26 Britain The EconomistMarch 14th 2020
B
ritishconservatismis in an odd state: politically triumphant
but intellectually dazed. A hundred days after the election the
Conservative Party is still far ahead of Labour in the polls. But it has
not provided a clear sense of what it stands for. Going back to the
good old days of blue passports and royal yachts? Perpetual war on
the liberal elite? Cutting red tape and unleashing business?
Such confusion is understandable. The Brexit explosion blew
apart David Cameron’s post-Thatcherite synthesis of free markets
with progressive values. But having been in power since 2010 the
party hasn’t had time for a rethink. The default contender to fill the
vacuum is the populism that drove the Brexit revolution. Alas,
such populism is an unstable mixture of emotions not a coherent
philosophy, consisting in part of rage at the liberal elites, in part
celebration of the noble savage in the form of the northern work-
ing class and in part nostalgia for national greatness. The party has
failed to take on the biggest issue it faces: can it cleave to free-mar-
ket orthodoxy (as it did when allowing the Flybe regional airline to
go bust), while still catering to its new voters in the north?
Here Nick Timothy has an advantage. He was at the heart of gov-
ernment for over a decade, first as Theresa May’s adviser at the
Home Office and then as her co-chief of staff in Downing Street. He
was hurled into the wilderness after the election debacle in 2017
and given plenty of time to think, not least about his own mis-
takes. These were numerous. He alienated many colleagues with
his abrasive management style and he was the principal author of
the party’s disastrous manifesto. Yet his “northern strategy” of
winning Brexit-inclined Labour voters bore fruit in 2019, suggest-
ing that the problem lay in its execution not its design. His conduct
in Downing Street was a model of restraint compared with that of
Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s chief adviser. And unlike Mr
Cummings, Mr Timothy is a conservative with both a small and a
large “c”. His new book, “Remaking One Nation: Conservatism in
an Age of Crisis”, provides something that the Johnson govern-
ment conspicuously lacks: an answer to the question of what con-
servatism is now for and a blueprint for translating philosophical
principles into detailed policy.
Mr Timothy argues that, since the French revolution, the role of
conservatism has been to act as a corrective to the extremes of lib-eralism. Today those extremes come in two forms: neo-liberalism,
which sees markets as the solution to all problems, and woke liber-
alism, which sees the world through the prism of minority rights
and all-pervasive oppression. Many see these two liberalisms as
polar opposites. But for Mr Timothy they are both degenerate ver-
sions of classical liberalism. The first undermines markets by fail-
ing to see that they require popular legitimacy and the second sac-
rifices what is best in liberalism (pluralism, scepticism,
individualism) on the altar of group rights.
Mr Timothy presents a dismal picture of the consequences.
Bosses have seen their compensation more than quadruple while
the value of their companies has hardly risen at all. The largest de-
mographic group—the white working class—has seen incomes
stagnate for over a decade. Britain has the highest level of regional
inequality in Europe. It also has one of the worst systems of voca-
tional education, with 80 undergraduate degrees awarded for ev-
ery post-secondary technical qualification. Woke liberals are in-
creasingly willing to no-platform or shout down opponents
because they see their objectives as quasi-sacred and their critics
not just as wrong-headed folk needing to be reasoned with but as
evil-minded enemies who must be destroyed.
Rather than using its power to mitigate inequality the govern-
ment has directed resources at the country’s most prosperous re-
gion. Transport subsidies are twice as high per person in London
as elsewhere. London and Oxbridge get almost half of national r&d
spending. Far from reviving vocational education, the govern-
ment has poured money into universities which, as well as failing
to defend free speech, load up students with debt at the same time
as too often failing to provide them with any significant return on
their investment.Solutions, solutions
Mr Timothy presents an ideologically eclectic list of solutions to
Britain’s problems. They are reminiscent of John Ruskin’s descrip-
tion of himself as both “a violent Tory of the old school” and “the
reddest also of the red”. But two ideas give his arguments organis-
ing force: the nation-state and civic capitalism. A long-standing
Brexiteer, Mr Timothy argues that the nation-state has been
uniquely successful in holding global elites accountable to voters
while also giving citizens a sense of common purpose. He points
out that the welfare state was constructed after the second world
war, when the sense of common purpose was at its height. A proud
citizen of Birmingham, he champions the sort of civic capitalism
practised by Joseph Chamberlain, a local businessman who looked
after his workers and went on to be a reforming mayor.
There are problems with Mr Timothy’s argument. He sees the
upside of nationalism without the downside, such as the beggar-
thy-neighbour policies of the 1930s. He sees the downside of life-
style liberalism without the upside: two decades ago advocates of
gay marriage were self-righteous extremists. But his book should
be a jolt of electricity to a moribund debate in the Conservative
Party. He makes a powerful case against the libertarian right,
which sees Brexit as an excuse to shrink the state and liberalise fur-
ther. And he presents a blueprint very different from the one that
has ruled the right since the 1970s. This is a conservatism which
celebrates the power of the state to achieve collective ends by deal-
ing with regional and inter-generational inequalities; which chal-
lenges the self-dealing of business elites by rewiring the rules of
corporate governance; and which puts a premium on rebuilding
local communities and reigniting civic capitalism. 7Bagehot The meaning of conservatism
Nick Timothy offers an answer to a question the government has fumbled: what is it for?