Liberal Creatures in Tory Clothing

The British political system has long been dichotomous. It does not so much favour as create two parties. This was once widely celebrated. There are few better ways to ensure institutional continuity and a political culture in which conflict, that inevitable feature of human experience, can be peacefully resolved. Far better that two parties should knock lumps out of one another than that dozens should compete to discredit, or even shatter, the constitutional framework as a whole. 

But what is a nation to do when a party empowered by such a system, yet long past its expiry date in terms of credibility and popular appeal, refuses to die the honourable death that it is due? Such is the case with the UK Conservative Party, an empty political organism that habitually neglects, disappoints, and insults the decent people who—against their better judgement, it must be said—continue to keep it in office. Can this hold for much longer? At the recent NatCon event in London, the handful of speeches made by senior Tories, most of them attempts to distract us from the collapsing scenery of their 13 years in government, were poorly received by the vast majority in the audience.

Media attention fixated on the mischief and disruption, whether caused by protestors storming the stage itself or Steve Bray (‘Mr. Stop Brexit’) blaring out music on his marginally less sentient loudspeaker by the entrance. While I admire their spirit, these activists could have saved themselves an afternoon if only they knew how much their contempt for the Conservative Party was shared by the many attendees, including myself, whom they berated with the kind of slogans one might expect from mid-wits nourished on a stodgy diet of James O’Brien radio rants. Insults like fascist and Nazi were thrown around with abandon, by which they appeared to mean pro-democratic self-government and anti-mass immigration rather than supportive of vaccine passports and locking people in their own homes on pain of arrest or financial penalty. These Tory measures they presumably supported, as did the entire Left-liberal media. In any case, it would have surprised them to learn that the most rapturous applause of the three days was given when Anthony Daniels, occasional writer for this parish, remarked from the podium that the Conservative Party “ought to be ashamed of itself.”

Indeed, it was difficult to get too upset by the band of powerless, self-discrediting protestors outside when the real obstacles to a sound conservative movement, namely the leading figures in the Tory Party, dared to show their faces at the event itself. Particularly lamentable were Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove, who seemed respectively to think that jokes about French cheese and sentimental tributes to Roger Scruton would make us forget the years of idleness, mediocrity, and at times even shameful capitulation to the Left, which has remained culturally supreme, even ascendant, despite its formal failure to conquer Downing Street. As Ben Sixsmith writes of Gove’s attempt to woo us with Scrutonian cosplay, “It would have been tempting to ask Mister Secretary Gove to tell us what his twelve years in office did most to give practical effect to his reading of Scruton.” What a shame that not a single Conservative minister, either present or former, stuck around for questions from a sceptical crowd.

Rees-Mogg gave a harmless speech on the fine heritage of English conservatism, but there was very little on the present Tory government—uncritically supported by Rees-Mogg when Boris Johnson was at the helm—that has spent the last four years busily betraying it. Instead, we heard the usual guff about supply-side reform, so beloved by those on the alleged ‘Right’ of the Conservative Party who speak as if there is no better antidote to the culture war, and the wider civilisational decline that it represents, than a package of tax cuts, deregulation, and glitzy trade deals with foreign markets. Rees-Mogg tried to reframe this kind of economic liberalism as a stimulant to national renewal—and in their proper place, of course, such policies can make us richer. But conservatives should recover the original Greek meaning of ‘economy.’ We must first have a home (oikos) before we can discuss the rules (nomos) best suited to its material flourishing. Free markets are a good product of a well-ordered society, but they make for a very poor foundation. 

The rot at the heart of the Conservatives is perfectly exposed by the fact that Rees-Mogg had harsher words for Rishi Sunak’s failure to throw EU regulations on the bonfire than for Boris Johnson’s refusal to control our borders, by far the more disgraceful abdication of responsibility yet one that went unmentioned by the ex-Prime Minister’s most reliable hero-worshipper. These liberal creatures in Tory clothing, who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, deserve electoral oblivion. If they do not reap it, we will soon find ourselves in a country that more closely resembles an airport terminal than a national home: rich in opportunities for consumption, but at its core an alienating, unlovable zone with nothing but an official GDP statistic shared in common. Are we to believe that broken promises likely to make a country poorer are worse than immigration rates destined on current trends to turn a people, at great risk and without democratic consent, into a minority in their own homeland?

Gove was no more impressive. He described himself as a liberal in the sense that he respects the right of individuals to make choices for themselves—unless, of course, these concern freedom of association, bodily integrity, and all of the other basic liberties that were violated by the experimental lockdowns he supported from within Johnson’s cabinet. Asked by the Telegraph’s Madeline Grant to sum up the Conservatives’ legacy over the past decade, he delivered a vague sermon on economic dynamism. If I may venture a more direct though less flattering answer myself, I would say that this government will be remembered for locking down its own people while flinging the borders wide open—an asymmetric view of ‘free movement’ if ever there was one.

If we keep rewarding mediocrity and poorly managed decline, we forfeit our right to protest when a country in desperate need of renewal is subjected to more of the same. The Conservatives must suffer an historic electoral wipe-out in 2024. For those who fear a Labour prime minister, rest assured that Keir Starmer stabbing us in the front for five years is likely to accelerate the political realignment that this country needs far quicker than a Conservative Party which quietly euthanizes us while posing as our champions. National conservatism can have no future in the United Kingdom until liberal Toryism is put out of its misery.