Ed West, the randy woman’s Peter Hitchens, has encouraged those of us who lean Right to “try to articulate what they believe“. He’s right of course, because so many in positions of power and influence have no comprehension of why conservatism is better than all other political offerings. They understandably think that conservatism is: Boris Johnson getting pissed in lockdown, Liz Truss “crashing the economy” or “far Right Faragism”. Perhaps we need to drop the name entirely and rebrand as… what? Radical romantics? Romantic realists? New Conservatives? Whatever happens to the Right over the next five years (at least) in opposition, we sensibles must be able to explain and build a conservatism that appeals beyond our own narrow groupings. Here’s my offering:
1 Conservatives are not seduced by the siren call to ‘change’. We have a deep memory of Lord Salisbury saying in 1879: “Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible.” Perhaps we are lucky because we grew up in a family that loved us, somewhere beautiful and received a reasonable education. Because of this we see no need for things to change. And if family love, beautiful community and reasonable education have all fallen away, we yearn and strive for their return.
2 Conservatives participate in communities rather than seek to create better ones. We know that being part of community means storing the school fête toy stall in our lofts, restocking the refashioned phone box with books in such a way that the defibrillator is not blocked, attending PCC, owning a good pair of secateurs for the local “path clearance group”, visiting the elderly when they are ill and lonely, going to worship, organising lift shares, popping in, driving out with chainsaws to deal with a fallen tree, and on and on. We shire conservatives know that community flourishes and requires no interference from the state. We know that streets need not be strewn with litter, that people should be able to leave their doors unlocked, that children should be safe to play outside. Conservatives would like all people to experience the quiet wonders of a community living well together.
3 Conservatives limit their influence on others. We appreciate that supporting and caring for our family, our immediate and wider family, is our first and most important priority. Only if that is managed reasonably can we move on to supporting our community. If that is a flourishing concern we might attempt involvement in wider arenas. It is unlikely we will involve ourselves in foreign affairs pressure groups while the local football club is fundraising for new facilities.
4 Conservatives love beauty. We prefer cathedrals to tower blocks. We think new towns should be built to resemble Bath not Preston Bus Station. We prefer stone and bricks to concrete or cladding, and think everyone should have a garden and spend time outside in nature. Conservatives value beauty over “sustainability” or “affordability” and think everyone is deserving of living well. We look at one-bedroom ‘luxury’ apartments and shudder: what life does this offer we wonder, devoid of community, of fresh air, of grass? (And to those mumbling: but not everyone can afford to live like that, just Google Victorian Almshouses and see how we once attempted to treat those in need.)
5 Conservatism loves humour. While bashing this out, I received a WhatsApp from a chum, a senior exec at the BBC: “Why are young men interested in Reform, thought you might know?” I have three sons, so asked them: “Tell him, we love Nigel Farage’s spread on TikTok, he’s hilarious.” Can you imagine Yvette Cooper or Pat McFadden making anyone outside their close circle of comrades laugh? Possibly Angela “ginger growler” Rayner might be fun, but she’s going to have to get all serious now, so will suppress the best side of her character. True conservatives have none of this: they continue making jokes, taking the piss and messing about even when in high office. Who yet can beat Churchill’s joke: “But tomorrow, Madam, I shall be sober”? It is impossible for Chief Tool Starmer to contemplate such irreverent nonsense.
(And to those of you who are mumbling, “but running the country is no laughing matter”, I say: it should be. Merry England and all that: Elizabeth I vs the severe Spaniards, Cavaliers vs Puritans, the lovely Duchess of Richmond Ball before the Battle of Waterloo, Wipers Times vs The Hymn of Hate, all those ball jokes vs Hitler, Labour’s “Green Investment” vs Johnson’s spaffing money up the wall, and so on.)
6 Conservatism looks at the other side. We true conservatives dutifully dip into the Guardian, BBC News, New Statesman, Economist, New Yorker and all the other dross hoping to be persuaded of our error. We understand the other side, mull over their arguments and try to give the benefit of the doubt to their good intentions. Alas their ideology is wrong: like a tangerine blue with mould, we can’t contemplate eating it, but at least we picked it up, peeled it and realised it was definitely rotten inside. The Left never dreams of giving the other side a glance. I once suggested to aforementioned BBC exec that he listened to a podcast with Melanie Phillips. He laughed in my face.
7 Conservatives loathe war. Now this is tricky, because of Churchill and all that, but I think most true conservatives are still in deep mourning that the First World War should have happened. We have a sacred view of humanity, knowing either as believers or Tom-Holland-style-Christian-remnants that man is made in the image of God and should therefore not be sacrificed on the altar of another man’s ambition. It is for this reason we loathe Blair and Campbell, latterly Johnson and inevitably Lammy.
8 Conservatives prefer to solve our own problems. We are able to look life in the eye and realise it is impossible to get through without hardship, financial insecurity, ill-health, bereavement, loneliness and all manner of human calamities. But within these difficulties conservatives naturally reach for solutions that do not bother the state. We do not demand state funded child or elderly care, preferring to look after our own. We do not expect the Government to fund endless retirement cruises or childcare vouchers for the children of barristers. Regarding the NHS, we feel it would be better served it folk took some responsibility for their own health.
9 Conservatives have a brisk approach to child rearing: lots of love, lots of fresh air, lots of books. Our children are less likely to be diagnosed with a range of SEN or anxiety issues for we work on their strengths rather than lionise their weakness. We recoil at the labelling of children that reduces them to their weakest trait. We accept if we have an academic duffer, we seek to find what they are intelligent at, for we know that everyone has the spark of the divine within them and will be good at something.
10 Conservatives are not interested in identity, only action. We remember the line in the hymn: “And the creed and the colour and the name won’t matter.” Like Elizabeth I who refused to “make windows into men’s souls” we do not concern ourselves with others’ religions. We are colour blind, and judge others, if at all, only by their actions. Likewise, the sexual preferences of consenting adults are of no interest to us.
11 Conservatives cannot participate in a lie. We do not believe the lie that people can change sex. We do not believe the lie that Net Zero is either possible or desirable. We do not believe the lie that fields of solar or wind farms are “good for the environment” and nor do we believe that Ed Miliband’s plans for green energy will bring down energy prices. We do not believe the lie that the NHS is the envy of the world and must be protected at all costs. We do not believe the lie that mothers will automatically be happier with state funded childcare. We do not believe the lie that fathers are unnecessary. We do not believe the lie that more state funding is the answer to everything.
12 Conservatives admire high culture. While we might enjoy Love Island as much as the next teenage boy, we understand that profound and universal truths are to be found in the very best of art, music and literature. We recognise with Maya Angelou, who lovingly wrote about reading Jane Eyre while her mother fried corn cakes, that art and ideas are for everyone and do not need to be curated to suit different social or ethnic backgrounds. We long for more people to read Middlemarch and Anna Karenina and listen to Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion and discover the truths found with the Psalms as translated by Coverdale. We are not elitist but seek to extend high culture to all.
13 Conservatives cherish the sign on C of E Church noticeboards: All Welcome. Quite the most conversative of all ideologies, we welcome all. We remember the parable of the vineyard workers, the “householder” who went out to recruit workers, paying them each a denarius regardless of whether hired at the first hour or the 11th. We recognise the grumbling of those who feel this is unfair – “These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.” But conservatives understand the deeper wisdom, that once here in Britain’s vineyard all are deserving of the same treatment. “So, the last shall be first, and the first last.” Conservatives are not the callous bastards of popular myth. We have a long and noble history of caring for the neediest in society. But our solutions are not benefits or free housing: but the denarii: honest wages for honest work.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I was a little disparaging of Joanna’s last piece in DS, but this has far greater merit. I recognise myself and all my dangerous far right friends in these words. How to get this across succinctly though.?
Live and let live?
Sadly though the whole philosophy espoused in this article is now simply history. There is nothing I do not recognise but it is a longing for that which will never return. I fear that the next few years will brutalise our country and its British people. To imagine that our future is not dystopian is to close eyes to the wreckage that has been wrought and the wreckage that is to come under this WEF Labour government.
“You will own nothing and be happy.”
That is the future.
” is now simply history. ”
I know what you are saying but her words very much describe my life and where I live. I know I am lucky and privileged but the world she describes does still exist, here down the deep lanes of North Devon as depicted in the wonderful photographs of Jame Revilious. I will be out on Wednesday night at the village emergency committee, checking the list of the village’s emergency chainsaw operators. It may not last for ever and it may be under threat but at the moment it does still exist.
I’m with you on this SD and a good article yes – open gardens in our ‘village’ (fast growing into small town – thankyou central government planning overrule) bought people out in droves and umbrella’s yesterday to nosey around and call in and view the little garden my friend (82 + old frail & widowed) has made – a perfect small south facing garden, tamed by her knowledge and interest. And fortified by my rather fine (I say so myself) chocolate checkerboard cake. She and I both agree we are lucky to have the space to enjoy and the interest and the company to keep us both going. For as long as we can.
It’s the same where I live in the west country and it’s why I moved here 8 years ago.
But it’s changing fast: already a small town which was 98% white has visibly growing numbers of “ethnic minorities” who I very much doubt were able to afford to buy a property here, so they will be occupying social housing. I am not making a comment about them as individuals, they may all be perfectly lovely people, but the fact is the area is visibly changing … very quickly.
“And the creed and the colour and the name won’t matter” …. except as we see around the country and particularly in some areas the creed does matter … and it matters a great deal.
Ditto in rural Oxfordshire
Enjoy it while it lasts. Where I live was pretty much the same till bout 5 years ago. Now new packets of migrants get opened every week.
It isn’t 1955 anymore. The Vicar doesn’t cycle down the lane and my grandmother does not get her mangle out from the Anderson Shelter. There was no such thing as “diversity”. You got no money unless you worked, which is why my grandad spent 50 years down the Michael Pit. We didn’t eat micro wave junk and fill our belly with Cheesy Wotsits and Irn Bru. Young girls didn’t push their babies along in a pram and ignore them completely because they are fiddling all the time with their silly phone. ——-But then again people will say I have to move with the times. —-WHY?
Varmint yr family are very lucky to have you.
Why thankyou . I am very humbled.——–If you mean it
Agree.
I have never believed in change for changes sake.
The red thumbs down people are big Cheesy Wotsit fans obviously
How about this – conservatives care about people as individuals, the left just cares about the system.
They just care about power.
and votes
It’s an absolutely superb article. I may have been disparaging about her last piece too. I think what she’s saying here is the left (Tory, labour communist green lib dem) essentially has a complete god complex. Who here doesn’t think David Cameron would rather see Dianne Abbot as pm rather than Nigel Farage?
This!
Thomas Sowell puts it very well.
The policy arguments between liberals and conservatives, socialists and libertarians, do not arise just from differences in priorities regarding freedom, equality, and security. At root, they draw from different conceptions of the nature of man. The Left holds an unconstrained vision: Given the right political and economic arrangements, human beings can be improved, even perfected. Success is defined by what people have the potential of becoming, not by people as they are. The Right holds a constrained vision: People come to society with innate characteristics that cannot be reshaped and must instead be accommodated. Success in political and economic policy must be defined in light of those innate characteristics.
I recognise elements of this in the place I live – a county town in a fairly rural area, traditionally Tory. We now have a Labour MP. I think the problem is that a lot of the people involved in the kind of thing described in the article are simply too “nice” or too asleep.
Very well put, Joanna. I enjoyed this article a lot. I nodded a lot, too. Thank you.
Bang on… with the exception of enjoying Love Island! Nice, uplifting piece.
I do hate any article that makes a claim of something being better without saying what it is compared with.
It is as bad as claiming that change is a virtue when it is Labour change, whereas climate change is bad.
I take it from the article that we have not had a Conservative government for years, and probably decades.
PS I don’t have a deep memory of Lord Salisbury, I am not quite that old and anyway I don’t mix in those circles.
Not to mention warm beer and old maids cycling through the mist to church.
Give me a break. There is a horrible kind of demanded conformity in the vision outlined here. A kind of socialism, if you like, or subordination of the individual to the collective.
Thanks, Joanna, for reminding me that I am not, and never will be again, a Conservative. Let’s hear it for William Gladstone and not be seduced by the siren song of Disraeli.
Well, I don’t know if I am a conservative or not. Any society will have some element of “demanded conformity” won’t it? Don’t the problems start when the “demand” is with menaces – you must voice the right opinions otherwise you will lose your job, you must take this injection, you must give the state all your money?
That’s a nice village that you live in, Joanna!
You have nailed it Joanna
Sovereignty of the individual, self-responsibility, self-respect, self-discipline, self-sufficiency, property Rights, celebration of heritage, our common language, morals, values, manners, traditions and Common Law, free market capitalism/free trade.
Conservatism is adopt and conserve what gives best outcome – but experiment, evaluate, evolve – not obsession with process irrespective of outcomes.
Welfare State, NHS, State education, redistribution of wealth via taxation, State intervention in the economy, social engineering, telling us what we may/may not put into our bodies, State determination of values, morals, is not Conservatism. But that describes many ‘Conservatives’ and every ‘Conservative’ Government since the war.
Love it! Thank you Joanna.
Ah, what a lovely vision of Olde Englande, suddenly brought crashing down by… “LOVE ISLAND”????
She claims that “We Conservatives” all enjoy DISGUSTING PORNOGRAPHY and VOYEURISM????
Speak for yourself, Joanna.
And where in your Item 2 is the village pub and post office?