Burke versus Gramsci – the Great British Institution and the Conservative Dilemma

 Conservatives look to Edmund Burke as their great founding father.  Central to Burkean thought is the institution with its historical memory as a repository of the wisdom of the ancestors.  In terms of modern philosophy and the Burkean tradition one might also look to Alasdair MacIntyre in his account of institutions and nations acquiring a tradition of virtue and as a Burkean opponent of Burke’s dreaded sophists, economists and calculators .

If conservatism depends for its philosophy upon manmade institutions there is always the risk such institutions will prove fatally fallible and corruptible.  Such could well be the problem in today’s United Kingdom.  Unlike the United States with its revolutionary origins, there has not been such a strong suspicion of Government and institutions within the British Right, sometimes quite the opposite.  The Crown and the Church as Margaret Thatcher once outlined are of far greater import to a Tory than the economy.  This perspective, it should be remembered, was held by the Conservative Prime Minister now looked to as an exemplar by today’s sophists, calculators and economists – the libertarian and neoliberal Right.

Margaret Thatcher though experienced the problem of the dilemma I intend to outline at first-hand.  All the British institutions, the Church of England, the BBC and even the hierarchy of the Conservative Party were opposed to her.  This tension has only grown more stretched and extreme.  While the Conservative Party has moved culturally to the Left, it is still faced by a hostile hard Left in control of the institutions that it should naturally be at home with.

The Church of England is no longer the Conservative Party at prayer, as the saying had it.  The BBC is faced with calls to be defenestrated by conservatives not radicals, because of its cultural Marxism.  Even the Conservative Party itself, at least its high command, is now a proponent of the hard-left cultural agenda in terms of same-sex marriage, “diversity” and equality of outcome.

It seems as though the Gramsci agenda of the “long march through the institutions” as extreme Leftist German-activist Rudi Dutschke put it, has been emphatically achieved in Great Britain.  The universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, the BBC, the Church are all advocates of a hard-line cultural Marxist agenda dressed up in palatable phrases such as “diversity”, “equality”, “openness”.

So what does a Burkean conservative do when the institutions its whole philosophy seeks to conserve and be guided by have fallen into the hands of the Marxists?  One answer is the populist response, looking to the American Right as an example.  Here characters like Nigel Farage and Aaron Banks are notable champions for such an agenda.  Indeed, despite being placed upon the Right, their populist agenda sometimes puts them on the Left.  For example, whereas an earlier Eurosceptic like Enoch Powell was a keen defender of the House of Lords, as well as the Crown and the established Church, Farage and Banks are radical constitutional-reformers.

The other response is the classically liberal agenda, advocated by the sophists, calculators and economists that conservatives should instinctively distrust.  From this free-marketeer liberal perspective privatisation rather than conservation is the answer to the BBC’s political subversion.  The free market is not really a conservative response to dealing with preservation of the institution.  We are not talking about a nationalised industry, but a British institution which is a custodian of many great British traditions.  Would commercialisation and advertising culture really be a conservative answer?

One might contrast arch-liberal free-marketeer George Osborne with populist Nigel Farage as two contrasting answers to the Gramscian victory within British institutions from Oxbridge to the BBC.  To abolish our institutions though is surely not a conservative solution, whether it be BBC privatisation or Church disestablishment. 

The populism of Brexit might have unleashed patriotic forces against the Gramsci institutions, but populist nationalism is not inherently conservative, as any cursory knowledge of Nineteenth Century nationalism will tell us.

It is undoubtedly the case that while the Right and conservatism look to be in the ascendancy, the whole movement is riven by internal contradictions.  This new populism rightly unleashed against the EU has now turned on British institutions like the House of Lords (admittedly corrupted into a culturally Marxist institution by the likes of Blair, Cameron and Clegg).  It could just as easily turn upon the Monarchy and nationalism again would have reverted to its radical-Leftist Nineteenth-Century roots.

It has to be admitted that when the Marxists own and control what you are trying to defend it is difficult to know how to proceed.  The only answer I believe is not one for people looking for instant solutions.  Only a gradual return to the values of Tradition will rescue our institutions and our culture.  And this might have to be carried out in a radical and unconventional way, outside of the apparatus of British institutions.  It might mean home schooling of our children, to teach them traditional values outside of the Marxist-run education system.  It might mean leaving the Church of England as a Church of Laodicea for a more traditionalist denomination that might feel foreign at first, such as Eastern Orthodoxy.  It might mean stepping back from the rat-race of the neoliberal economy with more self-sufficiency and less consumption.  In short it might mean letting the light of conservative tradition shine before men as an example, rather than trying to fight for it and impose it through democratic elections and the party system.  From the small acorn and with Providential nurture we might see a large oak of conservative counter-culture grow that provides a genuine alternative to the anomie of cultural Marxism and its insipid shadow, neoliberalism.  Only with a cultural change, rather than election victories will conservatives see their institutions restored and again linked back to the Burkean wisdom of ancestors. 

Reactionary Rus

Russia seems either both European and Asian or neither European nor Asian.  Is it Marxist or conservative?  Atheist or Orthodox?  Democratic or despotic?  The West is never really clear about Russia, as Winston Churchill once succinctly put into a pithy comment.

Today the liberal Western media is wringing its hands about a further step towards despotism, voted for by the Russian public.  What makes the media more upset is that the new constitution voted upon by the Russian people not only in effect seems to give Putin power for life, but has been sold to the people as a restoration of traditional values, particularly in terms of protecting marriage as between man and woman and including God in the constitution.

Traditional values are thus seen as the clever ploy and part of a despotic manoeuvre to seize power.  Worse is that the Western media regards this as an appeal to prejudice as though Putin has manipulated base instincts to rally support for his prolonged presidency.

The constitution itself does place a strict limit upon the presidency of two terms of six years.  It nonetheless resets the clock allowing Putin to begin his terms all over again.  Hence the accusation of an attempt to fix up a lifelong presidency. 

The role of a little-known body called the State Council is also raised in importance and power.  Again Putin’s critics have accused him of using this body to ensure he retains power as a member.

Whatever the politics, and this article is not meant to defend Putin, the interesting question is how Putin has relied upon social conservatism as an integral part of these constitutional changes.  By contrast, in the West, with its representative democracy, widely-held socially-conservative views remain excluded from political debate.  It is as though socially-conservative views cannot break through the dominance of liberalism in the Western party system, while Putin’s ever increasing power has meant the focus of accountability is directly upon him.  If Russia were to introduce same-sex marriage only one man could be held responsible for that.  Meanwhile in the United Kingdom a Conservative Government could introduce same-sex marriage with very little consequence in terms of electoral losses amongst small-c conservative voters. 

It would be a mistake to see social conservatism in Russia as somehow imposed as false consciousness from above.  Anyone who has encountered the revival of Christianity in Russia or discussed traditional values with Russians will have found that socially-conservative views remain mainstream for many.  It is far more likely that Putin is following the instincts of grass-roots attitudes that survived seventy years of atheistic Marxism to win his referendum.

What the overwhelming vote for Putin’s constitutional changes therefore demands from Western social conservatives is that they ask themselves why they are losing so badly compared to the victory in the cultural war in Russia.  And it is not just in Russia,  indeed many of the former Warsaw Pact nations are seeing a revival in both conservative Christianity and social conservatism, from Hungary to Poland.  Meanwhile, without any violent revolution in the West, values have been stripped away leaving a meaningless liberal anomie somehow fraudulently compensated for by Left-wing identity politics.  Most social conservatives will appreciate which of the cultural options will lead to greater human flourishing.  The disconcerting thing is that in Russia it appears to come at the cost of stable rule of law and democratic politics.

But is the political contrast so black and white?  While there is clearly a healthy bedrock and foundation of rule of law in the West, it is undeniable that as the cultural Marxist and postmodern outlooks have rapidly spread from the Academy into politics, law enforcement and the legal system, those fundamentals cannot be taken for granted.

 

There is a sort of totalitarianism-lite in the West.  In a free market economy it is vital to be able to survive in the world of employment.  With legislation on hate speech and equality goals any challenge to the cultural Marxist agenda can result in loss of employment - permanently.  There is no need for the Gulag or brutal oppression when people are scared about not being able to pay their mortgage or feed their families.  Meanwhile elections might change the finer details of economic policy, but whatever the voters want, the agenda of attacking traditional values continues under whichever party is in power.  There is a sort of liberal oligarchy installed in the West, with much more in common across borders than with the people within politicians' own nations.  In the UK the Brexit vote was a sign of this disparity and the same was true of Donald Trump’s election victory.  

Nonetheless, even without the heavy-handed legislation and the confident arrogance of the liberal oligarchy, the public in the West are very unsure about their conservative instincts.  While Russian babushka grandmothers ensured values survived Soviet oppression during the years of the Godless regime and the various nationalistic movements in Catholic Europe looked to Pope John Paul II, in the West the tide of consumerism and popular culture has almost drowned any residue of conservatism.  It is not just a detached oligarchy, but a confused public that ensures the onward and unimpeded march towards Sodom and Gomorrah.   

The Academy, the political world and the media reinforce the enthusiasm and commitment of each other for pursuing an agenda of radical liberalism that can only end in anomie.  Those institutions (such as the Church and the Tory Party) that should give leadership in this cultural battle are dominated by the same group of people – liberal, privileged and tending towards a relativism learnt at university.  The non-values dressed up as worthy tolerance and open-mindedness that these powerful people share give them some sense of purpose while allowing moral decadence in their own lives and in society at large.  While ideas inherited from the Protestant roots of much of the West in terms of probity in public office and the rule of law persist at least for now, there is a programme of undermining the standards and meaning bequeathed to us by Christian civilization.  The corruption is benign and amoral at the moment, not violent and criminal.  In a sense that makes it all the more corrosive to the soul of Europe.  It is spiritually and morally bankrupt, but sees itself as righteous and worthy.  This is a very dangerous situation.

 

It is dangerous not because of the risk of some extremist movement from beyond the Overton Window (although such a risk should not be breezily dismissed, as we saw from the rise of Black Lives Matter with its Marxist agenda of erasing history and silencing opposition over the summer).  Even in the straitened times of Covid 19 and in the post- Credit crunch world, material life will not turn into unbearable suffering for most.  Instead there is a risk of falling into a state of anomie in part because of all our wants being met in a consumerist society and all our freedoms to follow our passions respected as long as we “respect” the driving passions of everyone else.  Fundamentally important to this nadir of Western civilization is the disappearance of Christianity.  What remains of the Church as an institution in most Western countries is run and led by that same anti-traditional section of society, thereby ensuring no genuine revival is possible.  Combine that with the continual pushing at lowering of moral standards and promotion of immorality in drama and in all aspects of the media and the trajectory of the West looks to be pretty vertiginous.

 

To look specifically at the UK, where social conservatism is almost silenced, there is no mechanism such as the primary system that the United States has, to give direct democratic input into the selection of the prime minister.  True we are a  monarchy, not a pure republican democracy.  A primary system for the potential Prime Minister does not necessarily mean that the Queen would not still have the formal role of appointing her first minister, only that the party would select him differently and then recommend him to the Queen.  That primary system would be a safety valve to overcome the control the party has over selection of candidates.  It would be a means to start dismantling the liberal oligarchy.

What the Left dismisses sniffily as “populism” must have democratic avenues to be expressed, because it reflects the attitudes and prejudices of a nation.  Despotism from the Right remains a very remote risk in the West of course.  The real danger is the growing power of cultural Marxism to which dominant liberalism has been unable to present any serious ideological resistance.  Freedom of speech, political diversity and honesty are all under threat from the cancel culture of the Left.  Electing a Conservative Government in the UK has done very little to slow down the increasing power of the Marxists, as has been seen by the ease with which they seized control of the streets and attacked precious monuments with seeming impunity. 

Thus there are a number of reasons why traditional perspectives are locked out of the public square – the lack of Church leadership, the cultural changes forced by the media, the infiltration of the Conservative Party by hard-line social liberals, the politically-correct restrictions enforced through intimidation and by means of new laws.  Meanwhile the Academy continues its programme of brainwashing our young people with Marxist indoctrination. 

Nonetheless, Russia faced all this too and yet retained its belief in traditional values.  Perhaps the iron fist causes a reaction of resistance; but more likely, despite Sergeism, the values were more deeply instilled in the Russian people and could not be erased.

In the West since before the Enlightenment, all the way back to William of Ockham and the Nominalists, truth and values have been attacked.  This has disorientated ordinary people, meaning they are not sure how to justify what they feel in their spirit to be true.    The real problem therefore lies in centuries of dismantling our Christian values.  It lies in the very liberal paradigm that tried to accommodate the fracturing of Protestantism into different sects and the loss of a coherent and sustaining tradition.  It lies in the European narrative from a Humanist perspective of an oppressive Church that played the role of Caesar.  It lies in the doctrine of Papal Supremacy that broke the West from the East and eventually led not to a rebuilding of cohesion, but everyone becoming their own Pope through Protestantism.

Therefore even with avenues for populist expression, whereby the residue of traditional values amongst ordinary people that have not yet been erased might find expression, that incoherence of tradition will not be overcome.  Instead only a spiritual renewal will achieve anything in secular society.  Only a rediscovery of Tradition in the sense of a uniting, objectively true and subjectively encountered reality can heal the West.  Its very dynamic scientific and material successes are in part both due to and a cause of the break down of that cohesive Tradition.  The worldly comforts and riches achieved were pursued after the loss of Tradition and distract from the need for a return to Tradition.  The West has gained the whole world, but lost its soul.

Russia undoubtedly has its problems, as indicated by high levels of both single parenthood and abortions.  There is financial and criminal corruption in high places.  It was badly damaged by the Revolution and prior to that there were Oriental forms of oppression by the Tsarist state despite its Christian ethos that was so deeply rooted.

Nonetheless what survived in Russia and what often seems alien to those of us unable to see the world from outside the liberal paradigm, is the tradition of faith that is life sustaining in an eternal sense.  Of course, even the Church was heavily compromised by the Soviet regime, but the Tradition through the Holy Spirit exists within each member of that Church, as Lossky explained.  It is far more possible to remain unperturbed in one’s faith in the Orthodox Church when there are profound sacerdotal failings than under the sacerdotal hierarchy of all forms of Western Christianity.  Priesthood and laity are understood differently.

What we see in Russia is a suffering nation and through suffering Christianity flourishes.  Western material success combined with a reductive strand of theology has led to a hollowing out of the Tradition. Only from the small seeds of faith and re-connection with the Holy Tradition will the West be rescued in a sense far more important than maintenance of the rule of law and democratic rights.  Perhaps a time will come when those fundamentals of law and freedom are lost so that providentially we might rediscover what is important.  In the West we have lost the sense of what is most important and that is why we have become obsessed in a maniacal way with cultural Marxist causes.  The rise of Left wing extremism is indicative of the craving for meaning, but it will not be found there.  It will only be found in a return to Traditional Faith and the Church.  Russia has already learnt that lesson the hard way and furthermore at a grassroots level it never fully lost touch with Tradition.   We need to be able to understand what is happening in Russia and we can only do that by stepping outside of our liberal secularist paradigm.    

Putting things right

As another hunting season draws to a close (one much disrupted by the weather), it is worth considering the position of one of our great cultural traditions.  Despite the Conservative Party’s pledge to hold a free vote on the ban, despite Tony Blair, the man who as Prime Minister who used the Parliament Act to force the ban through the House of Lords unconstitutionally, admitting he was wrong and despite a clear impact on farms such as sheep farms on the Fells hanging on by their fingertips, hunting for political reasons alone remains banned.

Just as it was once useful for Mr Blair to allow frequent free votes on hunting to keep his more prejudiced backbenchers happy, so for the current Government hunting can be a useful political football.  It is all very well to launch a review into the impact on farming of restricting the despatch of foxes to one couple of hounds, but repeal of this aspect of the ban could be achieved by statutory instrument, with no need for a Parliamentary vote.

It feels more as though the review is to send a message of sympathy to hunting people without actually acting.  Yet even Tony Blair now admits the hunting ban was a mistake.  There are few who would argue the ban was about animal welfare.  It was as Tony Banks said “totemic” – it was a deliberate attack on a certain way of life and an imaginary, stereotypical foxhunter, who bares little resemblance to the majority of keen hunt supporters - The people that in Tony Banks’ bitter mind represented the class enemy.  Because this was about a visceral hatred and class resentment, no argument would ever have won around a man like Tony Banks.

So what is to be done?  Hunting has shown its determination to survive within the law, despite that law being unjust and unclear.  It faces the threat of animal-rights extremism, increasing urbanisation taking away country, an ambiguous and draconian law and this season, as so many others have also suffered, the impact of the flooding.

Hunting has rightly been defended on animal welfare grounds.  Most people of sound mind understand that hunting an animal is more natural and humane than trapping, poisoning or shooting.  Most realise that fox numbers have to be controlled.  The real misunderstanding seems to be that urban people assume that people enjoy hunting because they enjoy killing.  This is a complete misunderstanding and comes from ignorance, so perhaps it is time to talk about what is so enjoyable about hunting.

If hunting is only justified on the very valid argument of pest control the debate is narrowed to a question of whether foxhunting is cruel or not.  While that argument can be clearly won, the urban mind still does not comprehend what is enjoyable.  So they then ask: Why don’t you just treat it like pest control?

The answer to that is surely that hunting has grown organically throughout the centuries as part of rural English culture.  It is therefore multi-faceted.  Nobody sat down one day and planned hunting as the means to control foxes.  Rather, it has arisen naturally through tradition.  So the enjoyable things about hunting (which previously did a vital job in wildlife management) are the community, the tradition and pageantry, the thrill of riding across country and jumping fences and most importantly of all working with animals – horses and hounds.  Anyone who truly loves animals cannot fail but be absorbed by hounds working.

We know hunting did a vital job before the ban, but just because it did that vital job, does not mean that it should not be enjoyable or rich in community and traditions.  So rather than the hunting rules and rituals being unnecessary, they are precisely what make hunting so rewarding.  This is perhaps why hunting is surviving all that the Government throws at it. 

However, the question must be asked:  What about the fox?  For as long as there are so many restrictions on how a fox can be legally hunted, other less humane methods have to be resorted to by others (trapping or shooting).  The landowner will need to be rid of the fox, whatever the intentions of Labour MPs when they voted for the ban.  So really anyone who cares about animal welfare should be pressing for the ancestral duty of hunting to be restored to it.  Hunts across the land are fighting hard to sustain a way of life handed down to us, but for as long as hunts can only go through the motions, the fox must be controlled in more brutal ways by others.

Our ancestors handed us a method of fox control that respected the law of nature – often the sick and the diseased despatched naturally through hunting, rather than more indiscriminate means of culling.  The fox was given a clean chance of either complete escape or instant demise, with minimal suffering.  Hunting has survived under the ban because it is multi-faceted and is sustained by the commitment of hunt staff and masters and the rich tradition and the closeness to animals and nature it offers supporters.  Nature would be better served however if hunting were given back its historic role of humanely controlling the fox.  

The Marketplace and High Toryism

How much of a conservative force is the market?  I have blogged on this for Conservative Home here: http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2013/11/matthew-groves-is-globalisation-the-new-socialism.html

There is more to say on this though, because the market is undoubtedly an organic institution that has arisen naturally.  Its virtue is that it has not been centrally planned according to abstract theory.  It is rather the cumulative effect of individuals trading together, leading to a consequential price from demand and supply that regulates scarcity very efficiently. 

The market then must be defended and recognised as a part of the tried and tested human interactions that have created society.  It achieves what no central planner can in that it overcomes the partial and limited viewpoint of individuals.  Just as much as bureaucrats with fallible and limited knowledge cannot plan for a whole economy without disastrous results, so the market unconsciously regulates scarcity through prices set by no planner but through a natural process of reaching equilibrium.

Friedrich Hayek, that most liberal of philosophers, made the very Burkean point that in our historical origins civilization occurred when society began to rely on accumulated wisdom and knowledge that no individual comprehends or possesses.  So it is, he rightly argues, with the market.  The consequent result of lots of individuals transacting with each other is an unintentional regulation of scarcity.  This is why markets work and why, although Socialist governments in this country nationalised many industries, they would never have risked nationalising the provision of food.

The market is a valid and valuable institution that came about through historic evolution rather than the illegitimate process of political revolution.  The problem with politics today is not so much that it is pro or anti-market as that it regards the market as explaining everything about human interactions.

Rather like the more extreme enlightenment philosophers, particularly French empiricists, who regarded science as explaining everything about our race, this is a myopic outlook.  It ignores so many other important aspects of being human – religious faith, family love, romantic love, patriotism, appreciation of art and beauty, love of our countryside.  It is acceptance of that false Whig cliché that “every man has his price” first coined by our first prime minister, the corrupt Sir Robert Walpole. 

The market is an inadequate explanation for all aspects of human life.  To paraphrase G K Chesterton once you introduce to conversation with a Tory the Armed Forces and what motivates them, the Tory no longer talks of self interest and profit, but patriotism. 

That is exactly the point.  Surely conservatism is a rejection of the idea that human life can be explained in its entirety from one scientific or even one economic perspective.  It is my concern that the modern Conservative Party is in danger of acting as though the market explains all behaviour and is the most efficient way to get the best out of people in other aspects of life apart from trade and industry.  That is an ideological rather than a Tory perspective in the view of this blogger.  

In effect it is no different in its approach from the social Darwinist, the Socialist or any other ideologue who attempts to reduce the complicated nature of humanity to a materialist or pseudo-scientific theory. 

It is the argument here that just as patriotism drives the soldier, sailor or airman, so a notion of public service rather than self interest can drive the civil servant and indeed the politician.  The vicar is moved to his vocation by his faith not profit. Royalty serve us through the values of tradition and duty.  We must recognise that the market has its place, but to try and treat profit as the only motivator for human action will have a corrosive effect on society and if we succeed in reducing our world to one where it is the only motivation, we will be living in a degraded and cynical place. 

Is a Privatised Royal Mail an Oxymoron?

In the debate about the recent sell-off of the Royal Mail, there has been far more attention on the price of shares than the fact that the ownership of the “Royal” concept is in private hands.  The greatest privatising prime minister of them all, Margaret Thatcher, held back from privatising Royal Mail precisely because she recognised the sensitivities over selling off not simply a nationalised company, but an institution linked to the monarchy.

Conservatism is not just about economics.  Perhaps the way to differentiate between conservatives and the Left is that conservatives take into account more than the dismal science – as Thomas Carlyle described economics.  For a conservative, concepts of patriotism, tradition, religion and the family are what make society function too.  We are not simply defined by our economic class and our economic needs.

It was an ideology (Socialism) that defined people simply by their economic interest and ignored custom and tradition that led to the dire national crisis of the winter of discontent in 1979.  When people began to regard themselves as fighting an economic war against the ruling class, rather than being part of a nation with shared customs and traditions, conflict and instability were the outcome – as demonstrated by militant trade unionism.  If the modern Conservative Party only relies on economic arguments and forgets those values that are fundamental to conservatism then it has already given up the fight to economic rationalists and socialists.

A conservative should be able to say with conviction that the Queen’s head being on the stamp, the Royal epithet to our postal service, even the red pillar-boxes have a meaning that is not necessarily economically quantifiable. 

Conservatism recognises that emotions are often more important than the bottom line.  Monarchy, the established church, the House of Lords are there not because they are economically efficient (although the suggestion they are costly is a misconception put across by left wingers with an agenda); rather, by preserving and protecting these institutions we recognise that the commonwealth is more than an economic polity and is held together by qualitative rather than quantifiable values only.

If the debate about privatisation of Royal Mail only focuses on the cost of the shares and not on the importance of Royal symbolism then sadly it is the Whigs and not the Tories who have won the great debate about the spirit and soul of our nation.

The Royal Prerogative is Dead! Long Live Parliament?

 After yesterday’s Parliamentary vote for the first time for many years the United Kingdom will be opting out of joint military action with the United States.  There are two separate issues here – whether we should launch air strikes, covered in the previous blog and secondly, who should be responsible for the decision.  Many worry about the consequences for the Special Relationship and whether Assad’s regime has been bolstered.  It is largely because, following historic precedent, the Government took the lead on foreign affairs rather than Parliament, leading to an impression of support for the United States from Britain.  For reasons of the need for flexibility in changing circumstances, our Government makes use of the Royal Prerogative in foreign affairs.  Things are not as simple as they were though; constitutionally we are in a new area.  In 2003 Mr Blair set a new precedent by bringing an executive decision to go to war to the legislature.  Endorsement by the Commons provided a fig leaf for war on trumped-up claims. Ironically, the new convention of consulting Parliament was established by a Prime Minister who spent most of his tenure in Number 10 arrogantly ignoring longstanding conventions.  Now this new convention has meant that the legislature has frustrated the executive on an executive decision over Syria.

Last night an interesting exchange took place between two Conservative MPs.  Douglas Carswell MP, who may be said to represent the Whiggish tendency in the modern Conservative Party, was agonising as to what he thought the consequences of military intervention might be.  He was interrupted by an intervention from his parliamentary colleague, Benard Jenkin MP, who made the Tory point that the uncertain deliberations in the Commons were evidence of why deciding whether to execute a war should be a decision for the executive.

The blogger has many doubts as to whether intervention is wise.  The British public is extremely sceptical.  Parliament opposed the timetable for action before the weapons inspectors had reported back.  The Prime Minister reacted by taking military intervention off the agenda entirely.  As stated elsewhere on this site, much of the doubt about action was because of the way Tony Blair had taken the country to war in 2003.  It is indeed possible many MPs voted the way they did to put right the mistake they made in 2003 – they took the opportunity to vote against action in 2013, because they wished they had voted no in 2003. 

Be that as it may, there is surely a strong argument that the executive must make the decision on military action.  It is not the same thing as accepting military action was right, to say that exercise of the Royal Prerogative is a better way to decide whether to go to war.  The Government made an executive decision to send more planes to Cyprus, without consulting Parliament – so it still regards the Royal Prerogative as a live concept.

It is difficult for MPs to make an informed decision without full access to intelligence and without being part of an ongoing discussion with our international allies.   It is the Government that has a relationship with foreign governments, not Parliament.  To an extent, as per Mr Carswell’s concerned vacillating in the debate, MPs were deciding in the dark, without all the facts before them.  Consequences that MPs have not foreseen are now coming into play.  The United States will go ahead without us.  The Special Relationship is weakened.  The Prime Minister has been politically damaged.  Assad and his regime feels bolstered, at least for now.  Britain will no longer be at the table to discuss what the international community should do.

Of course the executive will make mistakes and its plans on Syria might have been such an example, but the Royal Prerogative is exercised by a prime minister who is a member of the legislature and heads a government that cannot survive without the support of the Commons - That in itself must be an important factor weighing on any government’s decision processes.   It means the executive remains accountable even if Parliament does not have a vote on the decision.

The vote in the Commons did not stop Tony Blair, due to the tribal party loyalty of the Commons (which has its place in passing legislation, when a government must deliver a programme) coming into play.  Combined with this, the internal politics of the Conservative Party meant it supported Blair.  All this gave the decision a greater air of legitimacy, despite many now regarding Iraq as one of our greatest foreign policy errors.

In the same way party politics cam into play yesterday, whereby a pressurised Labour Leader was desperately looking for an immediate victory.  A Parliamentary Conservative Party that feels neglected by its leader produced thirty rebels.  Does parliamentary politics really give greater legitimacy to executive decisions?

It seems rather that for good or ill the Royal Prerogative as exercised by elected politicians must be the mechanism for decisions of peace and war.  Blair had to face the voters in 2005 and they could have turned him out of office. David Cameron would have had to face the voters if he had made a mistake on Syria.  Instead we now see a situation where Britain has potentially damaged its relationship with its closest ally having initially been a driving force for air strikes, at a time when the Oval Office’s current occupant has little emotional connection with Europe and sees America’s future in the Asia-Pacific.   Meanwhile, Assad has recently launched another brutal attack and Britain may have inadvertently put itself on the sidelines of international affairs. 

I am not arguing that we should have attacked Syria, but that the Prime Minister was best placed to be responsible for that decision.  The fact that it is now not clear who is responsible for the decision means that the Prime Minister built up expectations with our allies only now to disappoint them, with all the consequences for our interests and credibility abroad that will bring

The armed forces serve the Queen, not Parliament.  That is not just because historically when Parliament had an army in the 1600s it committed abuses, it is also because in terms of exigent national emergencies, quick decisions, flexibility and access to intelligence the executive is best placed to decide.  Our constitution evolved that way because that worked best.  This involvement of Parliament in decisions of war and peace is yet another constitutional innovation from the Blair years that is proving to have unforeseen consequences.    

Pugin versus Portcullis

In so many ways the cold, metal and glass structure of Portcullis House, where MPs now have their offices is an affront to all that Augustus Pugin stood for.  The author of “Contrasts”, where he argued for a return to the Gothic in architecture, was the man who designed the inside of Sir Charles Barry’s new Houses of Parliament, after the ancient building was destroyed by fire.  He saw in his work the opportunity to reassert mediaevalism and the sublime beauty of the Gothic.

As one walks around the Victorian interior of the cockpit of our democracy, one can gain an impression of the complicated and reserved character of Pugin, the Roman Catholic draughtsman of French descent (whose family had escaped the brutal Jacobin revolution).  There is such intricacy to the design and so many historical references.  Everything is full of meaning and emphasises tradition and history.  For a nation with no written constitution, where precedent and convention shape our government, this emphasis is so important. 

Walter Bagehot spoke of the dignified and efficient parts of the English constitution, where the efficient was the democratic workings of real government and the dignified part that which gave our government its aura of ancient legitimacy.  Thus the Monarchy is the apogee of the dignified side of the constitution, with all its ritual and ceremony, while the real political power is exercised by the democratically-elected politicians who are the efficient part of the constitution.  Bagehot termed the phrase “veiled republic” for our system of government.   Pugin, through his work, ensured that veil was indeed intricate and beautiful.  It surely not only gives a greater sense of history to our democratic proceedings, but also sends a message to politicians that they are the transient part of a longstanding institution.  By making the Palace itself intricate and awe-inspiring, the politicians are forever reminded of their own smallness in history.  No wonder so many career politicians prefer being able to swagger through the emptiness of Portcullis House, our generation’s answer to Pugin’s skill and vision!

Perhaps the key point about Augustus Pugin’s and Sir Charles Barry’s combined effort is that they turned to the Gothic rather than the Classical style.  Whereas the Gothic with its vaulting arches looks to the Divine and the Ancient of Days, the Classical it seems to me puts man himself at the centre.  In a classical setting politicians would be tempted to see themselves as modern-day Ciceros, rather than heirs to the Christian Anglo-Saxons and Mediaeval Catholic Kings.  So there is something that informs the atmosphere of our Parliamentary building that requires the residents to look up to God and back to history, rather than to look to themselves as the centre of it all.  Surely for a Christian society it is more inspiring to have a feel of the church about our legislature rather than to look to the Romans and Greeks, whose peccable gods showed all the foibles of corrupt human nature?

There is so much of the detail in Pugin’s work that can be missed. Some little detail may suddenly be spotted, such a small-stained glass window or the coat hooks and ink wells in the House of Lords.  It is rather like a metaphor for old precedents or ancient rights that MPs stumble across as they endlessly churn out new laws.

Portcullis House on the other hand seems not to look to any era at all.  It is the structure of a hubristic, secular age, with man at the centre.  We no longer even claim that the gods are simply like us.  In Portcullis House the politicians are at the centre, tradition and ritual is cast aside and hubristically politicians can strut the stage, asserting that all that went before no longer matters; this is their day and they are not bound by what went before.  Tony Blair was the nadir of this sort of politician – a man who did not understand history and therefore treated so much of our constitution with contempt.

Of course, not all politicians are of this ilk.  The decent type that springs to mind are those MPs, including a majority of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, who voted against Nick Clegg’s vandalising plans for the House of Lords.  Some politicians do live up to the architecture all around them!

Portcullis House is suited to the modern, career-politician, who is removed from tradition.  For this is a political class where the Speaker dispenses with the trappings of office thus diminishing the office and aggrandising himself.  This is a political class that follows the shibboleth of “modernisation” because by throwing out the old means that what you are doing is far more important.

A salutary parable against this modernisation could perhaps be the cause of the fire that led to Sir Charles Barry’s and Augustus Pugin’s commission.  The tidying up exercise of the tallies from a different era led to the conflagration that destroyed everything bar Westminster Hall.  The lesson being that throwing away what no longer seems necessary can lead to unforeseen and disastrous consequences!

Pugin was worried about the paganism of the classical.  I am sure he would be even more concerned about the atheism of modern architecture.  Whereas the Gothic teaches us to look to the heavens, today’s architecture tells us we are at the pinnacle of nature and not bound by the old or the religious.  The contrast between the Palace of Westminster and Portcullis House speaks loudly of the difference between Pugin’s ideals and today’s political class.

Marriage and Motherhood - Chief Rabbi Sachs has criticised David Cameron's government

The outgoing Chief Rabbi has criticised David Cameron for not supporting marriage.  Marriage is indeed under pressure; as the Centre for Social Justice has demonstrated that for those who are in financial difficulties, the tax advantages of cohabiting discourage the commitment to marriage.

If a government were to support marriage it would need to have a clear idea of what marriage actually means.  To the secularist liberal it is reduced to a mere contract between two consenting adults to remain faithful to one another.  To the Church of England it is about the three virtues of mutuality, fidelity and complementarity.  The third of these is particularly relevant to understanding marriage when one also looks at the etymological origins of the word “marriage”.

It is always helpful to go back to the actual meaning of the word as a means of seeing clearly through the obfuscation of politicians.  Marriage as many will be aware comes from the Latin maritare and matrimony from the Latin matrimonium, which are linked with the Latin word marita for married lady.  All these words can be linked etymologically with mater, which of course means “mother”. Therefore marriage in its meaning is intrinsically linked with the idea of motherhood.

It is not a major leap from this to argue that to support marriage governments should be supporting motherhood.  That is why Chief Rabbi Lord Sachs is right to express his concern that the Government seems to have prioritised women in the workplace over the stay-at-home mother.  To be in favour of the stay-at-home mother does not mean that women should not be allowed in the workplace, just as being in favour of marriage does not mean other forms of commitment are invalid. 

The Conservative Party itself has made the argument that to be in favour of marriage is not to condemn other forms of relationship.  Marriage, as the empirical evidence and our Christian heritage demonstrate, is simply the optimal form of relationship for family life.  In the same way being brought up by a stay-at-home mother is the optimal way to be brought up, but that does not mean that other ways of being brought up are bad.

So if the Government can support marriage by supporting motherhood, how is it doing?  There has been a repeated pledge to amend the tax system to support those who make the commitment of marriage, yet this policy has still not been implemented.  Meanwhile the Government has attempted to change the very definition of marriage from its intrinsic link with motherhood by asserting that marriage now encompasses same-sex union.

The latest controversy has been the exclusion of stay-at-home mothers from tax-free child-care costs.  So once again, whatever the rhetoric, the government simply does not seem to believe that supporting marriage is about supporting motherhood.  By all means give the support to mothers who have to work; but, surely the stay-at-home mother, who has made such a socially positive commitment, should be included in this tax-free scheme? 

When it is not necessary to change it is necessary not to change (originally published on Conservative Home on 31st January 2013)

Conservatism is more of an attitude than a political dogma.  While there are many in the modern Conservative Party who adhere to political creeds such as libertarianism or liberal conservatism, surely a desire to conserve and a scepticism about sudden change is more about values and attachment to the tried-and-tested than ideology or political theory.  And that is a good thing.  I still believe that while the majority of the British public are not necessarily overly enamoured with the concept of the invisible hand of the market or shrinking the state, they do possess an innate conservatism.  It is that commonsense sceptism about political theories that kept the ancient institutions of state, the monarchy, the established church and the House of Lords intact in the turbulence of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries and saw the Conservative Party flourish in the era of universal suffrage in the last Century.  Lose touch with that conservative attitude and the Party loses the foundations of its support.

That is why it is deeply worrying that the Conservative Party seems to have developed an enthusiasm to be seen to be doing and changing.  My suspicion is that most people would prefer it if politicians did less not more.  The trouble with politics is that it can attract the sort of person who wants to make their name and usually a name is gained by changing something, whether or not the change is good – Edward Heath taking Britain into the Commonmarket or Nick Clegg’s abortive attempt to destroy the House of Lords spring to mind.  The Conservative Party should be the natural foil to this – it represents the attitude so pithily summed up by the second Viscount Falkland:  “When it is not necessary to change it is necessary not to change.”

It seems that many of the areas of policy where the Conservative Party has been perceived as vulnerable in recent times are where they have been more radical.  It is people’s natural conservatism that leads them to resent the growth of the supermarket at the expense of the local high street and it is again conservatism that leads people to resist development in their backyard; indeed the whole urge to protect the environment is a sort of conservatism – the conservation movement.

I believe Mr Cameron got it right when he realised that much of the alleged toxification of the Conservative brand could be cured while remaining true to Conservative values.  It is right that we are now a party of conservation and a party of localism.  Localism, despite its being given a name like a dogma is fundamentally conservative - as Edmund Burke pointed out patriotism springs from people’s membership of the little platoons rather than loyalty to a large, overweening state.  The Big Society is truly conservative – it is about voluntary organisations holding society together rather than that same overweening state the Socialists look to.

Unfortunately, the Coalition I believe obscures the clarity of who the Conservatives are.  What could be more un-conservative than attempting to unravel the constitution by abolishing the House of Lords or attacking marriage by changing its definition to include same-sex partnerships?  It is very worrying to many voters with a conservative outlook to see the Party that should represent them allowing the Liberal Democrats to run away with policies that attack institutions far more important to a conservative outlook than deregulation of the market.

What is also disconcerting is when MPs seem to rush headlong enthusiastically into reform.  Those reforms may well be justified, but if conservatism is more of an attitude of scepticism than political dogma, much as elected police commissioners may fit in with Localism, should we not have approached the policy with more of a sceptical try-it-and- see, piecemeal approach?  Instead there seems to be something almost zealous about the Party’s approach to change.

A case in point is the reform of the laws of succession, being rushed through Parliament in one day.  To a Liberal Democrat such as Nick Clegg the longstanding nature of primogeniture is a reason to overthrow it.  Surely to conservatives the approach is one of not rushing, but thinking through the implications.  Of course, it probably will be better for the survival of the monarchy if primogeniture is abolished, but there will be unforeseen implications and that is exactly why the conservative response should be to carry out this reform in a slower and more considered way.

One is reminded of the Church of England being disconcerted by the enthusiasm of Methodism.  The Anglican Church reacted in a conservative way; it exhibited an attitude of scepticism about the enthusiastic hymn-singing and evangelism.  Now in the long run it was probably a good idea for the congregation to sing hymns, but the conservative attitude is to take these things step-by-step and not to rush people who might be uncomfortable about change.  So please let’s have a little less enthusiasm and a bit more English reserve!

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2013/01/matthew-groves.html