from the EU helped employers to limp on with an employment model based on relatively low pay for antisocial hours and a lot of responsibility.
Louise Perry on why the next phase of feminism is conservative in The Spectator:
The second wave of the 1970s and 1980s was conceived of and led by a small cadre of young women who spent intensive amounts of time with one another, including sometimes living under the same roof, thinking and writing and working towards their utopian vision. Not coincidentally, they mostly didn’t have children, since being pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen was hardly compatible with a movement that demanded so much time and energy of its activists.
But how about pregnant and barefoot with a smartphone? The early battles of the Great British Terf War were fought by left-wing feminists, many of them affiliated with the trade union movement. But the popularity of platforms like Mumsnet meant that these people were joined by a much larger and formerly much quieter group of women: mothers from a wide range of backgrounds who feel the same fear for their children that the anxious constituent described, and who were newly able to participate in the public debate via the internet.
Wonky thinking
Will and his colleague Jim Blagden published a report for Onward on the Conservatives’ electoral collapse since 2019 and how they might recover.
There is an alternative agenda that can win elections for the Conservatives: the agenda that won an 80-seat majority just three years ago. The 2019 campaign will be remembered for the slogan “Getting Brexit Done”, but the political philosophy that underpinned the Conservative campaign deserves more credit. It represents a form of distinctly national conservatism that has broad appeal with diehard Conservatives and former Labour voters; in provincial shires and post-industrial towns; among high and low earners.
Some have argued that such an approach is “unconservative”. In fact, this agenda has much deeper intellectual heritage in conservatism than liberalism, rooted as it is in the radicalism of Disraeli and Chamberlain and the national reforming zeal of Baldwin and Macmillan. Revived by Theresa May and Boris Johnson, national conservatism combines social and cultural conservatism with an economic policy that helps a broad range of people, not just those who are well off.
Reminder: Rishi Sunak’s Mais Lecture remains the best articulation of his economic philosophy:
I can’t make decisions for people, and nor should I. It is the job of government to create the conditions, not determine the outcome. But I am clear that we need to change.
I am optimistic about the future of this country and people’s desire to do things differently; to be bold and focused.
We must put all our energies into three priorities: Capital. People. Ideas. And if we can do that, then we can rejuvenate our national productivity, restore hope and opportunity as we level up, and have confidence in our future happiness, prosperity and security.
Book of the week
This week’s Book of the Week is The Death of Consensus, by Phil Tinline. Drawing deeply on the cultural and political milieu of the Great Depression, the post-War period, the 1970s and 1980s, and today, it analyses the last century of British politics through the lens of recurring nightmares that break the prevailing consensus, and fill the political discourse with ominous possibilities – until a new settlement is reached.
“It is possible that we are ending the end of a long democratic process that has run since 2008, when the Crash kicked off the death of the old consensus. The question then is whether the Conservatives’ stunning election victory in December 2019, followed by the pandemic, will turn out to have been the beginning of a new consensus, in the manner of Attlee’s triumph in 1945, and Thatcher’s in 1979. Instead, the Conservative government may prove to be yet another transitional stage: something more like the governments of Neville Chamberlain or James Callaghan, caught in between attempts to modernise, and taboos of tenacious older faiths. If so, will it be Labour that proves willing and able to complete the transition to a new settlement, and dominate any new consensus? Whoever leads the two main parties into the next election, the answers may depend on which party can come to terms with its nightmares first.”
Quick links
A majority of voters in 75% of British constituencies think immigration has undermined British society and culture.
1-2% of Albanian men have travelled to the UK illegally in small boats.
Deployments of industrial robots rose 51% in China last year - but fell 7% in the UK.
Is Britain really on a path to becoming the “new Italy”?