What is the point of the Conservative Party?

There is no point in trying to out Reform, Reform...

The Conservative Party has tried to be Reform for forty years…and failed

This year’s Party Conference should be one of the most important in the history of the Conservative Party, up there with 2007, 1980 or 1946.

For the first time in its history, the Conservative Party faces a serious threat not to its ideological left but to its ideological right. Reform is in many ways the Conservative Party’s nemesis, the consequence of the party’s own ideological contradictions in trying to be an anti-establishment-establishment party; a liberal-conservative party; an internationalist-isolationist party.

Nigel Farage in the classical guise of nemesis…as imagined by Grok.

These tensions, in my view, trace their roots back to the post-war period, where the Conservative Party found itself intellectually outflanked by a conservative Labour Party - an unusual political entity that was social democratic, nationalist, protectionist and deeply committed to the fundamental pillars of the British constitution. In response and under the liberal Winston Churchill’s leadership, the Party shift away from its intellectual foundations towards a materialist liberalism (e.g. free trade, anti-regulation, pro-consumer rather than pro-producer) whilst nominally being committed to preserving a traditional social order.

Thatcher, who came of age in the 1940s and 1950s under this strange brand of Churchillian Conservatism, was the attempt to make this inherently contradictory brand of conservatism viable.

We unleashed the creative destruction of finance to preserve our industrial heritage, we destroyed it. We sought to expand choice in every domain, hoping they would choose to maintain traditional family and community values, we got isolation and dislocation. We sought to reduce the size of the state and taxes, but created such huge social costs that we made the state even bigger and more bureaucratic. We encouraged mass migration to fuel growth to buy social cohesion, but got neither. We sought to make Britain the vanguard in an international war against tyranny, yet through losing economic control of our home market, became economically dependent to those very regimes we opposed.

We stand in the shattered ruins of this doomed political project.

Every leader since then has, to ever diminishing levels of success, sought to put humpty dumpty back together. Each time it has taken the party further along the road to destruction.

Reform is so difficult for the Conservative Party to attack because it is essentially promising to deliver what Conservatives have talked about since the 1980s. Farage is a child of Thatcher, a “bar room Thatcherite” as Steve Bannon calls him. Alongside Richard Tice, they stand for a tax cutting, state shrinking, deregulatory agenda with close alignment with the United States. Much of the idea that Reform is going left-wing on the economy is more based on vibes, such as half-promises to nationalise the steel industry, rather than the general direction of travel. Does anyone seriously believe that the party of the Britannia Card is going to carry out a major programme of economic reform? Worryingly for Conservatives who embrace this agenda, Reform has little historical baggage or particularly attachment to any particular features of the British state.

What’s the point of ‘out-Reforming’ Reform?

Obviously one response to Reform will be simply to present the Conservative Party as a more competent, reliable version of Reform. Essentially it is one more attempt by Conservatives in opposition to promise to deliver Thatcher’s agenda in office. This feels like the very definition of insanity. Akin to those that say that communism has never failed because it has never been tried. The failures we have seen since the 1980s are not a bug, they are the consequences of the system. These failures were pointed out very early on the late 1970s and 1980s, as often by Conservative critics (see Peter Walker, Ian Gilmour etc.) as they were by the left. Moreover, given the Conservative Party’s forty years of failure in delivering this incoherent political vision, why would the British people trust it to do so now?

In going in a different direction, it will be necessary to gamble on the electoral and policy failure of Reform. It is essential to begin by saying that in the short-term there may be no political recovery for the Conservative Party.

Electoral failure seems down to whether a ‘progressive coalition’ under Labour can mobilise tactical anti-Reform voting on a mass scale which given the current PM’s unpopularity is a risk. Policy failure is almost certain because the same fate has befallen Conservative governments attempting to implement tax cutting, state shrinking, deregulatory, so-called ‘high growth’ policies for decades. Moreover, if Reform succeeds and the Conservative Party is simply a competent version (or even coalition partner) for Reform, then the Conservative Party will be finished in any event because Reform will have shown itself to be better at implementing the vision than the Conservatives.

There will also be some overlap with Reform. Clearly migration needs to come down. There will need to be investment in policing to restore law and order. However, this could be true for any of the major parties.

Regardless of whether Reform succeeds or fails, therefore, it is essential that the Conservative Party is distinctive.

Being in opposition and Reform stealing its clothes does present the Conservative Party with an unforeseen opportunity. It can move in a new direction, using the emergence of Reform as a catalyst for change, rather than having to admit its mistakes in isolation. The path of change is clear: what Reform is advocating for is fantasy, the Conservatives are based in reality (even if we used to advocate for fantasy). Conservatives are calling for a distinctly British and patriotic agenda, Reform is simply aping the MAGA movement (even if we used to in hock to Republican ideas ourselves).

Moreover, having spent huge political and policy capital over the years in trying to achieve what Reform is trying to achieve, the Conservative Party knows what those obvious traps are. Tax cuts that will not be delivered because we can never afford them, public services that get worse because of lack of revenue to pay for them, more social division caused by erosion of social institutions and reliance on cheap labour, the further erosion of our constitution and traditional institutions.

Six dividing lines for a distinctive Conservatism

So what is distinctive about the Conservative Party, philosophically, compared to Reform?

Looking through what Reform has said, I think there are six dividing lines for distinctively Conservative ideas.

1. Financial responsibility - the United Kingdom is broke. It’s not the public debt which is the biggest worry, although it is worrying, but our huge balance of payments deficit which has grown from £4bn in 1979 to £76bn in 2024. We cannot afford our current standard of living, let alone growing it, and in trying to maintain it we are selling off what we own to pay for our imports and to borrow overseas. So our future income is going down whilst costs are going up. Its unstable and driving higher inflation. Reform’s Reaganite economic agenda has nothing to say on this, but Conservatives have traditionally been in favour of economic stability. We need a strategy to pay down our debts (government, households and corporations) and regain control over our economic future. Debating these subjects, which Reform has no answers to, would shift the economic debate in a direction the Conservative Party could genuinely make some advances. It would mean being honest about the world not owing us a living and the need for a proper economic correction. It would also position Reform on the side of relying on global capital at a time of increasing geopolitical instability. Crucially, however, it cannot just be about the size of the state (as Reform argues) it has to be broader about our failing service-based consumerist economic model and switching to a goods production and higher domestic investment strategy.

2. An economically interventionist state - The Levelling Up agenda, outlined in our 2017 Manifesto and then delivered by Johnson & Gove (2020-2022), was the first time intellectually since the 1970s embraced an idea that the state had to intervene to create the foundations for economic success, not simply wait for ‘wealth creators’ or private business to do its thing. Reform cannot slash the state, slash taxes and create the conditions for national investment. The Conservatives must position themselves as defenders of the national economy, as they were historically, focusing on production in every part of the country and not generating wealth which is what Reform is obsessed with. Production will create wealth eventually, but not all wealth creates production (see our housing market). Supportive investment to rebuild local economies and communities through active Heseltine style-policies and more active coordination of the economy is essential. It will require harsh trade-offs, reducing marginal spend on welfare or public services to boost production, but without intervention our economy simply won’t change. Reform is not going to embrace this sort of interventionism.

3. Political order and stability - the protests in Epping have created a huge trap for the Conservative Party. On the one hand, the protests are an expression of concern about an issue where the party does want to take the government to task on: migration. On the other hand, political change via protest is anathema to the Conservative values of order and stability. Parliament should be the battleground for politics, not the streets. A majority of voters support the protests at the present, but last year’s riots were generally unpopular. The Conservative Party should be taking a principled stand against this sort of political activism. Calling out the Just Stop Oil protests or Gazan protests but then endorsing the Epping protests feels intellectually incoherent and avoids an opportunity to be distinct from Reform which will likely just go wherever it feels the public is. Reclaiming political order and stability, something that the public have been crying out for since the mid-2010s, feels prime Conservative ground. In four years time, the public will be sick and tired of people constantly taking to the streets to argue for change, whatever the cause, the Conservative Party should try to head where the public will be and not follow behind it.

4. Independent geopolitical actor - under Farage it is clear that Reform will seek dependence on the United States as the main pillar of UK foreign policy, as Conservatives have since Churchill. We need to be friendly with the US, of course, but as the US becomes more isolationist the UK cannot depend on the US in the same way it used to. Similarly, the European Union will never have the internal agreement and stability to be a useful force in global affairs. Britain depends on international order for trade and investment, being more exposed to global economic forces than any other country. Understandably, Conservatives used to make defence and security a cornerstone of their thinking. Rebuilding the independence of the UK as a ‘strategic balancer’, not dependent on any one power, has to be the cornerstone of a new conservative ‘Gaullist’ foreign policy. Even Reform voters have become tired of Trump. Labour has also made an error in trying to appease Trump rather than taking a Carney-style approach and stand up for the country. There is a chance to attack both. This will be hard, given our desperate financial situation, but essential in the longer term. Reform’s American intellectual roots could be its downfall.

5. Preserving the constitution - Reform’s June 2024 Our Contract with You is a declaration of war on the traditional British constitution. PR to replace First Past the Post. House of Lords abolished. A British Bill of Rights to preserve abstract ‘freedoms’. It’s a strange combination of US constitutional originalism and European electoral systems. It’s a recipe for constitutional chaos and making Britain ungovernable totally out of keeping with our traditions. The obsession with turning the UK into a ‘Presidential System’ is also another opportunity for distinctiveness. Parliamentary sovereignty, Cabinet government should be the cornerstone of our political constitution. Reliance on the ‘Great Leader’ to turn everything around is madness and our forefathers understood this, with great cabinets that were full of big beasts that could deliver in their own right. We need to return to that system, not abolish it. Unfortunately, the Conservative Party has flirted with constitutional vandalism in the past, particularly around flirting with an elected House of Lords in the late 2000s. However, there is a need for someone to stand up for the traditions of the British constitution, an organically developed system that at its best brings all the power of action tempered with the political moderation and convention. The Conservative Party must be, as it has done recently on votes for 16 year olds, the defender of the British constitution. Moreover, should Reform turn against our political union with Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, the Conservative Party will have another opportunity to assert its constitutional principles. Most urgently, the threat to the voting system seems a great place to start and would cut through to a public concerned about growing political fragmentation and ‘ungovernability’.

6. Preserving our traditional institutions - Scrutonian appreciation for our social fabric has become more mainstream in conservative circles, but it still lacks policy articulation. We cannot be defenders of our institutions without saying those that we believe in. Worryingly, the party has come into the habit of becoming a relentless attacker of institutions (in particular its obsession with tearing down our national broadcaster), rather than a preserver of them. However, as it again showed briefly during the 2020-2022 Levelling Up period, there is a broad consensus on the need to rebuild our social infrastructure - our sporting institutions, our clubs and associations, our village halls, our war memorials, our culture and artistic heritage - that make us what we are. Reform in its quest for enemies is likely to turn on all our institutions that do not conform or simply make unpopular decisions. Who knows, even the monarchy could be on a hit list, which some in Reform have recently criticised. The Conservative Party must hold its ground, calling for reforms to reintegrate these institutions back into national life, not simply tearing them down.

Humility is the only thing that can save the Conservative Party

One thing that Kemi Badenoch has been right about it is that the party needs to accept that things will get worse before they get better. However, unless the Conservative Party is distinct in what it offers, it has no future. In a few words: More Tory, less Liberal.

The Conservative Party has a rich intellectual history that it can draw upon. It does not need to continually offer up reheated versions of the same policies it has advocated since the 1980s. It must have the courage of its convictions, trusting that events will show the virtue of its positions or their opponents find themselves defeated by the failure of their ill-considered policies.

Ironically, the Conservative Party’s only real hope is to articulate the alternative to Thatcher’s Britain which we created. It will be painful at first, but it has already broken down economically, and now it is breaking down socially. Labour and Reform are, in their own way, tied to the project of making this impossible vision work - the former its social aspects, the latter its economic aspects.

The Conservative Party must have confidence to go in a new direction and admit its mistakes. Mistakes made from the best of intentions, but mistakes nonetheless.

As Edmund Burke said “true humility…is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues”.

Humility can be the foundation of political virtue that saves the Conservative Party. The alternative is irrelevance and, ultimately, annihilation.