Wrapping up policy proposals within a grand narrative of their historical importance and situating them within a long national story has powerful imagery that can move the conservative soul.
People want to know what the party will do in the future. Conservative statecraft is about surveying the past to enable current and future prosperity. It’s also about the party’s willingness to change and adapt to the times.
Heroic defeat is still a defeat despite the heroics. I came second to Reform by 23 votes, which is not good enough. Yet, my result bucked the national polls and the broader trends in recent by-elections, as we increased both our numerical vote and our vote share.
Their plans will undermine and blur accountability and worst of all they will exacerbate and create more competing legitimacies within the British State.
It is an absurd caricature of Tory philosophy to pretend that our Party must unthinkingly defend whatever the status quo happens to be, no matter how poorly it serves the nation.
The party must put up its sails and navigate back towards traditional conservatism. To do so, we will need to pick up and wield the sword of imagination – with a little help from some of our party’s greatest thinkers.
His life and works appears to have little influence at the top of the current Conservative Party, and among the wider membership and the British public. But it seems that in those countries where Scruton went behind the Iron Curtain, his work and life is not just remembered, he is still actively saving minds.
The option to “merely sit” is not available at present, since there is currently a battle of ideas between conservatism and its foes, and also one taking place within conservative thought itself.
Johnson’s election manifesto promised to remove the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, among other pledges.
The doorstep conversations were taking 15 or sometimes 20 minutes. This was absolutely necessary. We had to rebuild trust.
Part of settling down and marking time, as Roger Scruton would say, is protecting our environment. Doing so is an unchosen obligation upon us.
Such as talent, or making good choices in life, or ability. But to point this out is to smash the leftist dogma of egalitarianism.
Our country, families, the environment, home – we love them all. The object of life is love and we ought to aspire toward the triumph of love.
Members from a broad range of backgrounds competed and forged firm friendships during the long days of the campaign.
Today we shoul keep the cost of party membership down, provide social events for members to enable like-minded Tories to meet, and we must provide platforms for serious but enjoyable political participation. Indeed, we can learn all this and more from the Primrose League.