Fluent Radical

Cameron has signalled he’d be open to a name change for the Party (don’t get hysterical - he didn’t say he was going to do it, just that he was open to suggestions). Well, he’s right. The Party needs a name change.

Our new name should be the “Conservative Party”. The BBC likes to call us the Tory Party (roughly a fifth of the time according to Google). Sure it’s a convenient shorthand, but doesn’t it also imply a certain something that “Conservative” doesn’t? “Tory” describes a member of the Conservative Party, in which sense it’s quite innocent, but it also describes a strand of conservative thought.

But what is Toryism? The following is from The Right Nation by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge:

Classical conservatism, as defined by Burke, was built upon six pillars:

• a deep suspicion of the power of the state;
• a preference for liberty over equality;
• love of country;
• a belief in established institutions and hierarchies;
• skepticism about progress;
• and elitism.

American conservatism exaggerates the first three of these attributes, and subverts the last three. The result is a distinctive mixture of uber-traditionalism and classical liberalism.

Toryism is a bit of a loose concept. But if it means anything I would describe it as the part of our movement that subscribes to the last three principles. Others may disagree - I’ve been unable to find any satisfactory definitions online - but this is my impression.

American conservatism contains contradictory strains: Western conservatism versus Southern conservatism; Traditionalism versus Classical Liberalism. It does not contain any trace of Toryism. The last Tory to be important in the Republican Party was George Bush. A preppy, patrician establishment type who was hated by the rest of his party. They couldn’t wait to be rid of him. And no one like him is going to return to power in the Republican Party any time soon.

But the British Conservative Party still contains Tory elements. As evidence I will cite the enormous proportion of Conservative MPs who went to public schools. I love public schools, but I would say that this does indicate some sort of establishment preference within the Party. As further evidence I will suggest that the Party is still considered by many to be the natural home of the aristocracy - if they vote, I don’t imagine many vote Labour. These aspects of the Party are unmistakeably Tory.

And it’s this that puts people off the Conservatives today. Not because voters dislike individualism or social conservatism so much as they despise Tories. When Cameron talks about hope and optimism, he is not stealing from Oakeshott (The Right Nation again):

The English Tory Oakeshott argued that “to be 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 … the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.”

If Cameron means anything when he says that he’s going to make the Conservative Party look and feel like a completely different party, I hope he means by expunging all traces of Toryism. We can see this beginning in the new localist agenda that both candidates subscribe to. Localism is by definition anti-establishment, and Cameron in particular seems very supportive of real devolution of powers.

I could be wrong and he could be talking about expelling the genuine conservatives: the individualists, the social conservatives, the patriots - as the blogosphere fears and sometimes I do too. But I hope Cameron wants to institute truly Modern Conservatism as demonstrated by the Americans.

American Conservatism is optimistic about the future - insanely willing to assume any obstacle can be overcome. It contains a spirit of fierce egalitarianism - by which I mean the absence of class, not income equality. And it unthinkingly supports patriotic traditions such as the Independence and Memorial Days.

If we can call ourselves the Conservative Party rather than the Tory party, then that would be a name change worth making.