On the 28th September, Polity Press will publish The Case for the Centre Right — a book of essays edited by David Gauke, the former Cabinet minister and current ConservativeHome columnist.
I look forward to it, because the Conservative Party desperately needs to start debating big ideas again. Judging by the latest polls, it won’t be long before we have all the time in the world to do just that. If, or rather when, that day comes there’ll be no end of rescue plans on offer.
Gauke and his fellow contributors have therefore done well to beat the rush. But in making the case for the centre-right, what do they mean by the term?
I suspect their answer is “people like us.” Looking down the list of authors, which includes Rory Stewart, Michael Heseltine, Dominic Grieve, Daniel Finkelstein and Gavin Barwell, it doesn’t strike me as the broadest spread of opinion. Certainly, it speaks to a conception of the centre-right that is more centre than right.
A further clue to the general thrust of the argument comes from the blurb. This is what it says on the book’s Amazon page: “centre-right values that steered British politics for decades — internationalism, respect for the rule of law, fiscal responsibility, belief in our institutions — were cast aside in the wake of the Brexit referendum” and that, furthermore, “this radical rightwards shift can and must be reversed.”
But what radical rightwards shift would that be? It’s not that I yearn for such a development (as a quick perusal of my previous columns should confirm), it’s just that I don’t think it’s happened.
Admittedly, there was that brief and unhappy detour into Trussonomics last year. However, that was the exception that proves the rule. The mini-budget wasn’t just “reversed”, the instigators — Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng — were publicly humiliated before being bundled away. They were replaced with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, neither of them famous for their radical right-wingery. The same goes for the Foreign Secretary, the affable James Cleverly, who is best known for smoothing over relations with our European neighbours.
Perhaps the right-winger the critics have in mind is the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. If the standard left-wing narratives are to be trusted (which, obviously, they’re not) she’s the second coming of Enoch Powell. But would this be the same Suella Braverman who presided over a net immigration figure of 606,000 in 2022, facilitated by what remains one the most liberal immigration systems anywhere in the western world? Yes it would.
We might also briefly pause to note that three of the four great offices of state are currently held by non-white Conservatives, which is hardly the sort of arrangement associated with right-wing extremism.
Or does the case for the prosecution rest upon confected controversies like that over the Bibby Stockholm and the performances of Lee Anderson? If such things are truly representative of the state of the nation — or the soul of the Conservative Party — then why aren’t the hand-wringers doing more to warn those heading for our shores? How can decent liberal folk let asylum seekers leave the bosom of the European Union for the horrors of Brexit Island?
The answer, of course, is that the narrative is not to be taken seriously — it’s just part of a degraded, anti-Tory discourse that long pre-dates Brexit.
This is something that people like Danny Finkelstein and Gavin Barwell ought to remember well. I was a junior drudge in Conservative Central Office when those two gentlemen were working for William Hague. They must surely recall the barrage of abuse hurled against us. Hague was typically portrayed as a bigoted, xenophobic, skinhead. In fact, he’d done nothing more unseemly than resist British membership of the single currency and call for a “common sense” reform of the asylum system.
It didn’t end with Hague, of course. The calumnies continued throughout the opposition years and into government. So what changed? Why did a group of Tories that had been willing to serve the party as advisors, parliamentarians and ministers, go from disregarding the narrative of Tory extremism to amplifying it?
The answer, of course, is Brexit. That was certainly a break in continuity, but is there anything especially right-wing about a country controlling its own borders and pursuing its own trade policy? In liberal democracies as diverse as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, the concept of continued national sovereignty is so uncontroversial as not to be an issue at all.
Viewed objectively, there is no reason why support for Brexit should imply a broader political direction — whether towards the right, left or centre. That’s why Mr Brexit himself, Boris Johnson, saw no contradiction between quitting the EU and global leadership on issues like the environment or support for Ukraine.
Of course, for diehard Tory Remainers, Brexit is something they experienced subjectively as a complete loss of power and influence. If you feel left behind by your party, then it’s easy to conclude that it has moved on without you — in this particular case, by quitting the centre-right for the right or even the far-right.
But I fear that David Gauke and his fellow contributors have made an error in their political geography. The centre-right is a much bigger place than they imagine — and certainly big enough to accommodate pro, anti and ambivalent positions on Brexit.
To fully understand the centre-right you have to accept that it is distinct from both the centre and the right.
Let’s start with the centre, which in theory should be the most accommodating position on the political spectrum. In practice, though, it is typically colonised by the establishment. That’s not because the cultural elites naturally incline towards moderation, but rather because they have the clout to set the norms that define the middle ground.
Meanwhile, the right — like the left — is about challenging the status quo. Both right and left want to transform the country and its institutions, albeit in opposite directions.
The centre-right differs from the centre because it capable of disagreeing with establishment. It also differs from the right because it is reformist rather than radical. It does not necessarily believe that everything must change or that the centrist establishment is all bad. What some mistake as timidity is in fact the centre-right’s awareness of human fallibility — both on the part of the elites and those who want to bring the status quo crashing to the ground. While the right often claims the conservative label for itself, the conservative disposition is more naturally exercised from the centre-right.
That’s why the centre-right is a broad church. Being rooted in habit, custom, practicality, experience and experimentation, it is inclined towards pluralism. It is therefore more tolerant of difference than any other position on political spectrum — including the centre-left, whose caution is more about technocratic gradualism than epistemic humility.
It strikes me that the authors of Making the Case for the Centre Right are operating on a much narrower definition. While they ought to be welcome on the centre-right — and, indeed, welcomed back into the Conservative Party — it is not their exclusive property.
Dorothy Parker once said of an actress that she “ran the gamut of emotions from A to B” — a harsh but true assessment of a limited range. On the political stage, a centre-right that runs the gamut of ideas from G to H ( Gauke to Heseltine) would be just as restricted.