In the summer of 1990, I attended what was supposed to be a debate, at a Waterstones bookshop in London, between two eminent philosophers. The subject was conservatism – was it good or evil? Both academics had just published books on conservative themes. Roger Scruton had collected several of his essays, which were (unsurprisingly) ‘pro’, and Ted Honderich had written a book that was decidedly ‘anti’. Unfortunately, the ‘debate’ quite quickly degenerated into a slanging match, and the two men’s mutual loathing was palpable. This made for a kind of entertainment, but it was also a shame, for it did not allow for proper discussion of one of Honderich’s main charges against conservatism: that its adherents had never defined it properly, or provided a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for being a conservative.

But Richard North’s book shows why it is so hard to define conservatism in a clear, no-nonsense way. He describes the many different threads in conservatism, both historically and at present. Reading it, I had some understanding of Honderich’s frustration, though not complete sympathy. Exactly what makes so many different threads ‘conservative’? No doubt it is a mistake to look for an exact definition. But with, eg., Tory libertarians so apparently at odds with ‘moralising’ authoritarians and paternalists, and with ‘nasty, dry’ Tories so different to ‘nice, wet’ Tories (to use the author’s terminology) and moreover with the ‘nice’ ones subdivided into the ‘Grade A’ genuinely nice, and the ‘Grade B’ instrumentally nice, what is the unifying theme? And then there are the ‘managerial’ types versus the ‘ideologues’, like Powell, Thatcher and perhaps Joseph, whose real interests were not in management, for all their intellectual toughness.

North is a former broadsheet journalist, particularly on the Independent, who found himself out of step with the liberal press’s knee-jerk anti-Thatcherism in the 1980s. He is a self-proclaimed Tory. But since his book is not a manifesto, he is able to be both vacillating, and sometimes entertainingly blunt about what Toryism really amounts to. The uniting thread, he says at one point, is a belief in inequality and a hatred of socialism. He also remarks that the British are not brutal or mean, but believe in character and standing on one’s own two feet; this too is Toryism in a nutshell.

He quite happily admits that class interest is what once motivated Toryism, citing the clever, ultra-dry Lord Salisbury (who became Prime Minister in 1897) as an example. He suggests that Salisbury was ‘in denial’ about this; he should have admitted that he and his class were rich, wanted to stay that way, and that even if the ‘lower orders’ benefited from his policies more than they would have under any other system, this was incidental rather than their real raison d’etre. North is also amusing about Margaret Thatcher: ‘She was of course the most ghastly woman. She was shrill, bossy and somehow fanatical…..I very much doubt that I voted for her. But like millions of others, I knew she was just what we all needed, her party and her country equally’ (p167). But these two ‘dry’ Tories were people of their time, and Toryism is nothing if not adaptable. So aristocratic interest was replaced by middle-class interest, and then came to include the interests of the aspirant ‘lower-middle’ and working classes. Think of the Basildon result in the 1979 election.

What of the present time? According to North, the Left still has its howl of outrage but offers no real solutions. But the Tories are not much good at the moment. Historically they have been very flexible and accommodating. Now that they have won the Big Ideas battle, (at least in that hardly anyone wants the bad old days back – the days of donkey jackets, side-whiskers, flying pickets and 30% inflation) they must make Thatcherism work. One problem, one could argue, is that New Labour did that job for them. (There is an anecdote that Lady Thatcher was asked what her greatest legacy was, and she replied ‘New Labour’). But the present day Tories must not make Thatcherism work by aping Tony Blair.

This is one of North’s concerns about David Cameron. Blair initially had few policies but wanted to be the centre of attention, and found a Mission in the wars he took us in to after 9/11. Although Cameron isn’t going for Messiah politics, he deploys ‘an alarming number of other Blair strategies’ (p18). Just where is the bite? Cameron is trying to rebrand Toryism by finding the message Blair would if he were starting out now. I would surmise that North would classify Cameron as a Grade B Nice Tory - one whose niceness, with all its baby-kissing and hoody-hugging charm is calculated to give a misleading impression of relaxed, modern coolness. For North, this is worrying. The Tories should ‘Dare to be Dull’. Writing before the election of course, he suggests that if the Tory Party is elected, it will be because it promises competence rather than image. It needs to find a balance between its nice and nasty wings, and should be careful not to over-do niceness – that is not what it is for. We need to get rid of the myth that marketing, friendliness, interactivity and informality make politics a better activity. New Labour teaches us this.

I said this book is not intended as a manifesto. In fact it is a bit of a patchwork quilt of apercus, written by a slightly maverick, self-proclaimed autodidact with a history of antipathy to many aspects of Toryism and an ability to be frank about the faults of all its wings. I cannot quite work out whether the author sides more with the dry nasty lot, or the wet nice lot – and in his last, rather autobiographical chapter, he seems to admit uncertainty. The book is rich in history and insight, though without much abstract argument. It also gives the impression of being written and produced in a bit of a hurry (this may explain the lack of an index). But it is highly engaging, sometimes funny and always informative.

1) Roger Scruton, The Philosopher on Dover Beach (Manchester: Carcanet Press 1990).
2) Ted Honderich, Conservatism (London: Hamish Hamilton 1990).