Tories Put on a Happy Face

In his brilliant book, The Strange Death of Tory England, Geoffrey Wheatcroft explains that one of the features of the British Conservative Party is the ability to reinvent itself when its principles become problematic. In Bournemouth this week, the Conservative Party led by David Cameron entered a new phase, the Tories are now the Happy Party of Britain.

As Mr. Wheatcroft observed, Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Bill and the repeal of the Corn Laws killed the Toryism of Edmund Burke in the 1820s and 1830s So, the party accepted industrialization and voting to become the Tory Party of Disraeli. The challenge for the Conservatives at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st was to decide what it meant to be Conservative after Mrs. Thatcher left the scene and after Tony Blair re-invented Labour as another right-of-center party.

Through the long, dark nights of William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, the party remained Thatcherite in its mood (hit them with the handbag if they complain), but with most of her ideas implemented, they were out of things to do if elected. The British people spared them that problem by consigning them to opposition in three straight elections.

Along comes David Cameron, a toff (and the first one of those the lead the party in ages), who believes that snarling at the voters doesn’t work. Giving them stuff does judging by his speech to the assembled apparatchiks. Anatole Kaletsky put it quite succinctly in a column in The Times, Mr. Cameron wants “to lavish on the National Health Service whatever funding is needed and an absolute moratorium on spending cuts or hospital closures; more border controls and policemen; more support for faith schools; more prison building; more drug rehabilitation services; more defence spending, not just on body armour but also on military salaries, pensions and schools; more subsidies for childcare; more money for social workers and occupational therapists; more special schools.”

Mr. Cameron’s plan is to steal the clothes of Labour, just as Mr. Blair stole the policies of the Tories when he made his party “New Labour.” The Cameroonians, as they have been dubbed, lead a party that is still horribly split on Europe, and there is still an instinct to cut taxes despite this shopping list of goodies for voters. John Stuart Mill famously wrote in a Letter to the Conservative MP, Sir John Pakington (March, 1866) “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative.” At least now, they are happy about it. Mr. Cameron offers the world Conservatism with a Humanoid face.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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