David Cameron, Conservative (and let's not forget it)

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Yesterday evening, amongst the usual chatter and gossip, we had a few thoughts about what we mean by being a ‘conservative’. And, in some ways, with the loudness of the Tory “right” and the seeming success of UKIP this discussion is important. After all (and I know it’s not universally agreed) UKIP folk often lay claim to being “libertarian”.

The starting point was my observation that David Cameron is the most “High Tory” – the most ‘conservative’ – prime minister since Stanley Baldwin. I was asked to explain not least because, as readers here know, I get very angry at Cameron’s knee-jerk nannying fussbucketry. So how could I, as a conservative, describe Cameron as the “most Conservative leader”?

The answer to this lies in two central concepts of conservatism (or at least English conservatism) – the first is what we might call ‘noblesse oblige’ and the second is the idea of government as administration.

‘Noblesse oblige’ is the idea that a person laying claim to nobility is obliged to act nobly. We could describe it as a duty on the citizen to assist those less fortunate or even, to borrow from Hillaire Belloc:

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.

Some recoil from this concept seeing in it the ossification of society, the triumph of aristocracy as an institution. But for Cameron – and we see this in his enthusiasm for “social action” – such an obligation to act nobly is essential to conservatism. We are defined by what we do rather than what we support. Passing laws to help the poor in Africa or to care for communities in England is not sufficient; we must act ourselves to help society. A central tenet of Cameron’s conservatism is the idea of “giving back” – we are fortunate so it behoves us to put some of that fortune back into society.

The second concept is the idea of administration. Some people see the purpose of securing political power as the way to effect change, to direct the forces of government so as to improve mankind. In Cameron’s conservatism this is not the case; the purpose of power is administration – the running of good government.

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.

This may not be my conservatism – mine is founded on the idea of place, the principle of responsibility and the imperative of freedom – but no-one can say that Cameron is not a conservative.

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Dave "..didn't mention climate change." So what!

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According to the Friends of the Earth (and with friends like that who needs enemies) David Cameron’s speech today was a poor do. He failed to mention ‘climate change’:

"With not a mention of climate change, this was not the speech we would have expected from the Prime Minister of the self-declared 'greenest Government ever'."

So what?

Cameron didn’t mention a load of really important things – he didn’t mention housing, he didn’t mention transport, he didn’t mention devolution, he didn’t mention the deportation of Gamu and he didn’t mention the sale of Liverpool football club to an American baseball magnate. As far as I know he didn’t talk about the common agricultural policy, about free trade or about proposals for a landfill site in Denholme. All things that matter just as much to some as 'climate change'.

I could go on filling page after page with things that David Cameron didn’t mention in his speech today. And you know, it doesn’t matter – what matters is what is actually done by the Government not what its leader says on a stage in Birmingham. That’s just rah-rah – cheery stuff (and a bit of a thank you) for the folks who stomped the streets, knocked on the doors and pulled out the votes that gave Dave the job.

If the planet’s pals want to know what the Government is doing – read the Coalition Agreement and look to see whether it’s being implemented. We don’t need off the cuff, on the hoof policy announcements just to get a headline - Blair and Brown did that and look at the mess it got us into.

And we certainly don’t need – at a time when most ordinary people are bothered about their jobs, their mortgages, their kids education and conditions at the local hospital – a load of self appointed guardians of the Earth’s interests (as if they’ve clue) to talk about ‘climate change’.

I am really delighted Dave didn’t mention climate change. It shows he’s getting his priorities right.



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Dave, Nick - it's the economy that matters NOW not voting systems

This is beginning to get me annoyed. Look guys and gals, it’s pretty simple. The only thing that matters right now – the ONLY thing – is sorting out the government’s financial crisis before it comes over all Hellenic.

By all means have a nice fireside chat about voting systems in the down moments from sorting out the mess. But we don’t have to have another election for five years – yes, folks you’ve got five years to discuss and explore the options on voting reform.

But we don’t have five years to sort out the deficit, begin to reduce the debt, stabilise the economy, end the squeezing out of private enterprise and get the economy going again. I’m not sure we’ve the luxury of five months to do this urgent work – the markets, the lenders and the investors won’t give us five days if we insist on blabbering about voting systems rather than sitting down and working out what needs to be done NOW to sort the public finances out.

So Dave, Nick and all the other chatterers – shut up about voting systems and get on with sorting out Gordon’s mess – it’s why you were elected!

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Why you should vote Conservative on May 6th

Yesterday’s Telegraph Magazine carried an extended profile of David Cameron that was a good read. However, the opening paragraphs included a quote from Cameron that, to me, was a clear exposition of conservatism:

'People who tell you too much about their utopia, I always get a bit worried that suddenly we’ll be forced to wear the same uniform. When you hear about someone’s vision to remake the world, you do need a bit of, “hmm, that’s interesting… How much freedom am I going to have in that one, and how much is that going to cost me?”

Conservatism is the philosophy of the doubter – rejecting the idea of ideological purity, the search for the City on the Hill, with a more practical, considered and flexible approach. An approach rooted in place and the histories of place. Conservatives embrace a philosophy of values rather than an ideological search for a perfected future – a rejection of utopias.

This ‘real’ Conservatism is different from the liberalism that lay at the heart of Thatcher’s repositioning of the party – which may explain partly the discomfort of some in the Party with Cameron’s rediscovery of the politics of place and community. These ideas – central to the traditional Conservative idea of government – were set aside by Thatcherism.

“Even so, the election of 1979 might have been little more than a psephological curiosity had it not been for something far more important than the statistical outcome. For the fact is that the Conservative party had been swept into office on a programme which seemed to mark a conscious change of direction, not merely from that charted by its political opponents, but from that followed by all British Governments since the war, including its own Conservative predecessors. Hence the seemingly self-contradictory notion of ‘The New Conservatism’.” (Nigel Lawson)

For the first time, British Conservatives were grasping at an ideological position – at least in the rhetoric of politics if not in the reality of government. And that ideological position owed more to Gladstone’s liberalism than it did to the pragmatism of Disraeli or the scepticism of Salisbury and Balfour. What Cameron has done is to set out again the ancient cause of the conservation – a cause defined by Lord Blake in his history of the party:

“There was a…belief that Britain, especially England, was usually in the right. There was a similar faith in the value of diversity, of independent institutions, of the rights of property; a similar distrust of centralizing officialdom, of the efficacy of government (except in the preservation of order and national defence), of Utopian panaceas and of ‘doctrinaire’ intellectuals; a similar dislike of abstract ideas, high philosophical principles and sweeping generalizations. There was a similar readiness to accept cautious empirical piecemeal reform, if a Conservative government said it was needed. There was a similar reluctance to look far ahead or worry too much about the future; a similar scepticism about human nature; a similar belief in original sin, and in the limitations of political and social amelioration; a similar scepticism about the notion of ‘equality’.”

I don’t agree with everything in the 150 page hardback book, nor do I like the outlook or views of every Tory standing for election. But if what we get is an end to government believing it can solve every problem – including problems specially invented for the purpose of solution – then I will proceed with a smile on my face. I don’t expect to stop being angry and annoyed at the stupidity, mendacity, busybodying and bulling of government and agents of government. But I do know that with a Conservative government I’ve more chance of being free to speak out, free to buy and sell and free to move around this great land of ours.

Vote for the politics of place and community. Vote for honest doubt about the ability of government to solve all the world’s problems. And vote for what Cameron said:

How much freedom am I going to have…and how much is that going to cost me?

With a Conservative government you’ll have more freedom and it will cost you less – and that alone is reason enough to Vote Conservative.

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