Writing in the foreword of the 1946 edition of his own novel from 15 years previous, “Brave New World”, Aldous Huxley said this:
“For the last 30 years there have been no conservatives; there have only been nationalistic radicals of the right and nationalistic radicals of the left.”
Huxley saw the First World War – correctly in my opinion – as the breakdown of British conservatism, something which did not come back in to itself again until after the Second World War and the shock of the Attlee government to focus Tory minds. Perhaps the scariest thing about Brexit is that we are witnessing a similar breakdown of conservatism once again. This is bad whether you are a conservative or not given we have a Tory government and little prospect in the short term of an alternative.
It isn’t unconservative to want Britain to leave the European Union; it is certainly not conservative, however, to want to leave at any and all costs. Before and during the referendum campaign, the idea of Brexit was relatively simple: if the British people voted to leave the EU, the European Union would crumble. Either it would fall apart completely before our eyes, or at the very least it would give Britain everything it was after in Brexit negotiations. If it didn’t, EU unity would fracture, with the Germans arguing with the French, with the whole thing unravelling in Britain’s favour.
This hasn’t happened. In fact, the exact opposite has taken place. When you construct a plan based on a set of assumptions, and then every single one of those assumptions turns out to be incorrect, you have one of two options: you can admit you were wrong or you can double down and shape reality around you to fit your original premise. You can either come to terms with the world as it is or you can construct a fantasy. Conservatism is supposed to be about taking the world as it is, yet we’re not seeing that from many British figures who self-identify as conservative.
Beyond taking the world as it is, conservatism, in Britain at least, is supposed to be about the following: respecting institutions and conventions, the importance of the western order, that business knows best what business needs, that getting ahead in life must be earned. All of these have been overturned in the name of Brexit. So many have got upset about Johnson proroguing parliament, talking about it as a constitutional outrage, when in fact Downing Street has threatened something that is exponentially more constitutionally outrageous in the shape of suggesting that if there is a vote of no confidence in the government and an alternative PM can find a majority, Johnson will barricade himself inside of Number 10 and refuse to make way. If that happens, that’s when we can start talking about creeping dictatorships and the like.
There is one idea that underpins Brexit that is the least conservative of all, I would argue: that as a member of the EU, Britain is weaker than it deserves to be, and that by unshackling itself from the European Union, Britain can be truly great again. From a conservative point of view, this is impossible. A nation is as valued as it deserves to be in the world order – again, respect must be earned. If the EU treats Britain the way it does and not the way Brexiteers expect it should; if America and China treat Britain as a minor player in the grand scheme of things, this is all just reality asserting itself. You have to take the world as it is. or, I suppose, conservatives don’t need to any longer.
With the arrival of Johnson’s premiership, this is all getting worse. Bad as May was, there were elements of conservatism of which she wasn’t willing to let go. Now, conservatism is ideologically unmoored, happy to go wherever Brexit leads. I don’t think this has a good ending for conservatism. Conservatism is too strong a political concept to die out forever, but we seem to be witnessing its hibernation. When it awakens again, it may be into a very different world.
Before and during the referendum campaign, the idea of Brexit was relatively simple: if the British people voted to leave the EU, the European Union would crumble
This is one of those things where Remainers pretend they know what the stupid Leavers were thinking and get it completely wrong, isn’t it?
Leavers knew that the EU is self-important,inflexible, and tries to get its way by bullying. That’s some of the reasons we voted to leave it!
For years I have been writing, often on this very web page, exactly what the EU’s negotiating strategy would be: stall, delay, stall some more, and then at the very last minute produce a totally unacceptable ‘take it or leave it’ deal in the hope that our resolve would crumble, and we’d agree to remain after all. and what happened? Exactly that.
How did I know? Do I have spies in Brussels? Do I have supernatural powers of telepathy or procognition?
No. I knew because it’s exactly what they just did to Greece. Set their demands, and refuse to budge one millimetre. And Greece buckled. they won So why wouldn’t they use exactly the same strategy that worked last time, exactly the same strategy that has always worked for them, on the UK?
I knew, and I have not been quiet about knowing, that if we were going to leave the EU it would have to be without a deal. Because the EU was never going to offer anything but a deal designed to punish us.
And I am clearly not the only Leaver to know this. Because we’re not, despite what Remainers seem to believe, stupid. We have eyes. We have seen how Brussels operates. We saw what happened to Greece.
This idea that ‘Leavers all thought the EU would crumble, and are shocked that they have held firm’ is entirely a fiction made up by Remainers.
We knew the EU plays hard-ball. We knew what was coming.
And we still voted Leave. Indeed that made us more likely to vote Leave, because a club which tries to punish you when you want to leave is not a club you want to be in. Indeed it’s not a club at all: it’s a protection racket.
M –
On the front page of the Daily Telegraph today (30.08.2109) Ambrose Evans-Pritchard sets out succinctly how the European Union mistreated Greece – but not only Greece – also Italy and Spain as well. I found it rather shocking – and I’m not usually shocked by high politics or, in this case, low politics. One of his key takeaways is this: What is the democratic mechanism for holding this multi-headed organisation to account for its actions? Alas, there really isn’t one.
What is the democratic mechanism for holding this multi-headed organisation to account for its actions? Alas, there really isn’t one.
And that’s deliberate, because — as an EU-phile once explained to me long before the referendum, indded, around the time of the EU constitution debacle — the people who set up the EU realised that the populations of the member states might not always want to progress towards ever-closer union, and indeed might have ‘wobbles’ where they wanted to roll back the process towards full integration already achieved. Therefore it had to be possible for the EU institutions to override such expressions of democracy in order to stop the national electorates from making a mistake and doing something which was against their own best interests (as determined by the technocrats in charge).
“We’re not stupid, we just don’t know the difference between the EZ and the EU”
Nice one
I’m not sure I see the relevance of the distinction? The troika that delivered the ultimatum the Greece was the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund.
And it’s the European Commission which is currently negotiating with the UK (via its delegate Barnier) so the parallel is exact. The Commission is negotiating with the UK in exactly the same way it negotiated with Greece.
As it was always obvious it would.
Euro Zone and European Union? Basically the same people wearing different hats.
Nick
I don’t agree with your assessment of the Inter-war Conservative party. The crisis in conservatism, British conservatism at any rate, took place in the Edwardian period going right up to the very outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. The big issues agitating the party were tariff reform, House of Lords reform and Irish Home Rule – especially the latter – which the party opposed, playing the unionist orange card for all it was worth and flirting with obstruction and illegality. It should be noted that the three or four years before 1914 were disturbed generally in Ireland *and* Britain – just as the three or four years after the War ended in 1918 were also disordered and then not just in Britain and Ireland alone.
The dominant figures in Inter-war British conservatism were Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. Both of them were conciliators – especially Baldwin – and they had a fair record of reform at home and abroad (the government of India, for example) despite major problems with the international economy and the emergence of various authoritarian regimes. I think there is a good case for saying that the Conservative governments of the 1950s owed quite a lot to these two men in style and substance.
RIP
CONSERVATIVE english nationalism
Go on say it we are english we are exceptional
That’s what dick dastardly Cummings and his dog boris muttley need to stir the juices of his native base
Little englanders cheering on lying bastards and right wing papers leading them frothing through UKIP bnp propaganda
The strange death of one nation conservatism
Fish and chips breakfast lunch and supper