Edward McMillen-Scott deserves everything he’s got for his behaviour towards his colleagues. At best, it was grossly unprofessional, and at worst, it was obnoxious, malicious and stupid.

He can’t seriously expect to have said and done what he said and remain a member of his party. Labour and the LibDems have expelled people for more minor infractions.

In any case, why would he *want* to remain a member? Because of his actions and comments, he is universally loathed by his colleagues and distrusted by his party.

Edward McMillan-Scott’s treatment is proof, if it’s needed, that the Conservative party has been taken over by some pretty repulsive people. Anyone who’s considering voting for them should bear in mind that Mad Dan Han, the man who thinks the NHS was our greatest mistake, represents the rank and file perfectly.

@2:

Edward McMillen Scott is proof that people don’t expect to be called Nazis by their colleagues.

EMS is the worst kind of old school Tory MEP: dreadful little Communautaire trolls full of simmering contempt for their party, utterly cut off from mainstream Tory opinion on Europe, and as a result angry, vindictive and unpleasant.

Unfortunately, EMS allowed his mean streak to stray into gross unprofessionalism, and gave the party legitimate grounds to dump him.

Good riddance.

@2:

Could you please point me to the data of your survey of the Conservative Party grassroots please?

I’d quite like to see your results. They sound fascinating.

Labour need to keep raising the fact that Tories cosy up to xenophobes and homophobes in the European Parliament simply to assuage a boneheaded prejudice against the EU.

Labour needs to bang that drum again and again.

Also, well done to McMillan-Scott for sticking so doggedly to principle.

@5:

Good luck with that. Nobody cares about what happens in the European Parliament.

If you want Labour to waste valuable campaigning time banging on about vaguely-constructed Eurosmears to the sound of utter apathy, so be it.

Meanwhile, we’ll be reminding people that Gordon Brown took Britain into the LONGEST AND DEEPEST RECESSION IN HISTORY.

Meanwhile, we’ll be reminding people that Gordon Brown took Britain into the LONGEST AND DEEPEST RECESSION IN HISTORY.

You forgot the punchline…

“…following Tory economic propaganda.”

Or, maybe Labour should put out a poster saying:

“We don’t think 3 million unemployed is a “price worth paying”, so we did something about it. The Tories – 80-81, 92-93 – did not.”

@7:

Five million people have never worked under Labour 1997-2010. Longest and deepest recession in British history. A government-fuelled debt crisis. Budgetary cowardice leading to spiralling deficits. Extreme poverty has worsened. Inequality has worsened. Britain has plummeted down the OECD competitiveness league. We’re the last G20 nation to leave recession. We’re nearly bankrupt, fiscally incontinent, and being laughed at.

Was this all a “price worth paying” for a Labour government? I think the electorate will deliver their answer in May.

In the context of the Westminster expenses scandal, for which no Conservative was expelled, this will be seen by many as a serious case of double standards.

He seems to be forgetting Derek Conway…

In all seriousness, is he surprised that being the main vocal opponent to his party’s European policy, writing a score of tendentious articles smearing his party and his party’s allies and becoming the figurehead for Labour attacks on the Conservatives should have led to his expulsion from the party? The man is deluded.

The party seeks to prevent my candidacy in the next European election merely for taking a stand on matters of personal conscience. This raises very serious ethical, legal and political issues.

The party has no objection to his standing in the next European election but, given that he has so thoroughly contradicted the manifesto on which he was elected, has decided quite properly, and through the proper channels, that whatever he is, he is clearly not a Conservative candidate. I can see no legal issues that this raises whatsoever. A political party has the absolute right, within the rules that it itself imposes, to decide who stands on its ticket at elections.

If Macmillan Scott wants to be a Conservative MEP, maybe he ought not to have devoted quite so much energy to trashing them.

“Because of his actions and comments, he is universally loathed by his colleagues and distrusted by his party.”

Which explains why a lot of us don’t trust his party, because it’s clearly full of nasty intolerant idiots.

10 – if a member of a political party refuses to accept that party’s candidate for a leadership role, and stands himself as an independent, it’s not exactly surprising if he’s expelled.

Ask Ken Livingstone.

The courts should not be able to interfere with expulsions from political parties. If fighting the expulsion is important enough, it should be done by raising hell with the grassroots. I hardly think this MEP is in a position to do that, largely because the grassroots are wrong and he is right on the issue that led to his expulsion.

I think the Tories coming here can spin it all they want, ultimately this man was expelled for making a principled stand for those that elected him. The travesty is that he is deemed to have wronged the party more than someone that has actively damaged politics in this country through his actions.

No matter how you view it, this is proof that the Tories care more about political alliances with despicable far-right groups and individuals than they do about fleecing the public purse.

@13.

Neither the Lib Dems nor Labour has the sort of close association with neo-fascists that the have Tories struck up in the European Parliament.

And neither of them would dare embarrass and lower themselves in the way the Tories have done.

This is a matter of principle. The Tories have show they have none.

@ 8.

Martin, this is the Tories’ economy. The same model they boasted about “bequeathing” in some bizarre “golden legacy” (read: ticking timebomb) in 1997.

The Tories run down Britain’s strategic industrial infrastructure and gave rise to the calamitous disaster in financial markets through their blinkered “big bang” erm, “reforms” in the 1980s.

The credit crunch is the direct long run result of the indulgence of discredited Thatcherism.

And the OECD “competitiveness league” isn’t worth the paper its written on. Define “competitiveness”! Iceland was once deemed very competitive. As was Ireland. ‘Nuff said.

The Tories run down Britain’s strategic industrial infrastructure and gave rise to the calamitous disaster in financial markets through their blinkered “big bang” erm, “reforms” in the 1980s.

Do you know what Big Bang actually did? Could you explain to me please how the abolition of the distiction between stockbrokers and stock-jobbers led to the credit crunch? Big Bang was a reform that concentrated on the mechanics of trading on the LSE. It has almost nothing to do with the proliferation of “innovative” financial products that, if any one thing can be said to have done, caused the credit crunch.

The general level of ignorance on financial and legal matters is almost overwhelming.

If McMillan-Scott genuinely cared about his own Conservative Party, he would not be threatening legal action and promoting his “hard-luck” story this close to a General Election! It all goes to show that his “noise and fury” is nothing to do with principles but everything to do with his own greed, arrogance and gigantic ego!

“Tories’ chums in continental Europe will sway at least 0.001% of the elctorate and in a tight contest that ought to make all the difference, you know!”

It’s a standard defensive line isn’t it? You know there is something reprehensible in your parties actions so you justify it by saying that the electorate won’t care about it.

When put in to the context of how they deal with people screwing the public over with expenses, and what Kaminski and his lot stand for, it may not change many votes but I’d be amazed if it didn’t put niggling thoughts in people’s heads about the sort of party they’re backing.

18 – I think we’ve gone over this ground so many times on this site that there’s very little usefully to add to it. There’s certainly not much in the way of evidence that it has changed anybody’s opinion about anything. People who think the Tories eat babies, now still do. People who don’t, still don’t.

Incidentally, regarding the headline, is McMillan-Scott an anti-fascist in any meaningful sense? None of the parties in the ECR can accurately be described as fascist, in any meaning of that word other than the Orwellian reduction.

@16. Usual diversionary technocratic guff.

Perhaps of themselves the small on-the-day reforms (the split between stockjobbers and stockbrokers) weren’t responsible – it is the wider atmosphere of rampant, ill-judged deregulation that it represented that are at issue.

The wikipedia article! wikipedia article sums up nicely how Big Bang reforms and wider neo liberal so-called economic “reforms” fed the lunacy which crystallised in the last few years.

That is why the credit crunch is Thatcher’s most nefarious legacy. And boy are those rotten smelling legacies racking up.

From wikipedia then:

Big Bang (never “the Big Bang”) was so called because the abolition of fixed commission charges precipitated a complete alteration in the structure of the market. One of the biggest alterations to the market was the change from open-outcry to electronic, screen-based trading.

Big Bang was a technocratic rules-based regulatory upheaval that concentrated, almost exclusively, on the mechanism of trading. The ‘small on-the-day reforms’ were the deregulatory reforms of Thatcherism.

What regulations, that were in place in 1979 and removed by 1990, would have prevented the credit crunch? What Thatcherite deregulation was responsible for the massive increases in the CDS market? What was the role played by Thatcher in setting ISDA?

You don’t appear to know anything about this, and arguing from ignorance is rarely a good idea.

EMS was expelled from the Party for standing against the Conservative Group’s candidate. Any party would expel a member who did that.

For the same reason, Labour expelled party members who campaigned for Dai Davies in Blaenau Gwent, against the offical Labour candidate.

arguing from ignorance is rarely a good idea.

I think this is one of the two main functions of the internet.

Sunder,

I thought we had given up on the past misdeeds meme. It works so well – because obviously Labour party politicians never supported Communism for example.

So trying to reopen the argument by drawing upon the vindictive behaviour of one arrogant and ambitious but now disappointed politician (especially the ridiculous concept that he can seek legal remedy for being thrown out of a private organisation) is just silly. As well as petty.

You may not like Dan Hannan, but I advise you to acquaint yourself with the way he dealt with the issues you are raising here against Dennis McShane on Newsnight back in November. It may point out the risk of being seen to look like you are unjustifiably smearing your opponents. And as I keep saying, attacks on the Conservatives will do you no good – it is only by presenting a coherent and attractive way forward that you can compete with a party that has as of yet no need to show its policies. This sort of sideshow won’t even reach the attention of most voters.

Watchman@24

I was simply reporting the development and McMillan-Smith’s comments. Whether you agree or disagree with him, he is acting according to his views and conscience. I don’t see why he spent 25 years as a Tory MEP under Thatcher, Major and their successors to be a Labour

This was about McMillan-Smith’s claim that his expulsion is disproportionate, beyond the withdrawal of the whip.
http://www.nextleft.org/2009/10/is-there-common-ground-in-polarised.html

The specifics of Michal Kaminski’s background have been much debated. I published what I think was one of the most evidence-based accounts of the different accounts given by him, his supporters and his critics that anybody produced during all of those claims and counter-claims: do you disagree with anything referenced there?
http://www.nextleft.org/2009/10/is-there-common-ground-in-polarised.html

As it happens, I do quite like Daniel Hannan in a number of ways even while I disagree strongly with his views on quite a range of issues. He believes ideas matter in politics. He is prepared to set out his sincerely held arguments even when politically inconvenient, and I would take his ideological project seriously (http://www.nextleft.org/2009/08/taking-hannanism-seriously.html) His not quite grown-up mischief making is also entertaining, but also about having the confidence to build pressure ahead of his party’s position. Finally, he is usually perfectly courteous in person, and pretty open to engagement with those cyber-stalking or debating him at the level of ideas.

Never had heard of this chap before but I like him very much now, although was surprised to see the words anti-fascist and Tory in the same sentence, one gets the feeling that they’ll hold the hand of anyone to get into a position of power, something the Labour lot set an awful precedent for and they were no doubt being all inspired by Thatcher’s love affair with dictators and those under the influence of astrology.

And MArtin Coxall’s terrible ideas make me laugh a great deal, I love how the global recession was Brown’s fault. Now I know who to blame!

@ TimJ

Sorry, Thatcher is still in the frame. Her government set the blinkered deregulation train in motion. And then lionised it.

She allowed strategic industry to decline catastrophically.

Run around waving your hands all you like.

The credit crunch is her crisis as much as Brown’s.

So, no idea then. Thought not.

Daniel,

“although was surprised to see the words anti-fascist and Tory in the same sentence, ”

Really. Remind me which party Winston Churchill stood for (apart from the liberal period…). Or comes to that, show me one facist in the Conservative party.

I think you make the same mistake that might lead me to be surprised to learn there were members of the Labour party opposed to Stalinism. But there are…

Watchman@29

There is certainly an honourable tradition of Conservative anti-fascism. Ted Heath was strongly motivated by anti-fascism and his experience of travelling to Europe in the 1930s. One thinks as well of Iain MacLeod and other Conservatives with a strong commitment to anti-racism. John Major is another good example. I am sure there are many more, and from different wings of the party.

The modern party in the last 30 years has had some issues with rather too much tolerance of casual racism and anti-semitism, sometimes at elite as well as grassroots level.

I think the commitment to rooting that out is sincere. (It is also very toxic politically).

The party did have one lifelong pro-fascist as an MP up until 1999 in Alan Clark, as detailed here.
http://www.nextleft.org/2009/09/so-how-did-fascist-become-national.html

I know it is fashionable to think he was “only joking” but it was then a lifelong pose at least. Several Conservatives have pointed out the excessive tolerance towards him by their party. It would be very good to think he would be the last.

BenM,

If you want to blame a prime minster almost 20 years gone for a recession now, feel free. Seems a bit tenuous to me though – if the mistakes she made were so serious, why did the apparently responsible government since 1997 not correct them by say setting up a decent system of regulation?

But still, bigotted hatred is better than rational discussion any day, no?

Clark wasn’t a fascist – he was a Nazi, at least by his own account.

Fascists are irretrievably bourgeois and middle class, Nazis get to wear cool uniforms and talk about ‘sturm und drang’.

Watchman:

Don’t talk to me about Winston Fucking Churchill, who had a dabble in eugenics and as he was a rounded human being and not a up-on-a pedestal kind of guy, had all the flaws and foibles and right-wing tendencies that we all have from time to time.

I’m glad you wear your Tory Party badge with pride but it makes you blinkered, prone to WELL THEY DID IT and myopic commentary that is starting to annoy the hell out of me.

And stop calling out people as bigoted haters when they have done no such thing, otherwise you’ll be in danger of breaking your own troll laws.

I’m really bored with this idea that high-level political websites can’t discuss things that don’t matter on the doorstep to swathes of the general electorate.

There isn’t necessarily much of a public constituency for asylum rights, or prison conditions. Similarly Britain’s engagement in the European Union – or, say, the UK government’s relations with other EU states, or our policy in Macedonia or whatever, could be in its own right a real issue regardless of its electoral salience.

If the Liberal Democrasts/Greens/UKIP/Labour or the Tories were debating the treatment of a ‘rebel’ councillor, MP, MEP or whatever, can we discuss the merits of that even if it won’t swing the general election?

Daniel,

Is it not bigotted to assume Conservatives (who are not facists – see Sunder’s reasoned response) will be pro-Nazi. I do not assume you support the ideas of Pol Pot simply because you are left-wing do I?

Sunder,

Not sure if this is consistent with my earlier criticisms of the post, but I do agree that this sort of thing should be debated. My problem was with what I felt was politicised presentation, but I accept you may think this is the logical flow of the facts. I certainly think the argument ‘proles won’t care’ is ridiculous, or we’d all be discussing X-factor, Manchester United and Coronation Street all day.

Watchman:

Get lost with your strawman, Ben M did not type anything bigoted.

35 – Sunder, I entirely agree. For my own part, it has not been the fact of the debate over Conservative European policy that has been a turn off, but the fact that it has been conducted entirely as a ‘gotcha’.

Interesting questions – what makes UK conservatism different from mainstream European Christian Democrat parties? Why is the UK the most Euro-sceptic of European countries? Why are there no mainstream non-federalist Western European political parties?

Non-interesting questions – is William Hague a fascist? Do the internal politics of Latvia mean that the Tories are homophobes?

38 – “A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.” That looks pretty much like a definition of what Ben M was writing.

He made a point, I refuted it, in some detail. He then made the same point again, which I refuted in a different way. He then said, more or less, ‘yeah, whatever, you’re wrong and I’m right’. Obstinate devotion to own opinion? Sounds like it to me.

Using that definition Tonga Tim, we’d all be bigots here.

And your interpretation of what went on is not mine, do remember that yours is not the only take on a situation…you are not alone in this.

What is it with people today? Lot of aggro for a Friday…

41 – it’s a fairly standard definition isn’t it (admission: not having an OED at hand, I just used the wikipedia one…)? Which would you prefer?

Tonga:

Fairly standard and could be applied to everyone here, I prefer the use of the term bigot with a particular target and Tories (Labour/Libs/Whigs) don’t count for me.

And as I have said, Ben M is not a bigot.

Cheers.

And you’re going to stick to that opinion obstinately, regardless of the evidence? Bigot…

(joke – I can’t do smileys, they set my teeth on edge)

Daniel,

Ben M is probably not a bigot. But his comment and assumption is bigotted. Please note the difference.

Apologies if I’m getting on your nerves. Not my intention, other than if I think your viewpoint is wrong (I assume you can live with that?).

Tonga:

Again, what you call evidence, I call opinion, bigot.

W:

Glad we can agree that Ben M is not a bigot.

31. Are you enjoying wallowing in victimhood Watchman?

Thatcher is at the root of this crisis.

Robert Peston, a more informed man than I, mused thus last October as the banks went cap-in-hand to the Treasury:

I’ve also been musing on the historic significance of tonight’s events, and I think it can perhaps be seen as the death of Thatcherism, or at least of an important strand of the dominant ideology of the 1980s and 1990s.

An excellent pointer to the culprit in all this.

Don’t get me wrong. Brown is equally guilty, for not overturning those disastrous “reforms” soon after assuming the chancellorship in 1997 and cravenly swimming along with the putrid, self-absorbed rightwing press agenda for the next ten years. Brown was boxed in by Labour’s media strategy (suck up to the very newspapers who’ve been so fundamentally wrong about so many things) but that is no excuse.

Tories all over the internet whine that Thatcher has been out of office for so many years blah blah blah, which highlights how little they understand about her government’s policymaking and the intention to make them irreversible (backed by the Tory press goons) which lay behind them.

47 – this question should be easy then: What regulations, that were in place in 1979 and removed by 1990, would have prevented the credit crunch?

Or, perhaps an even easier one, what regulation would have prevented the credit crunch?

47 / 48 – and not forgetting the regulatory changes made by Gordon Brown. Didn’t these have an affect?

Sunder @ 25

I do quite like Daniel Hannan in a number of ways even while I disagree strongly with his views on quite a range of issues. He believes ideas matter in politics.

And from what I’ve read on this blog and elsewhere, Sunder, so do you.

But what must be stultifying and dispiriting for a blue sky political thinker is that the ideas currently informing the rationale of the Fabian Society seem more than a little stale in 2010. So, let’s think outside the box for a moment and see if we can pinpoint some areas of common interest for the future.

Foe example what about localism? Opposing monopoly state-corporatism? The potential offered by technology for dynamic direct democracy?

How can we care for those from a disadvantaged background without eradicating the need for their lives to retain meaning beacause we have eliminated the impetus for aspiration. Surely these are some areas of policy that would not divide the Fabian from the libertarian?

But you must accept that what was an exhilerating and noble agenda in 1910 has to morph to adapt to the very different world we live in now. Much of the caring collectivist agenda has been achieved and we now need to address and act on the failures as well as the triumphs.

Any ideas?

TWAT “Not sure if this is consistent with my earlier criticisms of the post, but I do agree that this sort of thing should be debated. My problem was with what I felt was politicised presentation”

Have you ever been on Con Home? T

This is a liberal site. If you don’t like that don’t bother to come on here. You won’t be missed.

33.

I wouldn’t ask people what their opinions of Tories allies in the EU are, you’re quite right that they wouldn’t care…mainly because they don’t know.

I shall perhaps get on with asking people what they think about the Tories allying themselves in a new group with fascists, and dispelling a member that was so personally anti-fascist due that he couldn’t bring himself to be pushed aside by his own party in order to get a fascist elected to a high position in the EU on a “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” political deal, and see just how positive their impressions of the Tory party are based on that reality.

Keep on spinning away from your fascist connections though, 33, I know it has to be uncomfortable having such a truth in a party you support that you can’t defend in any other way than to claim people don’t care because it’s the EU.

Funny really now I come to think of it, because isn’t it “fascistic” behaviour that people accuse the EU of involving themselves in when it comes to the UK and why they dislike the EU. Can’t imagine traditional tory supporters liking that their party is essentially promoting more of that kind of behaviour, eh?

TimJ:

Interesting questions – what makes UK conservatism different from mainstream European Christian Democrat parties? Why is the UK the most Euro-sceptic of European countries? Why are there no mainstream non-federalist Western European political parties?

In a slightly different order:

The UK is the most Euro-sceptic of European countries because, a) we’re an island, and b) significant sections of our entrenched special interests have seen us as America’s cousin rather than Europe’s brother for quite some time. Add in Churchill vs. de Gaulle and that’s quite an easy one. Also, we’re an island.

The political mainstream in Western Europe is broadly federalist because a) several salient players are already federal at the national level and b) federal models are spectacularly effective at administrating multi-ethnic, multi-national enterprises.

Balance is key; enough local government English and can play cricket. Enough local government that we can resolve our own issues over public rights of way, for example. But enough federal governance that Europe as a whole bargains with China: which is clearly good for us. Europe as a whole intervenes to create a UN coalition for intervention in Mexico, to stop the unbridled aggression of Sarah Palin’s 2013 regim. Europe as a whole becomes a free-trade area on the same level as the United States are, allowing free movement of workforce, free movement of goods and services. That’s good for absolutely everyone except entrenched capital interests.

These things are so obviously good for everyone that they are now mainstream ideas.

And first question last; the difference between UK conservatism and European Christian Democrats is that the Tory party as a political force and philosophy pre-date the Enlightenment and frequently still talk that way. The continental parties who occupy the rational right are all modern, moulded by the political narrative unfolding on the continent between 1848 and 1948. The Tories never had to deal with that kind of thing, or at least not since 1649 anyway.

Also, most of the Continental political parties operate in PR-based constitutencies. They are therefore forced to actually compete in a conceptual free market. Only the US Republicans operate in as protectionist a political model as the Tories; and it really shows.

Erm.

enough local government English

s/government English/government that we still speak/

As dropped clauses go, that was a clanger.

And first question last; the difference between UK conservatism and European Christian Democrats is that the Tory party as a political force and philosophy pre-date the Enlightenment and frequently still talk that way. The continental parties who occupy the rational right are all modern, moulded by the political narrative unfolding on the continent between 1848 and 1948. The Tories never had to deal with that kind of thing, or at least not since 1649 anyway.

Now this is an interesting point – although I’d argue strongly that the modern Conservative party is more an inheritor of the 18thC Whigs than Tories – specifically the legacy of William Pitt. I see very little continuity between 17th century Tories and the modern Conservative Party. Hence the importance of Burke as a Conservative thinker.

Equally if you’re arguing that the Conservatives are, as a movement, anti-rational, I’m going to have to ask you for some pretty compelling evidence. The Tories are clearly not medieval in outlook, the Church plays no more of a role in the Tory party today than it does in any other British party – and substantially less than it does in European counterparts. The ‘Christian’ Democrat is not a meaningless term.

And, again, the Conservative party has been subject to repeated re-inventions over its history – even taking, as I do, Peel as the first Conservative Prime Minister. You have to look at the relationship with the Liberal Unionists; the successive adaptations to the expanded franchise; the response to the birth of the Labour party, and the post-war settlement; the death of consensus and so on. Saying that they have not had to deal with a changing political narrative since 1649 (an odd date that – it predates the existence of even the proto-Tories) is palpably ridiculous. No other party has been able to adapt its identity and its message for so long.

Ah, debate Thank you.

Was the term ‘Tory’ not coined for those who supported monarchy over Parliament, status quo ante over progress and modernity? I’ll agree I fudged there; the Tories were in 1688, not in 1649. I used the earlier date because, in my analysis, that was the last time the British political establishment saw an analogous political event to the Europe-wide upheavals of 1848, and times since.

Britain has not thrown out its state and built a new one in at least twice as long as our nearest European competitor. That’s a major problem in our political establishment; cf. the remarkable correlation between safety of seat and extent of fraud during the expenses scandal. Our entire system has been in a ‘safe seat’ for a very long time.

On the other hand, you’re completely right about Pitt, Burke and Peel. Modern conservatism is founded entirely on the principle of ‘stop the social revolution, or at the very least put the brakes on for long enough that we can figure out how to profit from it’. The spectre of the guillotine hung over Whitehall for decades after its relevance had faded, influencing events right up to Parliament’s dealings with the Chartists.

I was, I’ll admit, engaging in a slight bit of spin, there, and possibly being over-pedantic. I read “UK conservatism” as signifying small-c conservatism in the UK, rather than just the Tory party; but I did then use a label associated with the party, specifically, to describe the movement. We just happen to have a particularly long period of time over which a coherent label has been hung on reactionary politics; Tory. It was a slightly cheap shot, and I possibly shouldn’t have taken it.

Beneath the confections of sophistication added on by ideologues or marketroids, progressive politics is about change, the idea that change can be good. Equally fundamentally, conservatism is about maintaining the status quo ante: change is bad, rapid change doubly so. It’s associated with rural constituencies and with the plutocracy because those are the two bits of any society who benefit most from a slow pace of change. It’s not hard to identify why the limb of our body politic linked with an aristocractic past and a parochial, reactionary present are sceptical about European society and law.

Equally if you’re arguing that the Conservatives are, as a movement, anti-rational, I’m going to have to ask you for some pretty compelling evidence. The Tories are clearly not medieval in outlook, the Church plays no more of a role in the Tory party today than it does in any other British party – and substantially less than it does in European counterparts. The ‘Christian’ Democrat is not a meaningless term.

Yes, I know. On the other hand, why does Britain still have an established church? That’s a status quo ante if ever I saw one.

My argument here is not that Tories as a class are god-botherers, particularly; it’s that conservatives seek to conserve the status quo ante, which includes marital rape being legal and homosexuality being banned. Some will have noticed this, and left the party. Some will not have noticed. Some have noticed, and are all in favour. Go figure.

You can be a progressive Conservative, in theory, but only in the precise measure that you are not a conservative Conservative.

Moving on, are the Tories anti-rational? As a party, no, not even now. As a political movement, no; their fringe are, but then, so are the fringe lefties and the fringe liberaltaricons.

Are they frequently guilty of embedding pre-Enlightenment assumptions about, say, homosexuality, poverty, education and/or race in their politics, rhetoric, advertising and, indeed, manifestos? Abso-bloody-lutely. Among the reasons Are you thinking…? failed as a campaign is that what they were thinking was thinly disguised xenophobia [1] and class warfare.

And, again, the Conservative party has been subject to repeated re-inventions over its history – even taking, as I do, Peel as the first Conservative Prime Minister. You have to look at the relationship with the Liberal Unionists; the successive adaptations to the expanded franchise; the response to the birth of the Labour party, and the post-war settlement; the death of consensus and so on. Saying that they have not had to deal with a changing political narrative since 1649 (an odd date that – it predates the existence of even the proto-Tories) is palpably ridiculous. No other party has been able to adapt its identity and its message for so long.

As I said above, my comment was contextual. I said:

the political narrative unfolding on the continent between 1848 and 1948

and those dates weren’t accidental either. The French have had three or four Republics since 1848. The Germans have totally re-invented both their politics and the shape of their nation three times, and the definition of ‘German’ at least once. The Spanish, Russians, Bohemians, Slavs and even some Scandawegians… even those ancient centres of stability and political entrenchment, the Greeks and the Italians, have all had military coups, street-level revolutions or been invaded in the last century. Some have had several of these things. All of Europe had seen either German or Russian occupation by 1948. We in Britain didn’t experience any of the above.

We haven’t thrown out our entire system and replaced it with a new one since 1649. Every major power in the EU has done so in the last century. If you’re a political movement whose raison d’etre is to preserve the status quo, being a British Tory is a pretty bloody easy life. I can’t think of a modern political establishment other than the Chinese who’ve had such a long holiday from revolution… Oh, no, wait, even that legendarily slow-moving and conservative empire has seen a coup d’etat in the last hundred years.

Returning to the theoretical level, while I appreciate that all of the things you list led to changes in the Conservative party, not one of them can be compared to the scale of political re-engineering I had referred to. If nothing else, a direct comparison between the events in Paris, Budapest, Berlin and Prague in 1848, and the events in London in the same year, illustrate my point pretty well. [2]

Simple summary; British conservatives have been insulated by political stability from the kind of reality check most nations provide their reactionaries with, on a regular basis, through revolution or through a couple of generations out of power. That ‘safe seat’, the security of knowing that even when the peasants revolt, they won’t really kill anyone, has affected their thinking.

[1] And yes, I do mean foreigners, not black people. More vitriol is spouted about Poles in my pub, and frequently by Brits of Colour, than any other single demographic except Manchester United fans. The British are, in most of my experience, racists only by correlation. What they really don’t like is foreigners, which for a Cornishman includes the whole rest of the British Isles.

[2] Mind you, I may not be able to follow this up and provide text reference. This is A-level history to me, and I haven’t read up on early industrial movements in some time. The ’48 Revolutions I’m pretty sure happened, though.

@ John Q. Publican

Great post.

I won’t go into it but for me the whole concept of being right or left is inherently anti-progress but then I’m a liberal, so my political ideas are 100% about innovation.

@ pagar

I’ve found that about Fabian. Your points superfically are also one of the huge reasons why I moved away from seeing myself as a Labour supporter.

@ Tim J

“Or, perhaps an even easier one, what regulation would have prevented the credit crunch?”

Oh come on. That was silly. Anyone who dares to answer this question in one paragraph or on a whim really doesn’t ‘get it’.

I will say this though, you can have all the regulation you want and it won’t change a thing, the issue is with the mindset of the people involved. ‘Plus ca change’.

For example, you have some posh dude that has spent 3 decades working in the city under a certain culture. He even learnt about this culture from his father and his father from his father before that. Now suddenly you impose new regulations on the city. Now stupidly we (keep on doing this!), expect people to suddly ‘change’ their behaviour and play to the tune of that new regulation. That ain’t gonna happen. Humans behave irrationality and this is the problem that we have, especially in this country and specifically the ‘Right’.

Like someone said above, what Brown did was more and less taking what Thatcher had installed and running away with it BUT what made what Brown did even worse was that he wasn’t as economically conservative as Thatcher was, so you had a situation that has created even greater ineqaulity than we’ve ever had. I always say to people who say that New Labour behaved like a middle party that ‘no they didn’t.’ They behaved schizophrenically. They were either ‘Right’ or they were ‘Left’. There was no middle ground.

People can say x,y and z or come up with all sorts of stats but as we’ve seen from history with the same mistakes happening over and over again, the problem we have is with ourselves-culture, when that begins to shift or even evolve…then we can see some kind of progress…

Was the term ‘Tory’ not coined for those who supported monarchy over Parliament, status quo ante over progress and modernity?

Indeed it was. However, the Tory group that it was coined for was killed off by the Hanoverian succession – it effectively ceased to exist as a movement by 1760. The Conservative Party was, as I said, the inheritor of Pittites and Peelites – both Pitt and Peel being, of course, Whigs. It’s just a transference of a political insult from one group to another.

<I’ll agree I fudged there; the Tories were in 1688, not in 1649. I used the earlier date because, in my analysis, that was the last time the British political establishment saw an analogous political event to the Europe-wide upheavals of 1848, and times since.

1688 was as much of an upheaval as 1649. But then 1832 was too, as was 1945. While there have been no revolutions or military conquests, the political establishment in this country has been changed beyond recognition over this period – it has merely been incremental rather than revolutionary.

On the other hand, why does Britain still have an established church? That’s a status quo ante if ever I saw one.

Because no-one has yet thought of a sufficiently compelling reason why there should not be. There’s an established church in Sweden too, after all. One of the things about conservatism is the belief that something’s antiquity is not, of itself, a reason to change it.

that conservatives seek to conserve the status quo ante, which includes marital rape being legal and homosexuality being banned.

Well, the marital rape exemption was finally abolished under a Conservative Government. And if you really think that conservatives as a rule believe in its legality, and the illegality of homosexuality you must know some strange conservatives – these are social (rather than political) attitudes that have all but died out in this country.

Are they frequently guilty of embedding pre-Enlightenment assumptions about, say, homosexuality, poverty, education and/or race in their politics, rhetoric, advertising and, indeed, manifestos? Abso-bloody-lutely.

You’re accusing the Conservative Party of embedding 17th century ideology in its manifestos? With the greatest of respect, this looks insane. I’m afraid you simply have to provide actual examples of pre-Enlightenment thought – perhaps they are suggesting a return to mercantilism? Or the re-instatement of an absolute monarchy?

The French have had three or four Republics since 1848. The Germans have totally re-invented both their politics and the shape of their nation three times, and the definition of ‘German’ at least once. The Spanish, Russians, Bohemians, Slavs and even some Scandawegians… even those ancient centres of stability and political entrenchment, the Greeks and the Italians, have all had military coups, street-level revolutions or been invaded in the last century. Some have had several of these things. All of Europe had seen either German or Russian occupation by 1948. We in Britain didn’t experience any of the above.

Before I get too confrontational, I should add that I agree with this – the relative stability and continuity of British governance does set us apart from mainland Europe. My issue was with “the Tory party as a political force and philosophy pre-date the Enlightenment and frequently still talk that way” which it doesn’t and it doesn’t.

We haven’t thrown out our entire system and replaced it with a new one since 1649. Every major power in the EU has done so in the last century.

Right, but the fact that we haven’t done so is a good thing. Look at the examples you use – France has been an Empire, a whole string of Republics and a Fascist colony. Germany has been a web of principalities, a militaristic Empire, a chaotic Republic, a murderous totalitarian nightmare – twice in the east – and a republic. Italy has been a geographical expression, a hubristic fascist state and a corrupt and incompetent republic. Greece has been at times a modern republic, and at time a quasi-fascist dictatorship. Spain has seen the slow decline of an Empire, the anarchy of civil war and a long period of fascist rule. There’s a common thread running through the history of continental Europe.

Perhaps the real lesson is that succesful political extremism drives out the moderates – and that conservatism is at its heart a moderate philosophy.

Oh come on. That was silly. Anyone who dares to answer this question in one paragraph or on a whim really doesn’t ‘get it’.

I will say this though, you can have all the regulation you want and it won’t change a thing, the issue is with the mindset of the people involved. ‘Plus ca change’.

Well yes. In my defence, it was deliberately silly. Anyone who thinks they can say, as a matter of certainty, that it was specifically Thatcher’s deregulation that caused the credit crunch ought at least to be able to identify what regulation was deregulated.

TimJ:

We haven’t thrown out our entire system and replaced it with a new one since 1649. Every major power in the EU has done so in the last century.

Right, but the fact that we haven’t done so is a good thing

I believe I can boil down the actual debate, as opposed to the bickering over how hidebound street conservatives are or whether a party whose principles are reactionary can also produce good laws [1], to this exchange right here.

Your statement is true only if you are a conservative. It is, in fact, a statement of the fundamental principle of conservatism.

My argument is precisely that not incurring that reality check is a very bad thing, for precisely the same reasons that safe seats correlate heavily with corruption in Parliament (you didn’t respond to that point, either). Security is fundamentally bad for politicians, any politicians; it allows them to start acting like Thatcher and Blair, Houphet-Boigny or Robert Mugabe. And this sense of complacency among conservative British has been building up since before the Industrial revolution. The PSI of arrogance is now pretty high.

My point was and remains that by comparison with any other major power, British conservatives (note, again, small-c) have had a stunningly easy ride. In 1649 something genuinely monumental happened. The elected representatives of (a very small part of) the British public had to go to war to get an unelected, unpopular, and unhappy ruler out of office. I suspect David Cameron currently sympathises with their point of view, but they killed a king; the impact of that, politically and culturally and even spiritually, was huge.

Orange in 1688, by comparison, was Cnut to the Cromwell’s William the Bastard. The Norman conquest structurally and materially changed Britain, as did the Commonwealth period [4]. The Glorious Revolution merely formalised and codified the religio-political victories that had taken place thirty-nine years earlier.

The Restoration had restored monarchy but it did not bring back the world or the assumptions of early Stuart rule. When a system is overthrown, as it was with regicide, limits are placed on conservatism. The correlation between wealth, power and conservative politics over the last 7,000 years has always placed limits on progress.

Most modern nations have recent experience of political spring-cleaning. What you do about entrenched conservatism from a disproportionately rich ruling class is blood in the streets. It keeps the politicians honest.

The system of checks and balances only works if both sides sometimes lose. The progressives lose slowly, every day in small ways. These force them to refine their ideas and get it right; that’s good, that’s what checks are for. But then we come to balances: the conservatives sometimes lose very quickly, in fire and blood, when they get too good at their job, and too rich, and too complacent, then let an entire generation lose all hope of progress or equity.

British conservatism has not had a reality check in 300 years. They talk and act like it.

I’ve lived through coups d’etat. I am not advocating guillotines in Piccadilly. I’m pointing out some of the reasons why the British political establishment, and particularly the conservative movement within it, are so dangerously secure.

I believe that the expansion of practical political activism by lowering the cost of entry into the market (i.e. the Internet) offers us the opportunity to circumvent, rather than being forced to over-throw, conservative special interests like Lord Ashcroft. I’ll be much happier if we resolve this issue by talking than by shooting people.

TL:DR summary; from your point of view stability is good, because you’re conservative. From mine, too long a stretch of such stability becomes dangerous, because secure politicians with unimpeachable power blocks turn to authoritarianism. Labour did, and it was a much longer journey for them.

[1] My experience [2] is that steet-level conservatives in this country really do think and talk like the Daily Mail and the Sun [3] (which is why the latter has changed allegiance, as much as the fact that the Conservatives are about to win). Yours is that they don’t. Fair enough.

I would include D’Israeli in the list of great Torys, he’s about the only big one you’ve missed so far. I was never arguing they’ve done nothing right in 300 years. I was arguing that the raison d’etre of the political philosophy of conservatism (small c, as you originally put it) is to prevent things changing. You haven’t contested that, have you?

[2] My experience is informed in part by both those newspapers having led orchestrated, expensive, extended campaigns against British paganism over the course of 40 years, because it sold newspapers to reactionary bigots. These campaigns have led to everything from armed gangs assaulting goths, to the Satanic Ritual Abuse scandal in the 80s. That is precisely the kind of (literal!) witch-hunting which I associate with pre-Enligtenment thinking, and with conservatism. And yes, people in my pub do ask if people like me worship demons (wut? wrong theology), and whether we ‘still’ use our own children for sexual rites and sacrifice [5]. That’s here, in the UK, in this decade, because of the Sun and the Daily Mail.

[3] Incidentally, my experience is that educated Conservatives, which includes the ones in the Westminster/political blogging bubble, think (more or less) like the Times and the Telegraph. Which is considerably less un-Enlightened a viewpoint. There isn’t really a newspaper which thinks like New Labour, mainly (I think) because no-one would want to read it. Personally, I seem to think most like Private Eye.

[4] It introduced the cultural dominance of a dreadful set of Puritanical social mores, for a start. Until then we shipped people like that off to America, and look at the Bible Belt to see why. Lincolnshire could easily have gone that way.

[5] Intriguing to see them recycling a twelfth century headline there, which is a bit back-dated even for the Sun. This was basically the Norwich Blood Libel being aimed at a new target.

Perhaps the real lesson is that succesful political extremism drives out the moderates – and that conservatism is at its heart a moderate philosophy.

Missed that one, sorry. I tend to agree; the US ‘neo-cons’ were not terribly neo and certainly weren’t con. They were aggressive right-wing extremists who changed all kinds of liberal, rational US laws and traditions in their quest for a genuine crusade. But then, so was Eisenhower; he is the one who introduced ‘under God’ into the Pledge of Allegience to the Flag, which among other exercises to differentiate the Septics from the ‘Godless Commies’, blazed the trail for the Bush dynasty and people like Palin.

Political conservatism is, indeed, a moderate philosophy. It can, when pushed hard enough from underneath, even act progressively (Peel, etc.) What I observe is that while Cameron’s clique may be progressive, moderate conservatives, the mass of public emotion which will sweep him into Downing Street is reactionary, hard-line right wing across the spectrum or issues, and genuinely extremist on some of them. Unfortunately, a considerable portion of the Parliamentary party seem to be all for it; Nadine Dorries, MP would be a typical example.

Your statement is true only if you are a conservative. It is, in fact, a statement of the fundamental principle of conservatism.

But the thing is, looking at the counter examples we have both used, you appear to be advocating catastrophic military defeat/totalitarian rule as a good (or at least a necessary) thing. It wasn’t a reality check that moderate conservatism got in Germany/France/Italy/Spain – it was a death sentence. That’s simply not a good thing.

Most modern nations have recent experience of political spring-cleaning. What you do about entrenched conservatism from a disproportionately rich ruling class is blood in the streets. It keeps the politicians honest.

No it doesn’t. Coups and revolutions don’t tend to lead to honest and stable government. And the advocation of murder as a good thing for a polity is something we’re just going to have to disagree about. I’m a Burkean on this point…

Security is fundamentally bad for politicians, any politicians; it allows them to start acting like Thatcher and Blair, Houphet-Boigny or Robert Mugabe.

As is this. Not only because the conflation of the first two with the latter two is ridiculous, but also because Mugabe’s actions are best explained as a reaction to perceived insecurity. Look at his targets, look at his timing – they are responses to threats to his security, not a reflection of the security he had.

I’ve lived through coups d’etat. I am not advocating guillotines in Piccadilly.

Well, that’s something at least!

Orange in 1688, by comparison, was Cnut to the Cromwell’s William the Bastard. The Norman conquest structurally and materially changed Britain, as did the Commonwealth period [4]. The Glorious Revolution merely formalised and codified the religio-political victories that had taken place thirty-nine years earlier.

That’s an interesting comparison, but it’s worth noting that what makes the Glorious Revolution of 1688 glorious was that it was a bloodless compromise. The civil war, Commonwealth and Restoration were a series of unsustainable extreme positions. Cromwell was not so much of a change of politics, as a change in personnel – he was a more absolutist ruler than Charles, and tried to maintain a dynastic succession of his own. William III represented a true compromise between crown and Parliament. The invention of the constitutional monarchy was a true revolution.

And that does seem to be a point you’re missing. Polities can undergo dramatic changes without the need for the total blank slate collapse that happened across Europe. One of the reasons that the revolutions of 1848 that swept the abolsute monarchies of Europe did not take hold in Britain was that the Great Reform Act had drawn so much of the poison 16 years earlier.

I would include D’Israeli in the list of great Torys, he’s about the only big one you’ve missed so far

I’ve missed lots! I think I’ve only mentioned Pitt, Peel and Burke – and Burke was never Prime Minister. Disraeli (he dropped the apostrophe as a child) was a truly great Tory Prime Minister – and certainly deserves to stand, with Peel, as the creator of the modern Conservative Party.

British conservatism has not had a reality check in 300 years. They talk and act like it.

This is only true if the only reality check you recognise is the murder of the entire ruling class of a country. British conservatism has had the last rites read over it (by my reckoning) at least four times since Peel. The expansion of the franchise, the ‘terminal’ split on tarriff reform, the post-war socialist settlement, and the triumph of a New Labour project explicitly designed to replace the party as the ‘natural party of Government’. Each time, the party has adapted its message, and its messengers, and reformed itself. That’s not indicative of an unchallenged ideology stretching back to Jacobitism.

Good discussion by the way! And apologies to anyone who’s stumbled in by accident…

But the thing is, looking at the counter examples we have both used, you appear to be advocating catastrophic military defeat/totalitarian rule as a good (or at least a necessary) thing

Not really; I’ve been saying that prior to the Internet, the ‘good thing’ (politicians who are constantly reminded that they run but do not own the country) could only be achieved through violence and that, I think, we’ve grown up a bit since then.150 years ago we certainly hadn’t; I personally suspect that Peel and company saved Britain from revolution, and I’m not convinced we’re better off now than we would have been had they failed. For a start, we’d have been fighting the redistribution battle much harder back when it might have made a real difference.

Historically? Yes. Totalitarian rule is not good, but revolution is; when a wheel revolves it ends up the length of its rim further forwards.

No it doesn’t. Coups and revolutions don’t tend to lead to honest and stable government.

Neither do FPTP and Her Majesty’s Civil Service, though. If you’d said this last year it might have been ignorable, but while our system is stable it most certainly is not honest. No system which could employ both the Hamiltons and Alisdair Campbell with a straight face, which could sack David Nutt and force Robin Cook to retire, and put Sir Alan “Unelectable” Sugar in the cabinet through the Lords’ back passage, can be called honest.
And that’s precisely the balancing act; keeping enough stability for peace and economic growth while also keeping the actual politicians sufficiently insecure that they can’t see themselves as ‘safe’.

Not only because the conflation of the first two with the latter two is ridiculous, but also because Mugabe’s actions are best explained as a reaction to perceived insecurity

A very good point; I accidentally created a HIGNFY ‘odd-one-out’ round there. Boigny fits the list, because the problems with him came from his absolute security in power as the Man Who Won Independence. Thatcher’s came out of the North Sea and the victory over organised labour, and Blair’s came from the combination of the Internet boom and a war. Mugabe, you’re completely right, does not belong in this company.

That’s an interesting comparison, but it’s worth noting that what makes the Glorious Revolution of 1688 glorious was that it was a bloodless compromise. The civil war, Commonwealth and Restoration were a series of unsustainable extreme positions. [...]

Oh yes, no argument there. But; 1) William’s achievement of a legislative compromise was the end of a process that started with a shorter Charles. It was, if you like, where the point on the wheel marked ‘now’ touched the ground again, marking one complete revolution of the system. 2) The political arrogance and complacency I was referring too dates from French Revolutionary times, when the British were already spraining elbows in self-congratulation because ‘their Revolution’ had been so civilised. It hadn’t; it just took longer. 1688 was not the equivalent of the Jacobin terror, it was the equivalent of the rise of France under Napoleon. The Revolution, for us, was regicide, and wasn’t civilised at all.

Polities can undergo dramatic changes without the need for the total blank slate collapse that happened across Europe. One of the reasons that the revolutions of 1848 that swept the abolsute monarchies of Europe did not take hold in Britain was that the Great Reform Act had drawn so much of the poison 16 years earlier.

Yes; entirely agree. We share an understanding of what happened and why as far as I can tell. The British conservatives, and I will say this is particularly true prior to 1950, were very good at changing just enough, just when needed. That’s a significant benefit we did get from the settlement of 1688. And it’s one of the remarkable, nigh-on unique, things about British conservatism; most other countries haven’t managed the trick, let alone so well for so long, and have needed revolutions rather more often. Duty and service were genuine traditions in Britain’s overclass, and I believe that had a considerable impact.

I would argue they’re much less good at that trick now though, partly because the timescales are so much shorter. Philosophically, the old saw about moving from radical to conservative in 40 years without changing an opinion can be shortened to less than a generation, and the political views of our dominant politicians now are as generational behind as the Iron Lady who inspired most of them.

I’ve missed lots!

Yes, sorry, cheap shot, I know Disraeli vs Gladstone was one of my favourite aspects of studying Victorian history at A-level.

Each time, the party has adapted its message, and its messengers, and reformed itself. That’s not indicative of an unchallenged ideology stretching back to Jacobitism.

Sort of, but only sort of. The fundamental drive of Liberalism is as old in its fundamentals. Liberals want more of society to be self-determining; conservatives want less change. At that level, really neither ideology has altered in a long time.

The threat I am perceiving from how the basic ideology of conservatism interacts with unprecedented political stability was described very well by the writers of Yes, Minister in the ’80s. Sir Humphrey, managing Jim Hacker, argues that a course of action is correct because it’s the way we’ve done it for 250 years. Hacker asks “Is that your clinching argument?” and Humphrey replies, triumphantly, “It has been for the last 250 years”.

The nation would need to get a lot smugger, and a lot (relatively) richer, for much longer, to get liberals thinking that way; their political raison d’etre is improvement. It doesn’t take much practice for conservatives to start thinking that way; their raison d’etre is conserving the status quo ante.

You said in one of the earlier posts that the antiquity of something is not a good argument for changing it. The reverse is also true; particularly since we figured out Moore’s Law, the antiquity argument has worn very thin as a rationale for keeping something. And I speak as an historian who has a passion for the past; but I mostly want the past as a source of examples and lessons, not of current threats to life, limb and wallet.

Good discussion by the way!

Very much so, thank you.

Neither do FPTP and Her Majesty’s Civil Service, though. If you’d said this last year it might have been ignorable, but while our system is stable it most certainly is not honest. No system which could employ both the Hamiltons and Alisdair Campbell with a straight face, which could sack David Nutt and force Robin Cook to retire, and put Sir Alan “Unelectable” Sugar in the cabinet through the Lords’ back passage, can be called honest.

This is a bit of a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good though isn’t it? The systems you praise for having had numerous re-inventions score a lot worse at this. I see your Neil Hamilton and I raise you Berlusconi. Or Chirac, or Schroeder, or Poujade, or Tangentopoli!

Yes, sorry, cheap shot, I know Disraeli vs Gladstone was one of my favourite aspects of studying Victorian history at A-level

It was only relatively recently that I began to appreciate that despite the ostensible clash being between mercurial but flighty Disraeli against solid but worthy Gladstone, the real battle was between Disraelian pragmatism (an organised hypocrisy) and Gladstonian idealism. The avatars were perhaps on the counter-intuitive sides.