For conservatives, people should matter more than policy

The enemies of conservatism are characterised by Braverman, the ERG, Nigel Farage and those like Matt Goodwin more bothered about where someone went to school than whether they do their job well

The online debate amongst conservatives seems, with each passing day, to resemble the interminable debate between different far left perfections. Each argument is presaged with some statement of true conservative faith followed by irrefutable evidence that the other person is merely laying claim to conservatism for nefarious purposes. We are close to the point where the latest and newest group of conservatives points out that true conservatism has never been tried (although this takes the form of invoking some past genius and observing that dastardly liberals cosplaying conservatism stopped them from taking us to that glorious conservative future).

With apologies to people in America, I’m going to start with David Cameron because, in a bizarre twist, the former prime minister has returned to the British cabinet as Foreign Secretary. For the latest bunch of ‘true conservatives’ this is terrible and demonstrates that Rishi Sunak, far from being the conservative we all thought he was, is a neoliberal globalist in hock to the sinister forces of the World Economic Forum (I paraphrase thousands of agitated posts on social media here). Cameron is obviously a liberal because he led the campaign to stay in the European Union, that bête noire of the true conservative. We need, of course, to skim over the fact that Liz Truss and Theresa May also campaigned to remain in the EU unlike Rishi Sunak.

But believers in the ‘one true conservatism’ didn’t like David Cameron before the 2016 referendum - all that hoodie-hugging and refusing to be a climate change denier wasn’t what true conservatives should do, and Cameron was obsessed with what he called social action and a thing called the Big Society. One of the myths of British conservatism was denied as Cameron told us unequivocally that there is such a thing as society, “it just isn’t the same thing as government”. Then Cameron endorsed other things the true believers hated - multiculturalism, a rules-based international order, and open trade. How can we even think to describe the man as a conservative?

Well back in those days I did take the time to say that, not only was Cameron a conservative, he was the most conservative leader of the Conservative Party since Stanley Baldwin. And the reason for me saying this was that Cameron displayed a real commitment to two central planks of Tory faith - noblesse oblige and a belief that what matters isn’t ideology but a commitment to good administration.

Noblesse oblige is pretty self-explanatory - it is the tale of Lord Finchley and the principle of charity. Wealthy people have a duty to ‘give employment to the artisan’ and, given their good fortune, to put some of that back into the society that gave them that fortune. But the second idea - good administration - is something that the current set of true believers have lost sight of (as, it seems, have the current government) and it matters:

“A Tory friend at university once described this as “soft loo paper conservatism” – the object of government is to deliver contentment, comfort, security and maybe happiness to the citizen. There is no place in conservatism for the idea that mankind can – or should – be bettered or that government, through planned action, can improve society. If society is to get better, it will do so because people act nobly not because government willed it so.

As importantly, Cameron’s “conservatism as effective administration” requires attachment to and confidence in institutions – the National Health Service, the Civil Service, Royal Colleges, Universities. Government should concern itself with ensuring these institutions are well administered rather than with the outcomes of the institutions work. Put the right leaderships in place and trust in their judgement is what government must do – and then act to implement and enforce the plans those leaders create.”

If you want to understand why Cameron did not support leaving the EU, then it lies at the heart of his conservatism. The EU had evolved from a choice made by a previous Conservative government, one endorsed by every subsequent Conservative government, it was a central institution of state and society. The task wasn’t to tear it down but to get the right leadership in place so it made the right choices and enacted the right policies.

This view of conservatism, a thread going right back to Disraeli’s great speech at the Crystal Palace on 24th June 1872, a speech that set the direction for the Party is being trashed as a result of the 2016 EU referendum and the loud voices of radicals within the Party. Disraeli told us that the Party’s task was to protect the great institutions of Britain, to defend the Empire, and to work tirelessly to improve the condition of the people. David Cameron fits comfortably within this tradition, he is without question a conservative.

So what’s the problem? As ever the debate isn’t really, despite all the talk of ‘real’ conservatives, about the idea of conservatism but about policy choices and the tone in which policies are presented. This matters more than those laying claim to ‘true conservatism’ appreciate. Most people are, in their private lives, conservative and this encompasses Hesiod’s dictat: 'observe due measure; moderation is best in all things'. Put simply, conservatives are uncomfortable with extremism, even when the extremists share the same concerns as those conservatives. This principle of moderation is also why all parties seeking power, especially in a dualist system like that in the UK or USA, trend towards the centre of politics and towards caution and moderation.

Since most of the population is conservative in outlook, they will seek assurances that change - a word too many politicians think is more powerful than it is - will have only the most modest effect on their lives. What people want is some certainty and predictability, the comfort that they can make long-term choices and not see those choices undermined by the forces of change. If people are going to take out a mortgage, the most substantial and significant financial choice of their life, then it behoves government to do its very best to ensure that it does all it can to make those mortgages predictable and certain.

Our desire for change to be modest and moderate is important and I suspect David Cameron understands this far better than more radical voices on what we call ‘the right’. But there remains a problem given that some aspects of policy do not respond (indeed have not responded) to the principles of good administration - get the right people in charge, give them a clear brief and the problems get sorted. And the Home Office is at the heart of many of these problems - equalities, immigration, national security and the control of crime.

Part of the problem (and we can see this from Suella Braverman’s letter following her dismissal this week) is that the priorities of government are unclear. We should be less concerned about the fact of Braverman’s demands of Rishi Sunak, than about how they are vague, polemical and de facto undeliverable. Yet those demands now form the basis of a new ‘true conservative’ manifesto, one which takes as its starting point the need for radical reform, denying the essential principles of Disraeli’s mission. A true conservative manifesto would, I believe, eschew radicalism and seek to stabilise institutions rather than attack them. I expect, however, that the response to Braverman’s demands and to the Supreme Court’s decision about the Rwanda deal for asylum, will be a return to criticism of the Courts and an assertion of perceived Parliamentary rights.

A genuinely conservative response to these matters would perhaps focus less on radicalism and more on asking why it is that the administration of immigration, asylum and policing policy is so at odds with the desires of the elected government? If we think as conservatives, then the answer lies in the leadership of these parts of government not in the policies of government. All the tools exist to manage asylum, immigration and policing better but the leadership seems unwilling to make full use of those tools. Instead of radical (and in the case of Rwanda deportations, cruel-seeming) policy proposals, perhaps we need to return again to the matter of who is making the choices about how the policy gets implemented? 

The most radical reform under Blair’s leadership wasn’t the creation of a Supreme Court, that was just changing the labels, but was a completely altered way of making public appointments. Wrapped up in warm words, the Nolan Principles and other associated changes put a distance between ministers and appointments that made it nearly impossible for them to get - using that principle of good administration - the right people into important jobs. And even more difficult to hold those right people to account for the decisions and choices they make. 

When Margaret Thatcher started to use executive agencies with boards to oversee their activity, she did so in the sound conservative belief that this meant getting the right people into the administration of important public services. Today, with Blair’s system forming a barrier, the system acts to promote people from within the system. NHS Boards are led by former NHS managers, doctors and local council officials, the boards within the Home Office are riddled with former judges, immigration lawyers and senior police officers, and environmental bodies get led by people who see the role as reward not as noblesse oblige. And our ‘true conservatives’ instead of pointing to the actual problem, choose instead to call for radical policy change not for substantive personnel change.

I don’t expect that much will change. The sense of fin de siecle about the current Conservative government is very strong and the return of David Cameron, for all that he is a real conservative, is perhaps too late and too little to prevent the inevitable election loss sometime in 2024. What, however, conservatives should be bothered with is in protecting their ideas from the sort of ‘know-nothing’ nativism that is characterised by Braverman, the ERG, Nigel Farage and those like Matt Goodwin who are more bothered about where someone went to school than whether they do their job well. None of these people are conservatives. David Cameron is a conservative.