British Conservatism Is Doomed

“To put it simply, if one cannot accumulate capital, he will not support capitalism; and if one has no solid basis for conserving one’s family and community, which property provides, then he will not become a conservative.”

We, in Britain, are currently going through another Conservative Party leadership contest, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson was ejected for behaving as he did before he was in office after he assumed said office. The campaign has seen the highest proportion of women and ethnic minority candidates in British political history, with the most popular candidate with the party membership being the British-Nigerian woman Kemi Badenoch. For me, Badenoch offered the one slim chance to save the country, as well as the prospect of a functional and effective Conservative Party. But because she was an actual conservative, she had to go and so failed before the final three candidates were selected. Now, we are down to the last two: former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. Neither represents the kind of Conservative politics equal to the dire moment in which Britain finds itself, and the contest now embodies how and why British small-c and big-C conservatism are both doomed.

Where Are We?

Considering where Britain currently is means surveying a blasted landscape akin to a Paul Nash painting of a World War I battlefield. As I wrote recently:

“Inflation is at 9%, the highest for forty years. Energy prices are already a disaster, and are set to become truly catastrophic in the autumn and next winter. Productivity, bumping along for decades like a sea slug on the ocean floor, is falling into the Mariana Trench. Our levels of private debt are rocketing into the stratosphere. Our public debt is in orbit after the COVID-19 spend binge. Poverty rates are climbing and set to go even higher. The consequences in learning loss from COVID-19 school closures for hundreds of thousands of children [amount to] an absolute disaster. A million immigrants settled here last year. Five million people have simply dropped out of the workforce and now subsist on benefits. Thousands of children have been abused, trafficked, raped, and even killed by grooming gangs. We lag behind other European nations for going back into the office. Quality of service from companies in the private sector and public services in the state sector have thudded face-first into the earth as a result. Our sainted health service is performing the worst it ever has and is a black-hole of funding. The organs of the state have ceased to function: Passport and driving licences are apparently a luxury rather than a necessity, while the main goal seems to be implementing ever more diversity and gender quotas. Our state capacity is, therefore, that of a poor south European country without the compensation of a pleasant climate.”