Joseph Eve is a Parliamentary Researcher at the House of Commons.
Kemi Badenoch’s recent ‘purging’ of the ‘wets,’ through removing the whip from Gavin Barwell and tightening the candidate selection process, will be seen by many as an expulsion of what are colloquially known as ‘One Nation Tories.’ A term that many instinctively ascribe to Tory Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.
Which begs the obvious question – what use is Disraeli to us conservatives who have survived the purge? Other than being an excuse to show off our knowledge of political history by reciting his most common epithets: the first Jewish Prime Minister and Queen Victoria’s favourite.
The inaugural Disraeli Conference, which I recently attended, provided a most compelling answer. It saw Disraeli reclaimed as a genuinely small-c conservative thinker, or as Professor David Starkey put it, ‘Burke made Prime Minister’.
The attribution of ‘One Nation’ to Disraeli rests on a quote from his Sybil, in which he writes of “two nations… the rich and the poor”. Disraeli is clearly aware of the squalor in which the impoverished classes live, among the latrines and dung heaps of Victorian England, and yet they are undoubtedly the English impoverished. Disraeli is talking about a demographically and culturally consistent nation.
Drawing on this quote, One Nation factions were traditionally concerned with economic questions. Hence, the One Nation Group founded in 1950 counted Enoch Powell amongst its number (and actually had strong, free market leanings), whilst the One Nation ‘wets’ chastised by Margaret Thatcher were hounded for their Keynesian leanings. Nationhood, sovereignty and culture were never part of the conversation.
Yet at some point in the early 2000s, the term was adopted by the proto-Blairist wing of our party, conveniently ignoring all other aspects of Disraelian thought. The baby of nationhood was thrown out with the economically progressive bathwater. The One was prioritised over the Nation as certain so-called ‘conservatives’ prioritised supranational courts, liberal migration policies and membership of the European Union over nationhood.
Disraeli’s Crystal Palace Speech of 1872, in which he set out his vision of Conservative principles, centred on the Constitution, the Empire and improving the condition of the people. The first two have largely been forgotten and, as such, the last has been used as a tool with which to completely undermine the first two. An open borders migration policy as a tool for increasing GDP is perhaps the best example of this.
For how you can set out to improve the condition of the people if you don’t know who those people are? A shared sense of national identity is a prerequisite for social improvement. A fact Andy Burnham may well be forced to reckon with when he demands the British taxpayer cough up even more money to pay for social care whilst continuing to put up illegal migrants in hotels and pledging to increase ‘foreign aid’.
Disraeli would have scorned any form of continuation of the Blairite constitutional settlement. In many ways, Robert Peel was Disraeli’s Cameron. In his address to the electors at Tamworth, Peel conceded that the Tories must accept the settlement of the 1832 Reform Act and get on with governing in the new order – a Whiggish, rather than Conservative, approach.
In fact, in his novel Coningsby, in which Disraeli describes the scene of the Tamworth manifesto, he observes: “There was indeed a considerable shouting about what they called Conservative principles; but the awkward question naturally arose, what will you conserve?”
This remains the defining question for conservatives today, and one that Kemi and her team are clearly formulating an answer to. Commitments to leaving the ECHR, rejecting arbitrary net zero targets, reasserting the primacy of British culture through the Cultural Cohesion Commission and tackling both illegal and legal migration, are all inherently Disraelian.
They reject the Blairite settlement, repair the constitution and put the nation first.
Those who would dissent on these points are not taking issue with economic details but with fundamental views of the world and the nation. Disraeli’s statement, again made in his prophetic Crystal Palace Speech, is no less applicable to today:
“The time is at hand, that, at least, it cannot be far distant, when England will have to decide between national and cosmopolitan principles.”
It is precisely these cosmopolitan principles that must be driven from the Tory Party for good. Wherever they linger the Party is not a broad church but two religions. I welcome that Mrs Badenoch has made it clear where she stands.
Far from being forever lost to the Blairites within the party, Disraeli is a thinker that true conservatives can and should draw upon for inspiration. The battle over his legacy may well decide the future of our party.
Joseph Eve is a Parliamentary Researcher at the House of Commons.
Kemi Badenoch’s recent ‘purging’ of the ‘wets,’ through removing the whip from Gavin Barwell and tightening the candidate selection process, will be seen by many as an expulsion of what are colloquially known as ‘One Nation Tories.’ A term that many instinctively ascribe to Tory Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.
Which begs the obvious question – what use is Disraeli to us conservatives who have survived the purge? Other than being an excuse to show off our knowledge of political history by reciting his most common epithets: the first Jewish Prime Minister and Queen Victoria’s favourite.
The inaugural Disraeli Conference, which I recently attended, provided a most compelling answer. It saw Disraeli reclaimed as a genuinely small-c conservative thinker, or as Professor David Starkey put it, ‘Burke made Prime Minister’.
The attribution of ‘One Nation’ to Disraeli rests on a quote from his Sybil, in which he writes of “two nations… the rich and the poor”. Disraeli is clearly aware of the squalor in which the impoverished classes live, among the latrines and dung heaps of Victorian England, and yet they are undoubtedly the English impoverished. Disraeli is talking about a demographically and culturally consistent nation.
Drawing on this quote, One Nation factions were traditionally concerned with economic questions. Hence, the One Nation Group founded in 1950 counted Enoch Powell amongst its number (and actually had strong, free market leanings), whilst the One Nation ‘wets’ chastised by Margaret Thatcher were hounded for their Keynesian leanings. Nationhood, sovereignty and culture were never part of the conversation.
Yet at some point in the early 2000s, the term was adopted by the proto-Blairist wing of our party, conveniently ignoring all other aspects of Disraelian thought. The baby of nationhood was thrown out with the economically progressive bathwater. The One was prioritised over the Nation as certain so-called ‘conservatives’ prioritised supranational courts, liberal migration policies and membership of the European Union over nationhood.
Disraeli’s Crystal Palace Speech of 1872, in which he set out his vision of Conservative principles, centred on the Constitution, the Empire and improving the condition of the people. The first two have largely been forgotten and, as such, the last has been used as a tool with which to completely undermine the first two. An open borders migration policy as a tool for increasing GDP is perhaps the best example of this.
For how you can set out to improve the condition of the people if you don’t know who those people are? A shared sense of national identity is a prerequisite for social improvement. A fact Andy Burnham may well be forced to reckon with when he demands the British taxpayer cough up even more money to pay for social care whilst continuing to put up illegal migrants in hotels and pledging to increase ‘foreign aid’.
Disraeli would have scorned any form of continuation of the Blairite constitutional settlement. In many ways, Robert Peel was Disraeli’s Cameron. In his address to the electors at Tamworth, Peel conceded that the Tories must accept the settlement of the 1832 Reform Act and get on with governing in the new order – a Whiggish, rather than Conservative, approach.
In fact, in his novel Coningsby, in which Disraeli describes the scene of the Tamworth manifesto, he observes: “There was indeed a considerable shouting about what they called Conservative principles; but the awkward question naturally arose, what will you conserve?”
This remains the defining question for conservatives today, and one that Kemi and her team are clearly formulating an answer to. Commitments to leaving the ECHR, rejecting arbitrary net zero targets, reasserting the primacy of British culture through the Cultural Cohesion Commission and tackling both illegal and legal migration, are all inherently Disraelian.
They reject the Blairite settlement, repair the constitution and put the nation first.
Those who would dissent on these points are not taking issue with economic details but with fundamental views of the world and the nation. Disraeli’s statement, again made in his prophetic Crystal Palace Speech, is no less applicable to today:
“The time is at hand, that, at least, it cannot be far distant, when England will have to decide between national and cosmopolitan principles.”
It is precisely these cosmopolitan principles that must be driven from the Tory Party for good. Wherever they linger the Party is not a broad church but two religions. I welcome that Mrs Badenoch has made it clear where she stands.
Far from being forever lost to the Blairites within the party, Disraeli is a thinker that true conservatives can and should draw upon for inspiration. The battle over his legacy may well decide the future of our party.