Punk conservatism, mass membership & closing the social gap: more thoughts for Tories

Inside a mass political party, how to close the social gap between elite and regular conservatives...plus we need a punk conservatism

The other day I wrote about what a new Conservative Party leader might set as their priority. I’m going to build on the ideas there by talking about some changes that conservative politicians might make if they are to truly represent those in society with a conservative mindset.

1. What a mass political party feels like from inside

2. How the conservative elite needs to get socially closer to the majority of conservative people

3. If a punk sort of conservatism might work for emerging generations

Inside a mass political party

Firstly we need to distinguish between a political party, a thing organising to get like-minded people elected, and a political movement, a thing organising to secure political change. The Conservative Party in which I grew up was the first of these things, not the second. Yes it was important in many communities but its offer wasn’t political but social - it may have been a joke when people referred to the 1950s and 1960s Young Conservatives as a marriage bureau but only because there was a load of truth in the observation.

I joined the Conservatives as a 15 year old. My Dad was the ward councillor and he, more-or-less, roped me in as a member of a new YC branch in his ward. I wasn’t complaining and so began fourty plus years as a Tory member. We canvassed, we leafletted and we manned stalls. But mostly we had a social life - canal trips, concerts, speakers about Science Fiction books or steam trains. And not a great deal of politics. I was part of a mass political party but it never seemed that way. Beckenham & Penge had three active YC branches with perhaps 150 members and we were also linked to our own ward branches. My Mum was secretary of our branch, Lawrie Park ‘A’ (the old Lawrie Park Ward had two branches - A & B - roughly representing the two polling districts in that ward).

Once or twice each year, we’d accompany Mum to go and collect subscriptions. This involved taking a list of members, ex-members and pledged voters and calling on them to ask for money. We’d knock on Mr & Mrs Brown’s door and, if we got an answer, ask them to renew their sub (or join if they were a pledged voter but not a member or former member). Mrs Brown would dig into her purse and give us 50p, receiving in response a membership card telling her she was now part of Lawrie Park ‘A’ Branch of Beckenham Conservative Association. This would be repeated at other doors - I don’t remember many refusals - as each person gave 50p or £1 to join the local party. For this they got invitations to branch and association annual general meetings plus, more importantly, notices of social events such as the strawberry tea Mum held in the garden or the barbecue that Cllr John Lewis hosted at his house.

This was the Conservative Party. When I moved to Dartford, my new branch, Newtown Ward, held a monthly meeting involving a very brief bit of business followed by either something to eat and drink or a visit to a local pub. The ward had three Conservative councillors but we didn’t really talk about politics except in the context of leaflet deliveries, canvassing and raising the funds needed to pay for this activity.

Today’s Conservative Party still tries to look a little like the party of those days. Except that the party has only (at best) 200,000 members, just a tenth of the membership when I joined in the 1970s. To make matters worse the Conservatives have centralised that membership and reduced local associations to mere branches of the national party rather than independent bodies that were part of a national federation. Those involved in developing this model perceive the party as an almost entirely political thing, a movement directed by a national leader and central headquarters. A future leader planning the party’s future should maybe learn from inside the old mass party before we all die out - we don’t need to elect the leader, we don’t need to ‘be involved in policy’, we need to choose the people we want to represent us as Conservatives, to raise the funds to get them elected, and to develop a social connection between the dull process of politics and the lives of conservatives.

How the conservative elite can get socially closer to the majority of conservatives

It is an irony that the majority of conservative thought leaders - the conservative elite, if you like, live in very unconservative places. Partly this is an accident of London but partly it is because the eager, enthusiastic and ambitious gravitate to places where conservatives are like hen’s teeth. American writer and urbanist, Aaron Renn, writes about this phenomenon in the USA:

“The best example here is movement conservatism itself. Conservative elites and their institutions are concentrated in New York and Washington. Even some of the ones that are outside of the Acela corridor are in blue areas, like the Hoover Institution, which is at Stanford University. Most conservative intellectual leaders don’t live in red states or redder areas of blue states.

This shows a couple of things. The first is that elites are drawn to elite cities. If you want to be part of the elite, then you need to be around other elites and where the institutions of elite society are located. That’s the top tier cities, especially the big four of NYC, DC, LA, and SF. If you want to influence the federal government, for example, you basically have to be in Washington.”

Renn observes that the choice of conservative elites in the US isn’t merely a function of practicalities but that “...they don’t want to live around your average Republican voter.” These, often younger and better educated, elites prefer what Renn calls a “...progressive socio-cultural milieu…” rather than the suburban and small town environments where most conservative voters can be found. It is no criticism of the UK’s conservative ‘thought leaders’ to say that they overwhelmingly live in London’s central boroughs or places like Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton and that their cultural preferences are very different from the cultural preferences of most conservative-minded people.

Part of the problem has been that Britain lacks conservative leaders in places that have cultural zing. For all his flaws (and they are legion) Boris Johnson once filled this gap as a fully paid up member of the cosmopolitan elite who was elected to lead a left-leaning city and managed to bridge that gap between progressive elite values and conservatives outside London. But it isn’t enough for there to be the occasional Boris, those aspiring to lead the party need to be people who don’t treat the typical conservative voter like something unpleasant they just fished out of the duck pond. I’m always struck that Liberal Democrat MPs traverse this gap more easily. They are just as likely to be part of that progressive metropolitan elite but somehow manage to act as if they really love the village fair and donkey derby or quiz night at the George & Dragon. You can picture the local Lib Dems entering a team in Oxenhope’s annual straw race far more readily than you can the Tories. What matters isn’t just participation though but for those leading the party (in the broadest sense) to recognise that these dull suburban social activities are important and that the Conservative Party should set out its stall to take part enthusiastically in the social life of places where there are lots of conservative-minded people.

Maybe we need a punk conservatism

Punk rock superstar, Iggy Pop performed a song called ‘I’m a conservative’ which most of his fans want to assume is a sort of anti-Reagan diatribe when, especially since Iggy Pop is on record as backing Ronald Reagan, the opposite is largely true. The problem, however, is that punk doesn’t smell of conservatism but rather of rebellion, kicking out at the establishment, and How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink.

There’s a point at which the conservative life is a rebellion. Not merely O’Rourke’s rebellion against being told what to do by bossy people who mostly vote Democrat but a challenge to the ‘...progressive cultural milieu…” and the endless promotion of a libertine lifestyle as the norm. When we see smart and well-educated people telling us that we need to ‘normalise’ fetishes, it should dawn on us that the radical, the punk, choice for the well-educated urbanite is to be a conservative. I look at initiatives like Comedy Unleashed and see a nascent sort of punk conservatism developing. Yes many involved see themselves as liberals, supporters of gay rights and generally cool stuff but they also know that the “...progressive cultural milieu…” see them as transgressors, as promoters of bad (see also “far right”) opinions that shouldn’t be allowed.

Vanity Fair wrote recently about El Segundo “California’s Freedom-Loving, Bible-Thumping Hub of Hard Tech”:

“The founders in El Segundo have settled on an expansive terrain in which to express sentiments that might chafe otherwise progressive sensibilities. They have an outsize respect for their country and men in uniform. They love fast cars, tobacco products, and their Lord and savior Jesus Christ. They are aspirationally blue collar, often wearing blue jeans, clean leather work boots, and dark T-shirts with company emblems embroidered on their breast pockets. By day, the founders often trek to the Central Valley to launch drones into the airspace. By night, they can be found drinking Singapore slings at the Purple Orchid tiki lounge, or burning pallets at Dockweiler Beach, chewing nicotine pouches, and chugging energy drinks.”

Here we have the same spirit that P. J. O’Rouke, The Ramones and Iggy Pop gave us back in the 70s and 80s, a punk conservatism that believes that you don’t have to be square to be conservative, that you can have fun, work hard, kick out at the old bosses, and still be conservatives. I don’t know how we get to this sort of world in the UK, it may already be there but we haven’t noticed (certainly the UK lacks America’s high risk, high return start-up culture) but I think it should form part of the future for any conservative political effort. Stop being fussbuckets, start believing that having a good time is absolutely part of the conservative life, and that risk-takers are going to…er…take risks.