Miles Bassett is a former Chair of Wandsworth and Merton Young Conservatives.
All political parties inevitably develop their own quasi-religions – with their own Messiahs, deites and Antichrists. The deity worshipped by Conservatives for the past 40 years has been the free market – with any attempt at interventionism bringing howls of heresy from its ardent followers.
As a result of this blind faith in free market economics, the Conservative Party has demonstrated a remarkable willingness to sacrifice large parts of Britain’s civic identity to market forces: public ownership of almost anything is decried, large British companies are actively encouraged to be sold and broken up, the publicly-funded BBC is mercilessly attacked and ridiculed, established companies such as Eurostar are left to go bust instead of receiving government support, and national security has been sacrificed in the pursuit of delivering infrastructure as cheaply as possible with Chinese investment.
The result is that the British conservatism has been warped into a kind of modern iconoclasm – where there is very little other value in Britain, other than that of money.
Free markets seem to have little room for more abstract concepts such identity and belonging. And recent Conservative governments seem to have been incredibly relaxed about it, given the extraordinarily lackadaisical attitude that previous Conservative chancellors have taken to takeovers of British companies over the past 13 years which have not just been praised, but encouraged.
For example, in 2014 George Osborne shrugged off Pfizer’s proposed takeover of AstraZeneca at the time as “a commercial matter between the two companies”. Thank God that didn’t happen. Imagine what Britain’s vaccine response could have been like if it had happened; Pfizer admitted that the takeover would result in job cuts and a reduction in R&D.
Similarly, Osborne’s successor, Phillip Hammond, rejoiced that SoftBank’s takeover of ARM in 2016 as a sign that “Britain was open for business”.
It’s extremely disheartening to have governments that are so enthusiastically careless with our national creations. Where is the comfort of being ‘open for business’ to the British workers of UK plc, who essentially toil away at companies that are held to have no intrinsic value beyond their share price? No other country in the world – certainly not France, Germany or the United States – would actively praise the takeover of their strategic industries by foreign companies.
With this political economy, the Conservative Party’s vision for Britain begins to look almost medieval – run by narrow and individualistic corporate interests, which the public have little or no control over. Such a society does not fill fill the void in the heart of the individual, who lacks a feeling of belonging. No amount of Johnson-era flag waving is going to change that.
This, surely, is what’s causing the restless and bored population to look for extreme political changes, such as Brexit or Scottish nationalism, to find that sense of belonging which our economics cannot provide. It’s shocking that free marketeers have learnt so little from the political tumultuousness of the mid-2010s. It’s no surprise that Anand Menon, Director of UK In A Changing Europe, recalls warning a Newcastle audience of Brexit’s potential hit to GDP. To which a member of it replied “That’s your GDP, not mine!”
That audience member would, I’m sure, have been distraught to find that six years after the Brexit vote this carelessness still exists. Conservatives such as as David Frost may dismiss the claim that conflict exists between free markets and community, stubbornly declaring that only the forrmer can bring prosperity, but we’ve had decades of free markets – and Brexit still happened.
Yes, things are changing. The Johnson era and Covid has eased the Conservatives worship of the free market somewhat, with the creation of Great British Railways and Great British Energy. And the Government has finally realised seeking ever-greater Chinese investment really a good thing after all.
But the Conservative Party must wake up and realise free market worship isn’t conservative at all. It’s destructive iconoclasm. And after the last 40 of deindustrialisation, mixed-feelings of globalisation, 2008, populism, Covid and Ukraine, climate change and housing shortages, dogmatic free market ideology will soon start to look irrelevant, especially to a future electorate that refuses to let go of the left as they age.
Flag waving and monarchy is not enough for the British people to feel comfortable in their community. The Tories of the 2030s will need to make a complete clean break with the 1980s. We can think new ideas – and return to older ones to conserve and protect the institutions that make up the social fabric of this country, without living in fear of Margaret Thatcher’s scorn. If the Conservative party does not leave 1986 behind, the public will ultimately leave it behind.
Miles Bassett is a former Chair of Wandsworth and Merton Young Conservatives.
All political parties inevitably develop their own quasi-religions – with their own Messiahs, deites and Antichrists. The deity worshipped by Conservatives for the past 40 years has been the free market – with any attempt at interventionism bringing howls of heresy from its ardent followers.
As a result of this blind faith in free market economics, the Conservative Party has demonstrated a remarkable willingness to sacrifice large parts of Britain’s civic identity to market forces: public ownership of almost anything is decried, large British companies are actively encouraged to be sold and broken up, the publicly-funded BBC is mercilessly attacked and ridiculed, established companies such as Eurostar are left to go bust instead of receiving government support, and national security has been sacrificed in the pursuit of delivering infrastructure as cheaply as possible with Chinese investment.
The result is that the British conservatism has been warped into a kind of modern iconoclasm – where there is very little other value in Britain, other than that of money.
Free markets seem to have little room for more abstract concepts such identity and belonging. And recent Conservative governments seem to have been incredibly relaxed about it, given the extraordinarily lackadaisical attitude that previous Conservative chancellors have taken to takeovers of British companies over the past 13 years which have not just been praised, but encouraged.
For example, in 2014 George Osborne shrugged off Pfizer’s proposed takeover of AstraZeneca at the time as “a commercial matter between the two companies”. Thank God that didn’t happen. Imagine what Britain’s vaccine response could have been like if it had happened; Pfizer admitted that the takeover would result in job cuts and a reduction in R&D.
Similarly, Osborne’s successor, Phillip Hammond, rejoiced that SoftBank’s takeover of ARM in 2016 as a sign that “Britain was open for business”.
It’s extremely disheartening to have governments that are so enthusiastically careless with our national creations. Where is the comfort of being ‘open for business’ to the British workers of UK plc, who essentially toil away at companies that are held to have no intrinsic value beyond their share price? No other country in the world – certainly not France, Germany or the United States – would actively praise the takeover of their strategic industries by foreign companies.
With this political economy, the Conservative Party’s vision for Britain begins to look almost medieval – run by narrow and individualistic corporate interests, which the public have little or no control over. Such a society does not fill fill the void in the heart of the individual, who lacks a feeling of belonging. No amount of Johnson-era flag waving is going to change that.
This, surely, is what’s causing the restless and bored population to look for extreme political changes, such as Brexit or Scottish nationalism, to find that sense of belonging which our economics cannot provide. It’s shocking that free marketeers have learnt so little from the political tumultuousness of the mid-2010s. It’s no surprise that Anand Menon, Director of UK In A Changing Europe, recalls warning a Newcastle audience of Brexit’s potential hit to GDP. To which a member of it replied “That’s your GDP, not mine!”
That audience member would, I’m sure, have been distraught to find that six years after the Brexit vote this carelessness still exists. Conservatives such as as David Frost may dismiss the claim that conflict exists between free markets and community, stubbornly declaring that only the forrmer can bring prosperity, but we’ve had decades of free markets – and Brexit still happened.
Yes, things are changing. The Johnson era and Covid has eased the Conservatives worship of the free market somewhat, with the creation of Great British Railways and Great British Energy. And the Government has finally realised seeking ever-greater Chinese investment really a good thing after all.
But the Conservative Party must wake up and realise free market worship isn’t conservative at all. It’s destructive iconoclasm. And after the last 40 of deindustrialisation, mixed-feelings of globalisation, 2008, populism, Covid and Ukraine, climate change and housing shortages, dogmatic free market ideology will soon start to look irrelevant, especially to a future electorate that refuses to let go of the left as they age.
Flag waving and monarchy is not enough for the British people to feel comfortable in their community. The Tories of the 2030s will need to make a complete clean break with the 1980s. We can think new ideas – and return to older ones to conserve and protect the institutions that make up the social fabric of this country, without living in fear of Margaret Thatcher’s scorn. If the Conservative party does not leave 1986 behind, the public will ultimately leave it behind.