The Conservative Party has always been a 'One Nation' party - it is nothing when it isn't

A patriotic party not a nationalist party. A respectful party not an intolerant party. And a party that can stand anywhere in Britain to present ideas about place, duty, family and tradition

“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws . . . . THE RICH AND THE POOR.”

We tend to think first of Dickens as the chronicler of Victorian social conditions but, in many ways, the route to a better world for the English working class didn’t start with the popular and successful Charles but with another man, the man who wrote those words above, Benjamin Disraeli. And the opening words of the passage above - ‘two nations’ - became over time a statement of Tory ambition - One Nation.

The idea that our nation is divided seems a statement of unquestioned truth. We can barely summon up unity to watch England scoring five consecutive penalties to reach the semi-finals of the European Championship. As soon as the last cheer’s echoes fade and the tears of joy are wiped away, we are greeted by a barrage of divisive ‘culture war’ assertions because four of the five England scorers are the children of immigrants.

Our nation is divided by wealth and income. We are divided by geography. We are divided by race, by age, by gender and by education. And these divisions are seen and exploited by a terrible generation of political grifters on both right and left. It simply doesn’t suit Angela Rayner, Suella Braverman, Nicola Sturgeon or Nigel Farage for us to fill in the chasms that cross our society, culture and economy. For these politicians exploiting division is the route to a frivolous, personal power. Power that will be squandered on pandering to one or other side of the divides in our nation.

The Conservative Party has, since its inception as a modern party in the mid-19th century, been the party of nation, union and bettering the condition of Britain. The Party may often have fallen below the ideals that this mission requires but it has been since that day in 1876 when Disraeli told the National Union, gathered at Crystal Palace, that the Party’s job was to defend the union, protect our great institutions and improve the conditions of the working man. The Conservatives became Britain’s first mass membership party and remained just that until the ‘modernisation’ under William Hague turned it from a party of its members to a vehicle for the leader.

Last week the Conservatives suffered a historic defeat. There is no escaping from the reality of the result and its cause. Conservatives lost because they had lost sight of their historic mission of unity, opting instead for the sort of triangulation between different groups first used by Tony Blair. Above all the Party decided to adopt a test of ideological purity based on the 2016 Brexit vote. This test has nothing at all to do with how people actually voted in the 2016 referendum but with positions on ‘wokeness’, ‘globalism’, and ‘culture’ that owe their origins to the European radical, nationalist right rather than to conservatism. It is ironic that those loudly calling for ‘real conservatism’ are, almost without exception, from the non-conservative right. Above all these new right advocates believe, learning from Donald Trump in the USA, that you can govern a divided nation by doing just what one side of the divide wants.

There is not, however, a reliable majority (or even plurality) of voters in the new right’s ‘populist’ category. You can, like Matt Goodwin the political scientist turned advocate of populism, use carefully constructed opinion polling to craft a hypothetical majority that leans left on economics and right on ‘culture’, but this is an illusory coalition. Conservatives have, it seems, lost sight of something that they always knew instinctively, most people are not particularly interested in politics:

“Conservatives don't spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a conservative. After all, politics is boring, political philosophy, doubly boring. So we don't spend hours discussing the nuance of our ideology, preferring instead to talk about the garden, the football or the state of the gullies on Bingley Road.”

When Disraeli spoke of bettering the lives of ordinary men, it wasn’t done as some sort of electoral calculation, he hadn’t conducted opinion polls or focus groups. What Disraeli set out was a mission - “this is not a policy of sewage” - rather than a programme of government. The sense in recent years is that, for all the new Labour government’s talk of missions, the ambition of politics has narrowed, become more cynical and completely lacks ideological gravitas. Even those - left and right - who want to tear down the institutions of international markets, co-operation and protection, do so in the belief that the simple fact of destroying these institutions is sufficient. ‘Brexit means Brexit’ they say when a moment of reflection tells us that Brexit means a bewildering and complicated set of choices, some good, some bad. Others cry ‘End Capitalism’ without giving the slightest thought as to what the replacement for capitalism looks like (except not like all the other places that have tried to end capitalism disastrously). Even those who consider themselves wise centrists persist with the idea that mission, ambition and management are synonyms and with the bizarre idea that ancient institutions are inherently bad and need replacing with smoothed, rebranded, modernised and repositioned versions.

‘One Nation’ is not simply a conservative vision but, for British Conservatives, the mission of the Party. And the union, the monarchy, an established church, a sovereign parliament and great institutions steeped in tradition, are as much as part of that unifying mission as the imperative of reducing poverty, banishing divisive prejudice and protecting the old and ill. The great institutions are corrupted by leftist modernism but this doesn’t argue for their destruction but for conservatives to assert the interests of a united nation rather than the interests of institutional leadership.

‘One Nation’ recognises that the evolution of the economy, while it acts to make us overall richer (or, at least it damned well should), also leaves people behind. While Margaret Thatcher’s abandonment of old manufacturing and mining communities is grossly exaggerated, ‘One Nation’ tells us we need a better approach to supporting places and people left behind by economic change. What it doesn’t say is that we should set aside the benefits of economic growth because some few folk will lose. 

‘One Nation’, like Disraeli, recognises that poverty is a terrible curse and that a wealthy, powerful nation must be ashamed that poverty persists. The new right is too ready to condemn the poor as victims of their own stupidity, poor choices and ignorance. Worse, many of that new right seek to find scapegoats for poverty in the form of immigrants and minority faiths. Our first thought on seeing a poor man should be to ask how we alleviate his suffering not to accuse him of being a scrounger, the undeserving poor. It is true that people have agency and that most poor people have it within themselves to escape poverty but this doesn’t mean we just leave them to their own devices.

None of this means falling into the leftist trap of believing that making people’s lives better requires the direction of a huge state. Or that the creation of ever expanding entitlements can be afforded. But ‘One Nation’ also demands that we do something when young people can’t afford the rent, when old people sit in pain waiting for a hip operation, and when walking the street visibly Jewish or Muslim invites insult, offence and even assault.

In recent years there has been a tendency for ‘One Nation’ to become a divide within the Conservative Party rather than an idea of unity. For ‘Reform-adjacent’ parts of the party the term is thrown as an insult, as if the principles on which Disraeli reformed the party are somehow unconservative and that ‘One Nation’ conservatives are really ‘liberals’ or even ‘socialists’. Yet it is Nigel Farage’s talk of ‘revolt’ that undermines the unity of the nation not that some Tory MPs are a little bit too ‘woke’ for some people’s preferences.

For the next couple of years nobody will be especially interested in what the Conservative Party has to say about specific policies. Conservatives should use this time to rebuild the party as what it has always been, the party of union, community and tradition. It seems there’s an initial choice between a leader who wants to lead Reform UK or a leader who wants to lead the Conservative Party. This should be easy but there’s a risk that the party will choose to reclaim those ‘lost’ Reform voters by simply adopting the same politics but without Farage’s charisma. The effect of this is to marginalise the party - the very opposite of what is needed.

Assuming the Conservatives dodge this risk, the mission is at first organisational. Candidate selection, local organisation, the party structures and the election of leader all need to change. There’s an advantage in that, even despite the crashing defeats of recent years, Conservatives retain several thousand councillors, control most of the County councils and have a lively presence in the Welsh Senedd, the Scottish Parliament and the London Assembly. And maybe a new leader will step over the Brexit wreckage to talk about Britain in the world rather than the protectionist, isolationist outlook that Farage and Reform UK have adopted from Donald Trump.

None of this is about ‘winning from the centre’ because British centrist politics is entirely stuck in the managerialist ideology of Tony Blair. Instead Conservatives should be clear that you cannot manage poverty away, that the state can’t manage its way to economic growth and that taxation doesn’t lead to prosperity. And that a united country - One Nation - doesn’t come about by destroying institutions, traditions and norms. One Nation is the antithesis of the ‘culture war’ imported from the USA and it is possible to respect people’s lives without tearing down the basis for our nation’s culture.

In an otherwise awful interview one possible leadership contender, Victoria Atkins, got one thing right. In Britain, the majority of people live, by choice, essentially conservative lives, most people should be at least open to supporting a Conservative Party. But many of these people living conservative lives currently hate the party because it let them down on the most important part of Disraeli’s deal - their lives got worse. Not because of immigration. Not because of ‘woke’ managers in the NHS. People’s lives got worse because their wage packets didn’t grow but the cost of the mortgage, the weekly shop, electricity and the council tax did grow.

The Conservative Party has always been a ‘One Nation’ party. A patriotic party not a nationalist party. A respectful party not an intolerant party. And a party that can stand anywhere in Britain to present ideas about place, duty, family and tradition that resonate with many people. Right now much of this isn’t true, too many buy the populist snake oil about nationalism, identity and failed institutions and sell that as conservatism. Much to do but the work needs doing if we want Britain to really be One Nation.