When assured by a parliamentary colleague that a properly led Liberal-Conservative party was guaranteed his vote, Canadian prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald exclaimed, ‘Anybody may support me when I am right. What I want is a man that will support me when I am wrong.’
David Cameron may be harbouring similar thoughts as the general election draws nigh. Will dissenting party members and former voters come out to the polls in support of his Conservative parliamentary candidates?
The Conservative party has long been a mix of laisser-faire, limited-government adherents and advocates of Disraeli’s One Nation Toryism, for whom State action on behalf of the least advantaged is a virtue. But this complementary composition—around which most fault-lines lie—broke down completely following the 1997 defeat, with each faction distrustful and suspicious of the other.
Life in the political wilderness has had a sobering effect, however, and in the end, the Conservative ‘appetite for power’—in John Ramsden’s felicitous phrase—triumphed over tribal rivalries.
Cameron won the leadership based on his charisma and promise to heal old wounds, campaigning to reconcile the country with his progressive conservative programme. (Commentators often write of his efforts to ‘detoxify’ the party, but that seems too harsh, given that the putative toxic Thatcherite economic policy was the partial platform upon which Tony Blair’s New Labour won the trust of the British electorate. Cameron’s objective was to address the social concerns Britons felt were unappreciated, and has done so with his pledge to fix the ‘broken society’. )
By-and-large the rifts were soothed and the Conservatives have faced this election as a united party. Yet the last two years of economic recession and uncertainly about how to bring about recovery have occasioned a simmering disgruntlement.
The MPs’ expenses scandal, which left no party unscathed, has added to the unrest: critics argue that in view of the appalling record of the Labour Government, Conservative fortunes ought to have soared. That they have not is cause for muted enthusiasm and second-guessing of the party’s performance.
But if Marc Anthony did not come to praise but to bury Caesar, my inverted purpose is not to cast aspersions upon the Conservative party, but to acknowledge the lay of the land and to look to the future.
‘The complaints of a friend are things very different from the invectives of an enemy,’ wrote Edmund Burke. ‘It is our duty rather to palliate his errors and defects, or to cast them into the shade, and industriously to bring forward any good qualities that he may happen to possess.’
Though the conservative-minded voter may likewise have legitimate complaints with the Conservative party—for what honest political organisation can be all things to all citizens?—the point at issue is not personal pique, but the national well-being, and whether other contesting parties, with the potential to form government, can advance a conservative agenda.
· If this voter ridicules the Conservative deficit-cutting timetable and its programme for promoting economic health and prosperity, do either Labour or the Liberal Democrats offer a path toward financial salvation?
· If this voter is exasperated with the Conservative posture toward Europe—as too obsequious, or insufficiently accommodating, or just plain unintelligible—what can be said in defence of parties that seek greater European integration, adoption of the euro, and a blurring of British sovereignty?
· If this voter laments irreverent Conservative attitudes toward time-honoured constitutional conventions (plans for House of Lords reform comes readily to mind), what can be said in favour of changes which include the Alternative Vote and Proportional Representation?
No doubt this list could be lengthened, but to no purpose. Omitted are those Conservative proposals around which there is general consensus: decentralisation of power from Whitehall; returning autonomy to individuals and their communities; making cherished public services accountable and cost-effective, whether in education or the National Health Service; and rebalancing the roles of MPs in Westminster with the constituents they serve.
Suffice it to ask that, for each article of perceived failing in the Conservative party outline for office, whether or not any possible alternative government can do better or, indeed, does it threaten more of the same and worse.
This is the question before the friends of Conservatism; as for Burke, he knew when it necessary to rally round his allies. Only when the danger had passed was it well to seek amendment:
When his safety is effectually provided for, it then becomes the office of a friend to urge his faults and vices with all the energy of enlightened affection, to paint them in their most vivid colours, and to bring the moral patient to a better habit. Thus I think with regards to individuals; thus I think with regard to antient and respected governments and order of men.
Such recourse can be had when the election has passed, when there is ample opportunity and the hope of restored trust to effect the amelioration of shortcomings within a Conservative government. But now is not the time.
Now is the time for all good Conservatives to come to the aid of the party…
Stephen MacLean’s research website is focussed on Organic Toryism
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