I was absolutely delighted to find an article on Ed West’s Substack that talks about the utter failure of the Conservative Party to speak with any sort of coherent and easily understandable voice. He’s bang on target when he says that there comes a time when you start to agree with Peter Hitchens in thinking that the current Tory Party needs to die and be replaced by something more muscular and unafraid of the slings and arrows hurled at them by leftists who have little or no intention of every supporting the party. Mr West has really nailed it by saying that the Tories are an ‘agnostic’ party that stands for nothing in particular.
Here’s just a small snippet of what is an excellent and thought provoking article
‘Factionalism within the party is driven far more by aesthetics than by ideology. One (former) MP once told me that when he asked his association why they had picked him for a safe seat, he was told “It was the lovely way you spoke about your wife at the selection”. Many MPs come to parliament without any real belief other than a view that “good things are good, and we should do more of them, and bad things are bad”. I’ve met less than half a dozen mainstream Tories who could be classed as ideologues.’
This all feels rather existential. When was the last time a Tory politician actually articulated what they believe, aside from ‘aspiration’? Aspiration is great and everything, but it’s thin gruel when you’re facing a political movement that really believes it has the answers. They’re bad answers, simplistic and deriving from a wilful denial of human nature and of what makes people happy, but they’re spoken with great confidence and authority, and that’s why younger people believe them.
A big disadvantage is that modern conservatism is, by definition, a sort of agnosticism. It’s oppositional. Progressivism offers a vision, a moral certainty; it asserts that its worldview is the correct one, and that people who disagree are fundamentally bad people; it invents and popularises morally-loaded terms with an impressive prolificacy. This is what many of us dislike about the post-new Left, but it’s attractive to vast numbers of people who fall into line.
It’s why it’s a major problem that no one in the Tory party is offering any sort of statement of principles, arguing what small-c conservatives might believe.
Read the entirety of this first class article via the link below.
https://edwest.substack.com/p/what-should-small-c-conservatives
Yes, but I would also like to ask what any citizen might want living in a democracy from their government or society, whether capitalist or socialist, a few pointers….
1) A right to secure housing, a roof over their heads in some form
2) A right to gainful employment without exploitation
3) A right to the best education for their children regardless of income
4) A right to adequate healthcare regardless of income
Are these socialist demands or also embraced in compassionate conservatism?8
Wouldn’t you agree that those of us who worked and saved for a lifetime also have the right not to be taxed into abject poverty? Many of those who made provision for later life are going to be unable to pay £2,000 in council tax on top of raging inflation and don’t know what to do next.
That is indeed a big issue. It riles me greatly that members of my family who worked to provide for themselves and their families are treated worse than those who did sod all with their lives apart from suck off the teat of the taxpayer.
OK I’ll take each of your questions in turn
1) A right to secure housing, a roof over their heads in some form
Should this apply to everyone? Should bad people, individuals who don’t contribute to society or are disruptive or criminal be housed if it makes the lives of the decent people a living hell? Sadly it’s a housing policy based on perceived needs rather than conduct or local connections that have turned too many of our public housing estates in to hell holes.
2) A right to gainful employment without exploitation
Slavery, something still common in many third world nations is morally wrong in my view. However a balance needs to be achieved between the rights of the employee and the rights of the employer. I’ve done jobs that I never would have got had much of what trade unions demand had been in place. I’m old enough to remember the closed shop and I objected vehemently to being forced to join the NUJ just to hawk my abilities as a freelance.
3) A right to the best education for their children regardless of income
I’d class this as a right to the most appropriate education for the nation’s children, not a one size fits all situation as exists at present. Personally I’d like to go back to the situation that existed prior to 1902 where schools were controlled and funded by local school boards rather than local authorities. Every child is different but some are so different that what the schools are offering, mostly on a take or leave it basis because they are local council monopolies, is just not good enough.
4) A right to adequate healthcare regardless of income
I’ve nothing against the state funding healthcare but not providing it as that creates a conflict of interest. We should have a diversity of suppliers from the private sector, religious groups, charities and yes even from municipalities. The NHS idea is a terrible one and maybe we should take back the hospitals and other similar healthcare facilities and give them back to these charitable, religious, municipal and private groups who had them stolen from them in 1948?
“Progressivism offers a vision, a moral certainty; it asserts that its worldview is the correct one, and that people who disagree are fundamentally bad people; it invents and popularises morally-loaded terms with an impressive prolificacy. This is what many of us dislike about the post-new Left, but it’s *attractive* to vast numbers of people who fall into line.”
Not too sure about the attractive part. It often seems that people are coerced into line by the threat of losing their jobs and those that do not kowtow actually lose their jobs.
The “moral certainty” reminds me of the “moral certainty” and moral inversion of ISIL and other “hard” ideologies of left and right.
All things considered ‘progressivism’ which is anything but, is a very ugly ideology on a par with Communism, orthodox Islam and Fascism.
In the absence of religion, especially a religion that provides a framework for understanding society, progressivism takes its place. While some progressive victories are ones that I welcome, equal rights for men and women, people not being gaoled for being gay or bi and the fact that I can have a woman rabbi and nobody (apart from the Black Hats that is) gives a toss, are good things.
Progressivism has become an ersatz religion and it has many of religion’s downsides but none of its advantages.
In general I’d entirely agree with your reply, but I also think that “progressivism” as a term has been hijacked by those with entirely regressive ideologies. IMO it’s similar to how communist one-party states used the word “democratic” in their names (DDR, PDRK).
The problem is that the word “progressive” has the idea of “improvement” wrapped up within it, yet the “progressive” ideologies such as critical race theory, Trans Ideology etc. are anything but improving for society since they separate people on the basis of skin colour (a literally superficial trait) in CRT and are science-deniers in the case of the latter (e.g. sex in a new-born is not ‘assigned’ at birth, it is OBSERVED at birth, never mind the magical thinking that says XY can become XX and vice versa).
The things you called progressive I would call (old-school) liberal, but that word, too, has been hijacked to as in (LOL) “Liberal Democrats”.
I completely agree that the word ‘progressive’ has been hijacked. I also agree that treating people in a certain way because of their innate and unchangeable characteristics such as race is the sort of behaviour by the progressives that people who followed MLK would call racialism. THe racists are today the anti-racists. The same does apply to Trans as it is a science denying cult. It treats people differently depending on whether they are trans or not with trans viewpoints elevated above the viewpoints of every one else.