The Conservative Reader
Realism v optimism; Brexit benefits; left-wing Starmer; economics of the nation; ignorant atheism; the British Raj; the Anglican Settlement; meritocracy; nepo-babies; Covid in China
We think conservatives need to talk more and get better at sharing ideas. So here we share the best newspaper columns, policy reports and books that will stimulate thinking and promote new ways of doing things.
The Conservative Reader is published 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.
You can find more about what we think on Twitter here and here.
Best wishes, Nick and Gavin
Towering columns
Matthew Parris says we are in a mess, and it is time for realism, not optimism:
Opinion polling suggests that the electorate do sense difficulty ahead. It’s not as if we’re unaware that inflation menaces us, government indebtedness is mounting, strikes punch our economy in the stomach, the NHS is failing, our trade deficit is rising, productivity remains stubbornly low and Brexit isn’t working. We know too that we’re already poorer than we were a few years ago. We’re not, in short, unrealistic about the present mess or the future outlook. Where unrealism seems to be kicking in is about how far, in consequence, the electorate will have to lower its expectations.
We cannot continue to offer healthcare free at the point of use. Those (like me) who can pay should be charged. We cannot expect to inherit our elderly parents’ houses and so require the state to pay for their old-age care. We middle classes have no right to enjoy rail travel vastly subsidised by the general taxpayer. I have no right to an old person’s London travel card saving me thousands a year when young people on a tenth of my salary must pay — nor to a winter fuel allowance.
The taxpayer should not be subsidising public-school education for the small minority who benefit from it. Pensioners should not, regardless of our wealth, expect increases in our pensions that exceed the increases working people get. Britain should not be merrily promising substantial increases in defence spending when we already shoulder a disproportionate burden in the defence of freedom. I sometimes wonder whether we, not our former colonies who did relatively well by us, are the real victims of empire. We’ve been infected by exceptionalism. “Big hat, no cattle,” as the Argentinians say of someone whose means fall short of their boast.
David Frost insists we are better off thanks to Brexit:
Look at the most recent GDP figures we have, from the OECD this week, covering the period since Brexit actually happened economically at the end of 2020. Since then, this country has grown faster than Germany, France, Italy, Spain or the Eurozone overall. You won’t learn that from the BBC.
Yes, our EU trade has fallen off a few per cent. That is to be expected in leaving the customs union and single market. But trade is not GDP. Some assert a link between trade and productivity, but it is not proven for advanced economies, and it is empirically disproven for the UK: our worst productivity performance ever came in the decade before Brexit when we were more closely integrated into the single market than ever before. But Brexit isn’t only about economics anyway. It’s about democracy.
I am sometimes confronted by angry Remain campaigners who ask “can you tell me just one benefit of Brexit? Just one?” My simple answer is: “being able to change things at elections.” EU member states are only semi-democracies in any meaningful sense of the word. If you are a voter in an EU country, you can’t change at an election your country’s policy on trade, food and product standards, VAT, immigration, most services, competition, consumer protection, farming, fisheries, employment law, environmental protection, energy, much of justice and law enforcement, much public health policy, or support for industries or poorer regions.
If you are in the euro, add interest rate, debt, and deficit policy. All you can do is choose a government that will try to change these things – if it can persuade the Commission and all the other countries. Somehow, it never can. Why would we want to go back to that, to get, perhaps, one day, 0.5 per cent on our GDP?
Danny Finkelstein says Keir Starmer is lowballing the electorate - and may be more left-wing than anybody realises:
… once you have won an election, voters will let you finish what you have started. They begin to rationalise that your new bolder policy — privatisation is a good example — is what they always thought you would do, even though you didn’t say so. While it is often suggested that oppositions talk big but become more moderate in government, this is, in fact, the opposite of what usually happens. Governments are more radical in power than the same party was in opposition. Only reality acts as a brake.
Perhaps Starmer understands this. Perhaps his actions over the past decade have not been a combination of guile and betrayal. Here is the alternative theory. Starmer has — and this is possible to glimpse despite his opacity — always been quite left-wing. He was to the left of every leader since he was in his twenties. Except Corbyn, because there is nobody to the left of Corbyn. But he was, at least, quite comfortable with Corbyn as leader. The alternative theory posits that this wasn’t play-acting. He didn’t just say that the 2017 manifesto was a foundational document for Labour, he actually meant it. He didn’t just run as a leader from the left — mainstream, not Corbynite, but still the left — that is actually his politics.
But on becoming leader he understood he couldn’t win an election like that. He’d have to lowball voters. It took him a while to appreciate that, but once he did he was pretty robust about it. He has been focused and committed in his work of reassurance.
Henry George suggests the early 20th Century British historical economists may in their critiques of socialism and liberalism hold the key to today’s challenges:
As with international political economy, so with the domestic. At home, laissez faire was destructive to the social bonds that comprised the organic unity of the nation. For the British historical school, the state and society were not separate, hostile entities. Cunningham wrote that “the State is the embodiment of what is common to the different persons in the nation, it expresses the spirit which each shares… we cannot represent the State as antagonistic to the individual citizens. The State is concerned with the general interest—with what is common to all.” Laissez faire economics failed for the same reasons that liberal philosophy did: its atomized conception of social relations meant that, according to Cunningham, “public objects of general good and for the common advantage, may be overlooked.” Therefore, “they should be consciously and deliberately taken in hand by public authority; and there must be some interference with private interests, favourable to some and unfavourable to others.” For “in so far as the national resources and the aggregate of individual wealth are distinct, it is desirable that the public authority should occasionally interfere.”
The need for a reassertion of the social and cultural ties that bind, that give life its meaning and reason for being, was essential. The state must play a role, as the act of governing in the interests of the common good of the average, everyday man or woman is the reason for the state to exist with any degree of justice. Socialism may provide the wrong solutions, and the twentieth century's Communist catastrophe to the tune of tens of millions dead bore out the historical school’s fears. But, presaging Tucker Carlson’s argument that leaving capitalism’s inherent rapacity unrestrained will give us socialism instead, H.S. Foxwell wrote in 1888 that “The State may become social reformer without becoming Socialist, but if the State does not become social reformer it will inevitably become Socialist.”…
…The British historical economists developed a system of political economy worthy of the name. They took Britain’s circumstances at home and abroad as they were. In their conception of a holistic, organic relationship between state and society, they struck far closer to the social-situatedness of economics than liberalism or socialism. In their thought, and the programmes of Conservative reform they influenced, we can see the foundations of British postwar conservatism’s Middle Way, representing the continuation of Benjamin Disraeli’s romantic belief in the possibility of reconciling the two nations into which Britain was in danger of metastasizing. We would do well to learn from them in our own time.
Sir Trevor Phillips argues that atheistic liberals believe they have all the answers, but they are mistaken:
It is telling where the non-believers congregate. There are only 12 local authorities out of more than 300 in England and Wales where they outnumber Christians by more than 5 percentage points. The most secular are dominated by universities: Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Hull, Exeter — an educated elite shedding the beliefs of its parents as so much superstitious gobbledygook.
In their world, human intellect can be applied to every problem and all competing interests can be reconciled. Ministers and union leaders would “get round the table” and “sort it out”. Every problem could be solved if other people (particularly politicians) weren’t so blinded by ego or mendacity. That is perhaps why such folk see no reason to distinguish between Hark! The Herald and Jingle Bells; for the irreligious, Christmas is just another fairy story. But sometimes fairy stories have a lesson for us.
You don’t have to turn to the Bible; think Aesop or the Brothers Grimm. The astronomer royal, Lord Rees, possesses a brain about as large as any of the galaxies he studies. In his books, he constantly reminds us that we are not masters of the universe, merely a blip in the cosmic hum. Whatever we think we know today will be disproved or improved by someone else tomorrow; the essence of scientific progress is humility.
Tirthankar Roy says Britain left much that was good in India, and history ought to reflect that fact:
When independence came in 1947, India inherited a weak state (if military power is ignored) and a strong market from the Raj. Its nationalist leaders went the opposite way. The economic development strategy they designed set out to demolish the Raj’s legacy. They created a much larger state, with public control of finance, while restraining foreign trade, foreign investment, migration, and even a lot of domestic trade. These moves delivered a taxpayer-funded green revolution and industrialisation, but destroyed a vast pool of capital accumulated during British rule in cotton textile production, commerce, banking, insurance, and plantations.
In some other ways, the Raj profoundly influenced the making of modern India. Independent India delivered the right to vote to every adult citizen (something the British did not consider), but its parliament was an offspring of the institution known as the Imperial Legislative Council. The army was another inheritance. Thanks to the disparity in military capacity between the kingdoms and British India, incorporating these kingdoms into India and Pakistan was a smooth affair. Company and contract laws designed in the British model helped private investors.
For decades after 1947, India’s port cities were the country’s premier intellectual and cultural hubs, thanks to their cosmopolitan heritage and a lead in higher education modelled after the British counterpart. The continued popularity of the English language in business transactions made South Asians globally competitive despite disengagement from the world. That human capital proved crucial to the re-emergence of India when the economy opened again in the 1990s.
There are, of course, reasons to condemn Britain’s colonisation of India. But there is no doubt that British rule also benefited India. Any account of the rights and wrongs of the Raj must reflect both sides of that coin.
Wonky thinking
In a lecture to the Conservative Philosophy Group, published in abridged form by the Spectator, Adrian Hilton made the case for the Anglican Settlement, which he describes as “one of patriotic loyalty, natural morality, dignity and compromise; of a shared sense of belonging and self-understanding”:
The Royal Supremacy in regard to the Church of England is essentially a perpetual act of divine worship and service; the right of the Crown in its supervision and administration to provide for the religious welfare of its subjects. While theologians and politicians may argue over the manner of this ‘religious welfare’ or the precise meaning of what Hooker intended by the ‘true fulfilment’ of a ‘right relationship with God’, the focus on such issues serves to alienate and distance the Church of England from many of its parishioners. This hinders its mission in the complex context of pluralism, liberalism and secularity.
A principal tension is that we now have bishops who swear to uphold the sacred doctrine handed down to them, who then issue pamphlets and publish books which ditch Cranmer and Hooker in favour of Durkheim and Weber. They take the sociology of religion more seriously than doctrinal integrity and historical tradition, believing – in a BBC Radio ‘Thought for the Day’ kind of way – their Anglican sociology to be more in tune or more relevant to the national life. Yet they are seemingly oblivious to the spiritual yearning in moments of crisis, and the longing for meaning in human life. They boast and broadcast the virtues of food banks in churches, as though the feeding of the 5,000 were a model for the postmodern Christian mission; living by tomato soup, tinned meats and packets of pasta alone has supplanted ‘every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God’. It is a laudable mission of welfare, but one that is almost oblivious to the reason people were originally seeking out Jesus, which was not for a bread and fish takeaway.
… for all its faults, the Church of England communicates or radiates a sacred beauty, or a beautiful sanctity. We see it in everything from parish prayers, stained glass and hymns to the burial of queens and the coronation of kings. It is perpetually mediating between God and man, between Roman and Anglican Catholicism, between high and low, between American liberal and African conservative, between biblical doctrine and biblical scholarship, between secularity and spirituality, contemporary ‘relevance’ and historic patristic faithfulness, maintaining the spiritual order in the life of the individual and in the community. It provides the Eucharistic moments in the life of our nation, inculcating a common moral code – ‘British values’, if you will – with sacramental authenticity and an almost apostolic authority.
Book of the week
Our chosen book this week is The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World, by Adrian Wooldridge, who defends meritocracy from its critics and argues that it remains better than the corruption, patronage, nepotism and hereditary castes of rival systems:
The man who gave meritocracy its name understood that status is at least as important as income or class: the losers in the meritocratic race feel devalued not because they are paid less than the high-IQ types but because they are treated as less valued members of the community. Status is at the heart of the current unease about meritocracy on both the left and the right. Populists accuse the cognitive elite of looking down on them. Parents worry that their children will be denied high-status jobs on the basis of a handful of exam results. This problem is particularly marked in Britain and the United States, where the elites are besotted with a handful of academic institutions and vocational education is treated as an afterthought. Britain's system of vocational education is a patchwork of underfunded colleges and ever-changing qualifications. America spends far more on subsidizing (through tax breaks) its fabulously endowed elite universities than it does on its entire system of vocational education.
It is nevertheless wrong to think that all this is a problem of meritocracy per se, as so many of meritocracy’s current critics seem to do. It is a problem of a policy that focuses on opening up elite institutions to all comers rather than on crafting different types of education for different abilities and aptitudes. The German speaking world has avoided much of the current discontent with meritocracy, in terms of both angst in elite institutions and anger among populists, by giving an honoured place to vocational education. More than a quarter of young Germans attend technical schools and about half get apprenticeships when they leave school. It's not unusual to spend some time as an apprentice and then to go on to university.
Both America and Germany once gave more weight to practical education. In America, the land-grant colleges that were founded in 1862 and 1890 deliberately focused on practical subjects such as science, engineering and agriculture. Institutes of Technology (such as MIT) were designed to rival elite colleges in the practical arts. In Britain, the great cities built vocational schools and industrial colleges for the new working class. Quintin Hogg, a sugar merchant, philanthropist and sire of a Conservative dynasty, revived the Royal
Polytechnic Institution, which had been founded in 1838 but had fallen into decay, and turned it into a great centre of technical education, with almost 7,000 students. Two Conservative prime ministers, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, studied metallurgy at Mason Science College, the nucleus of Birmingham University (though
Baldwin also studied history at Trinity College, Cambridge). Red-brick universities tried to carve out a niche teaching practical subjects rather than turning themselves into imitations of Oxford and Cambridge. The landmark 1944 Education Act envisaged three types of schools - not just grammar schools and secondary moderns but also technical schools. British higher education once included two types of institutions - traditional universities and more practical polytechnics. In recent decades, however, both countries have strongly favoured academic education over vocational education - and thus selection by
elimination over selection by differentiation.
Quick links
At least 8 per cent of MPs are related to other current or former MPs.
More than 250 million people in China caught Covid in 20 days.
Over 90 per cent of car washes in the UK employ people illegally.
More than 45,000 people have crossed the Channel illegally this year.
Over a million thefts were left unsolved in England and Wales last year.
Mark Drakeford says he will stand down as First Minister of Wales by 2024.
Michael Gove has signed a £1.4 billion devolution deal for the North East.
Theresa May says she supports the SNP’s new gender recognition law.
Only 2 per cent of people aged 18-24 say they will vote Tory at the next election.