Seeking a route through the woods: a future for the Conservative Party

The political route facing conservatives in Britain after the seemingly inevitable drubbing on the 4th of July:There is no right track but a combination of tracks

They shut the road through the woods
      Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
      And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods

I read a great deal about how the Conservative Party has lost its way. People write about how the ‘One Nation’ faction means the Party is, as Fergus Mason tells us, “...sprawled across the political spectrum like a vast, bloated and useless jellyfish.” People cry out for a true conservatism but other than a sense of pain and loss there’s very little that is specific. I suppose if there is a route back we need to start by recognising it isn't the Conservative Party’s current road.

There are a few different roads back that people present. There’s some who say that the current problems aren’t ideological but a matter of circumstance and misfortune so the road is fine. There are others who look to Donald Trump or varieties of European ‘populism’ saying the problem is a lack of national spirit. And there are those who walk back into the Party’s history seeking the point where, to borrow from Robert Frost, “two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”

Each of these ideas have merit and each speak to different perspectives on politics: the pragmatic, the angry and the believer. The pragmatic tell us that politics is cyclical and driven as much by the vagaries of events as by the ideological preferences of the public. The angry reflect genuine upset among many that the leaders of their ‘tribe’ have let them down. And the believers say that, regardless of the current leadership, the truth of the conservative mission remains.

In Robert Macfarlane’s ‘The Old Ways’ he describes the Ridgeway, an ancient trackway running along the downs from Wiltshire to Buckinghamshire. The Ridgeway isn’t a single path but a collection of interwoven paths that follow the line of the downs. Although there is a single destination, as it were, the paths are different with some high on the exposed downs and others dropping down into what were wooded valleys crossed by holloways and pack horse trails. The political route facing conservatives in Britain after the seemingly inevitable drubbing on the 4th of July is, I feel, very similar. There is no right track but a combination of tracks. Let’s explore those tracks.

British politics has become less tribal (this is not peculiar to the UK) which means that voting patterns become more volatile. One effect of this is what we have seen over the last couple of years as voters, disillusioned with the Conservative government, shift support. The genuine tribal association with the two main parties that up to the 1990s represented two-thirds of voters probably accounts for less than 40% of those voters today. In part this is explained by the successful reduction in class divisions across society with them being replaced by different divides - race, age, education levels and even gender - that do not fit so easily into the traditional left vs right divide.

One outcome of this reduced voter loyalty, especially in a ‘first-past-the-post’ electoral system is election results like 1997 and 2019 where a party is ‘punished’ for failing to please the increasingly independent electorate and the punishment is exacerbated by the nature of the electoral system. A pragmatic approach, ‘what goes around, comes around’, suggests that the political merry-go-round will inevitably result in a Labour government becoming unpopular. After the 1997 general election, the Conservative vote had recovered sufficiently to give the party a poll lead by September 2000. Although Labour still went on to win two more elections (2001 and 2005) the volatility in voting intention was plain.

On this path the priority is effective opposition both in parliament and across the country. This requires, as we have seen with Keir Starmer, realising that opposition means opposing the government’s programme not having detailed alternative proposals. Labour opposed the planning reforms set out by Robert Jenrick, not because they disagreed with creating a better planning system, but because the Conservative parliamentary party was deeply divided on the issue. We can contrast this, for example, with Ian Duncan Smith missing the opportunity to defeat Blair over Iraq because he (nobly) acted on what he saw as the national interest rather than, as Starmer would have done, (cynically) opposing the war because it would expose divisions in the governing party. Pragmatists should also learn from Starmer’s Labour Party in using unpleasant ad hominem towards any and all government party politicians.

It is not enough, however, to rely on mere opposition. Labour’s success is, to a considerable extent, driven by an activist and membership base filled with people who genuinely hate Tories. This anger is driven by ideology (‘smash capitalism’) and by a sense of injustice felt by groups (racial minorities, public sector workers, LGBT, students and so forth) with which these activists associate themselves. In Europe the success of ‘populist’ parties has taken the same form with rural communities, parts of the urban working class angry at perceived exclusion and preferential treatment for immigrants, public sector workers and the urban elite. In government the Conservative Party, much though it empathises with this anger, is unable to take advantage of it because the blame for exclusion and preferential treatment is directed to that Conservative government.

It isn’t hard to imagine circumstances where at every prime ministers question time, across social media and in assorted local forums, we see an effective opposition challenging the government’s actions around immigration, asylum, and other contentious issues (the ones that form the core of populism - sectarianism, crime, wokeness as well as migration). It isn’t necessary to literally - a la gilets jaune - take to the streets but a sort of tacit acknowledgement of their cause provides a powerful momentum to activism. Although the fuel protests of 2000 were short lived they did help to propel levels of Conservative support from 25-28% to 35% or more. 

Although Starmer has been very lucky, his government still faces difficult choices, the resolution of which present opportunities for a populist or national conservative agenda - closer links with the EU, speeches at Davos, the endless round of politicised international law interventions, and the inevitable failure to reduce immigration levels. Added to this will be the gradual dawning on many ordinary people that the target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 requires pressure on people to change their choices - rising energy costs, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and a load of new controls (ULEZ in London is a fine example) aimed at forced behaviour change.

The last of my three paths is one founded on a renewal of mission. People looking in the Conservative Party’s history have several sources of inspiration and mission. Disraeli’s two 1872 speeches, at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and at the Crystal Palace, set out a mission of being a national party, supporting the great institutions of state, and improving the condition of the working man. The idea of ‘one nation’ comes from Disraeli (although Sybil’s sub-title was Two Nations) as does the tradition of working class conservatism that so upsets people of the left.

While Disraeli isn’t a bad place to look for ways to renew the mission of conservatism, we can also consider more recent work including the further development of the ‘one nation’ idea at the Conservative Research Department under such luminaries as Rab Butler, Enoch Powell and Ted Heath. This shifted Disraeli’s emphasis from empire and institutions to focus more strongly on social reform and meeting the aspirations of the ordinary worker both white- and blue-collar. Ideas such as home ownership and self-reliance dominate this mission alongside the recognition that Labour’s state ownership and support for trade union power acted against the interests of most workers.

Finally we have the marriage of conservatism with classical liberal economics both in the UK and the USA. The meeting at Selsdon Park Hotel that led to the 1970 election manifesto represented another development of Disraeli’s mission. The end of empire led to a reassessment of Britain’s international role and the party, alongside Republicans in the USA, became advocates of social reforms in the form of promoting individual over collective rights. Importantly, however, Conservatives at their best refused to simply accept rent-seeking and corporatist capitalism. This is best illustrated by Ted Heath’s description of the Lonrho affair as "...the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism…”.

These three paths all lead in the same direction. A pragmatic and occasionally cynical approach to opposition, surfing the righteous anger of many ordinary people with immigration and fussbucketry, and renewing the mission of conservatism represent the best way back to government for the Conservative Party. While defeat in July seems inevitable, it is a defeat for a tired and directionless government elected on a limited agenda - “get Brexit done” - not a defeat for conservatism. What matters afterwards is that the Conservative Party remembers its history, steps away from embracing a sort of genteel decline, and returns to the ideas of nation, institutional stability and the betterment of people’s lives. And in doing this conservatives must also embrace the cynicism of good opposition and the anger of those most hurt by mass immigration, net zero policies and the endless fussbucketry beloved of the public sector elite.