What Britain now needs is its own version of Christian Democracy
National conservatism seeks to reclaim our cultural heritage, but offers no economic solutions
One of the oddities of the Conservative Party is that it is often not very conservative, while many of its politicians – some by conviction, some just desperate to appear modern – insist that they are liberals, of one sort or another.
After a confusing 13 years in power – in which we have seen austerity, a spending splurge, a tax-cutting experiment, and a return to something like austerity, not to mention five different prime ministers and the back and forth of the Brexit wars – the Tories are starting to debate who they are and what they need to be.
Many of the “Children of Dave” – the socially liberal, technocratic Cameroons who dominate ministerial office – lament the culture war and regret that voters care so much about immigration. The Boris Johnson disciples – forgetful of the circumstances of his departure – met this weekend to celebrate their deity and make the case for “party democracy”. The libertarian right – somewhat quieter after the disaster of the Truss premiership – still insist we need to slash the state and cut taxes.
This week, a conference gathers to probe another scheme. “National Conservatism” is the idea of the Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony, and it has caught on among factions of the Republican party in America. Inspired in part by old conservative thinkers in Britain like Richard Hooker and Edmund Burke – but only in part – the “Natcon” mission is one of restoration: “of traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties in the countries we love”, the Natcon statement of principles says, which “have been progressively undermined and overthrown”.
While it is an error to think of conservatism as opposition or reluctance to change, as thinkers from Burke on have shown, a sense of loss can be powerful among those of a conservative disposition. If, in Michael Oakeshott’s words, to be a conservative “is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant”, it is obvious that conservatives are more likely to mourn the past than progressives.
This sense of the past can be a positive force in the present, since it allows conservatives to understand the importance of identity, institutions, language, culture and organic change. But it can also present a risk. For while the Natcons are right to worry about the decline of national institutions and the weakening of national culture and government by globalisation, temptations to bring back what has long gone – or may never have existed – can lead conservatives to the wrong conclusions.
The role of religion looms large in the Natcon agenda. The statement of principles says, “No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment … where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honoured by the state and other institutions both public and private.”
This is a proposal with complex consequences. Western countries, including Britain, are grounded in Christianity in ways that are rarely understood. Western philosophy is shaped by Christian teaching about the dignity of the individual, love and forgiveness, and the need for humility in the strong and generosity to the weak. As the historian Tom Holland argues, we can see conflicts within Christian thought, and between Christian sects, in the philosophical and political conflicts of today.
Christianity is an indisputable part of who we are, and conservatives should respect the Church as an institution and the value of Christian teaching. Yet there is no single, clear Christian “moral vision” when it comes to public policy, as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s forays into politics suggest. With church attendance falling and minority religions growing, Britain faces a challenge in how to manage the tensions – which on occasion have grown violent – of the coexistence of different faiths. Making our polity more religious than it is, when we already have an established Church, is unlikely to succeed.
The core insight of the Natcons is about the significance of the nation. Our national identities are not, as some thinkers insist, a modern creation, made possible by the technologies of past centuries and vehicles for modern ideas like liberalism and socialism. They are organic and ancient, and formed through shared geography, language, custom and history. Our national identity allows us to recognise familiarity in strangers, and makes possible the solidarity we need to make sacrifices for one another in the pursuit of the common good.
Though not defeated, that identity, and the associated means by which we order and govern ourselves, is under pressure. The global trade system, which has enriched Western minorities and allowed China to become dangerously powerful, has undermined the working and middle classes at home. Adherence to international treaties written in times gone by is rendering border control impossible. Mass immigration on a scale that was unthinkable even a few years ago will change our country forever. Ultra-liberals on Left and Right see the nation as a platform upon which anybody in the world should be free to live – the Left for its ideological commitment to cosmopolitanism, the Right for the supply of cheap labour.
Where the Natcons fall short is that their commitment to the restoration of national community appears to rest on the cultural and geopolitical side of the policy, and not the economic. But to restore the national, and the solidarity and good citizenship that comes with it, and to defend our culture and revitalise our society, we also need a different approach to the economy.
That choice is not, as is often caricatured, between more economic liberalism and social democracy. A third model – a British equivalent of German or Dutch Christian Democracy, in which the state plays a strategic role in the economy, workers are protected, and struggling regions are helped to achieve market-led growth – is what we need. In other words a truly conservative – and not liberal – political economy, that addresses, in the pursuit of national community, the very serious economic, social and cultural challenges we face.
Our national identities are not a modern creation. They are organic and ancient