Political parties are protean by nature. It’s difficult to say anything about them that holds true over long periods of time. The Republican Party, for instance, has oscillated between pro-tariff isolationism and free-trade internationalism at fairly regular intervals during its history. Sometimes, however, recurring behaviors within parties persist over time, giving them a distinct flavor and identifiable character that remain consistent throughout their history.
The British Conservative Party is a case in point. At the end of the 19th century, the leader of the Liberals, William Harcourt, made the astute observation that the Conservatives “never yet took up a cause without betraying it in the end.” Over a hundred subsequent years of the Tories in government and in opposition have done nothing to weaken this claim. The unflinching willingness of the party to divest itself of any previously held principle or policy in order to win a majority in the House of Commons would be impressive if it wasn’t so completely amoral. Apart from a few brief periods of respite when some person of principle has managed to wrestle the reins of power away from agents of the status quo, the Conservative Party has operated with only two guiding principles in mind throughout its history: It is in favor of being in power, and it opposes being out of power.
The reply might come that every political party wants to be elected and triangulates its positions on some issue or another with that goal in mind, but a crucial distinction is necessary here. Most parties in Western democracies want to be in power in order to do something; the Tories will do anything simply to be in power. As Peter Hitchens has observed on numerous occasions, the Party’s only genuinely consistent purpose is to obtain office for the sons of gentlemen (“gentlemen” here meaning rich men from the right background, not well-mannered men of sound morals — think Rupert Murdoch, not Jimmy Stewart).
This was demonstrated yet again this week when the government announced that it intends to throw the politics of Margaret Thatcher overboard and embrace those of Franklin Roosevelt. More than any other Conservative prime minister in the past hundred years (yes, including Churchill, I maintain), Mrs. Thatcher actually wanted to lead the country during her premiership more than she wanted to be its leader. Her agenda, as Charles Moore has shown in his excellent recent biography, was driven by philosophical convictions and the unwavering execution of national policies that embodied them.
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See Also:
(1) Effie Deans: Where do moral norms come from?
(2) Anger Grows Against BBC “Poll” Tax
(3) EU compared to ‘bitter jilted ex-partner’ after lashing out with doomsday Brexit forecast
(4) Brexit divorce bill: How much is UK paying EU in 2020? The staggering amount
(5) Brexit victory: EU to backdown over fishing row in huge breakthrough for UK
