One week into the Conservative leadership contest and I have a question: what is a Conservative?
It's not a riddle, rather a reflection on the debate we've heard so far. There has been plenty of talk about who the party should choose and what the party should do but less on what the party is, or should be, for.
I'm not after ruminations of high philosophy; Burke and Scruton already covered that. What I'm looking for is a purpose or a mission, a reason why the Conservatives are currently in office and why they should be returned at the next general election.
We have a rough idea what the Labour Party is all about, even if the Labour Party doesn't always seem to. Lord knows we're well-versed in the primary aim of the SNP and we'll soon hear about the others if they ever get any.
But what is the Conservative party after? What kind of Britain does it want to see?
There are very obvious dividing lines in the leadership race. There are those candidates who believe the party should stick with the centrist project introduced by David Cameron, which tempers traditional Tory instincts about the individual and the state with modern attitudes about family arrangements and sexuality, as well as an attempt to soften the harsher edges of capitalism.
Then there are the contenders who seek to reignite the torch of Thatcherism, with a return to familiar themes of liberty, limited government, tax cuts and slashing the red tape said to inhibit the economy. The neo-Thatcherites are less socially conservative and markedly less religious than the Iron Lady but they retain her no-nonsense disdain for socialism, dependency and paternalism.
Finally, there is a new entrant: the cultural conservative. Scourge of the woke, enemy of identity politics, the cultural conservative fears the Conservative party is asleep while the left marches through the institutions, injecting US-style grievance narratives about race and gender into national life, denigrating British history and otherwise engendering division.
Supporters of each of these models of conservatism give short shrift to rival ways of doing things. This strikes me as wrong-headed. Each of these approaches to right-of-centre politics has their merits and they all have something to learn from one another.
What they all have in common, however, is this: they are insufficient. Pitching to the centre is fine, but what about the growing number of voters who won't be found there? Cutting taxes is a noble endeavour, but who gets the relief and who gets burdened for it? Challenging the internal corrosion of British institutions is vital, but what about the families, neighbourhoods and entire towns that have been corroded?
The Conservatives could adopt one or all of these approaches but they are still just that: processes. They are mechanisms for taking forward political instincts but none contains a blueprint for the sort of society Tories wish to deliver.
A Tory society ought to give individuals the chance to set down roots, raise families and help build communities. It ought to ensure the middle class dream of ownership, prosperity and security is more than just a dream. It ought to be a society in which the values of hard word, self-reliance, opportunity and reward for effort are not just hollow platitudes.
This is the sort of society that will conduct itself in the restrained and responsible way that Conservatives wish to see. The question is: are Conservatives prepared to foster such a society? (And, if not, are they prepared for the social and political consequences that will follow from failing to do so?)
There are no shortcuts but there is a guiding principle: homes. Not just homes; we need economic growth, well-paying jobs, affordable childcare, credible alternatives to wasteful years of university miseducation. But homes are what pull it all together.
During the Second World War, Robert Menzies, who would go on to become Australia’s longest-serving prime minister, gave a speech which came to define his philosophy and supply the basis for his electoral dominance. Known as ‘The Forgotten People’, the address was Menzies’ defence of the middle classes from both the socialists and the corporate tycoons, a declaration that these people — ‘salary-earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers’ — were ‘the backbone of the nation’.
Menzies was not merely pandering. He was issuing a warning, at a time of great social and global upheaval, that Australia’s prosperity, its national stability, even its democracy depended on a strong middle class, on ‘people who are nameless and unadvertised, and who, whatever their individual religious conviction or dogma, see in their children their greatest contribution to the immortality of their race’. Their sturdiness, he averred, lay in their ‘responsibility for homes — homes material, homes human, and homes spiritual’.
The home was ‘the foundation of sanity and sobriety… the indispensable condition of continuity… [and] its health determines the health of society as a whole’. The material home gave people ‘a stake in the country’; it gave them something to build, to conserve and to work for. It also allowed them to follow ‘the great instinct of civilised man’ and construct the human home, which is to say a family.
With a roof over their head and children at their feet, the middle classes would, finally, tend to the spiritual home, the circumstances in which values were inculcated and characters formed. Those capable of attaining the three kinds of home would acquire ‘a fierce independence of spirit’ and ‘a brave acceptance of unclouded individual responsibility’. They would raise their offspring to be ‘not leaners but lifters’.
If all this sounds familiar, it is because Menzies, fiercely proud of his family’s Renfrewshire roots, had drawn his theory from ‘the tradition of Scottish homes’ in which even a ploughman working the fields would put his son’s education at the heart of family life. His extended post-war tenure as prime minister is often dismissed by historians and intellectuals for its lack of political dynamism and yet Menzies presided over an era of unprecedented prosperity, full employment and home ownership. He was the conservative champion of the forgotten people.
Britain's Conservatives should take up the cause of our forgotten people: the young. Locked out of the housing market, they are denied the opportunity for homes material, human and spiritual. They will rent for many years longer than their parents; some will rent all their lives. Enslaved to their forever-inadequate deposit savings, they will put off marriage longer and children, too. We will soon get to see what it looks like when a country makes it prohibitively expensive to have children. The impact on national revenues could be devastating.
The effect on social behaviour and political activity will be no less daunting. A generation which cannot afford to meet the basic requirements of the good life will live lives that are less than good. They will be less responsible, less community-minded, and less willing to contribute to a welfare budget from which they are unlikely to benefit.
The young are not diligent about voting but soon enough they will reach middle age, when electoral participation begins to pick up. In time, and not much of it, the Tories could be looking at a middle-aged middle class that is still living the precarious life of a twenty-something. With nothing to conserve — no assets, no children, no investments — it is unlikely they are going to cast their votes for the Conservatives. At that point, the debate won't be what the Conservative party is for but whether it will ever see government again.
Whoever wins the leadership race, a moment of choosing is coming for the Tories and coming soon. Does the party want to expand affluence, ownership and families in Britain? Or is it content to manage decline until another government comes along?
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on July 18, 2022. Feature image: National Library of Australia, public domain.
Excellent thought provoking article especially as the projected figures for Scotland are a diminishing workforce with an increased amount of people of pensionable age Something we in Scotland need to seriously debate Would have helped if we had had a successful census but we know all about that of course
Very well said. I don’t see a Menzies among the current leadership contenders. Badenoch will be fine, though. Good Scots name if nothing else.