Becky Walsh is a director of Quadrangle Consulting Ltd and Chairman of Hereford and South Herefordshire Conservatives.
“PSEUDO-TORYISM” was a term invented by Disraeli to describe the version of conservatism that, to his dismay, he found prevailing at Westminster in the 1840s when he was a young backbench MP.
Real Toryism, Disraeli was convinced, still existed.
It was to be found all over England, up and down the country, among rich and poor, among Catholic, Jew and Protestant, among Tory squires and labourers in the factories and the fields. It was in fact to be found everywhere except at Westminster.
“The great party has ceased to exist; but I will believe it still lives in the thought and sentiment and consecrated memory of the English nation. … Even now [Toryism] is not dead, but sleepeth; and in an age of political materialism, of confused purposes and perplexed intelligence, that aspires only to wealth because it has faith in no other accomplishment (as men rifle cargoes on the verge of shipwreck), Toryism will yet rise to bring back strength to the Crown, liberty to the Subject, and to announce that power has only one duty – to secure the social welfare of the PEOPLE.”
In 1845, at the age of 40, Disraeli sat down to write a novel that he hoped would bring home to the parliamentary party what a gulf had opened up between itself and its own supporters.
The novel was called Sybil, or the Two Nations. (The two nations of the sub-title are those of the rich and the poor). The novel marks the inauguration of what came to be known as One Nation Conservatism. Never again would a complacent Tory hierarchy stop listening to its natural supporters; never again would the grassroots be left wondering what connected them to the centre at all.
At least that was the theory. Thus, One Nation Conservatism began as a revolt against a sham version of Toryism that prevailed at Westminster but nowhere else.
Of late – to the bewilderment of many – it appears that Disraeli’s One Nation Conservatism has mutated into the very thing Disraeli was concerned to dismantle – a complacent, incoherent, values-free party leadership, endlessly talking about ‘winning from the centre’ but in fact Conservative in name only.
We are a long way from Disraeli’s beautiful heroine Sybil’s conversion from radical Chartism to sensible Tory champion. No, any conversation about One Nation Conservatives these days seems to start with the phrase “it’s complicated”, followed swiftly by some convoluted explanation of why we should cower in the face of Woke warriors, and most importantly should find the next Blair-esque figure to lead us to the sunny uplands of kindness.
In contrast, Disraeli spent his time as the founder of One Nationism enumerating the achievements that Tories could take pride in and the causes that they had defended against huge odds – his list includes the Tories resisting ruinous changes to taxation, the Tories denouncing the system that mortgaged industry to protect property, the Tories reconciling both churches in Ireland, maintaining at all times the territorial constitution on England as the basis of security for government, and preventing the Church from being salaried agent of the State. And despite these achievements, Disraeli reminds us again and again, that faced with a well-organised and cynical Whig opposition, his Tory party is failing to connect with the people.
Let’s return to 2024 and our current state. Like many of us over the last few weeks and months, I have been engaged in exchanges in person and on WhatsApp groups discussing the leadership race, the direction of political travel for our country, the concept of One Nation Conservatism, the nature of popular conservative ideas, what Right means, and so on. These exchanges in so many parts of the country have been frank and very illuminating. But most of all, they have made me realise how our concept of what One Nation Conservatism is ill-defined and wrapped up in personalities rather than policies.
Disraeli was a practical politician, as well as a romantic one, and his solutions were real solutions for real problems. His desire and aim was to reverse the degradation of the PEOPLE.
He argued that there was a need “To elevate the physical as well as the moral condition of the people, by establishing that labour required regulation as much as property; and all this rather by the use of ancient forms and the restoration of the past than by political revolutions founded on abstract ideas, appeared to be the course which the circumstances of this country required, and which, practically speaking, could only… be undertaken and accomplished by a reconstructed TORY PARTY”
Why did Disraeli not believe that the solution could lie with the Whigs? Well, he clearly did not believe that England ought to be governed for the exclusive benefit of five (Whig) families. He was not prepared to submit to being a remote beneficiary of such a system, as a well-bribed ‘Tory’ pension-holder. He regarded the tax regime invented by the Whig Junto and its friends in 1694 – ‘Dutch finance’ -as a Ponzi scheme, an exercise in embezzlement of our national wealth on a gigantic, eye-watering scale and it broke his heart that the Tory party had gradually caved into it, taking the view: “If you can’t beat them, join them.” Enter Sybil.
The famous creator of One Nation Conservatism, a movement now seen to be “centrist/leftist” in Conservative party terms, is, in my reading of Sybil anything but the 19th Century version of an Heir-to- Blair centrist. Disraeli’s hero, the aristocratic Egremont had passions, emotion, romanticism, love of country, interest in preserving ancient ways, traditions and culture. Egremont’s personal conversion comes by talking to people who were suffering, in the country he knew and loved, and by understanding the traditions and history of the country he knew. His Conservatism was a reforming but traditional and small c conservative model.
Disraeli believed in our great nation, he believed in Christianity, the Monarchy, property ownership, educated and powerful leaders, and perhaps most of all, moral confidence.
Up and down the country, knocking on thousands of doors, we all know why so many Conservatives/Tories didn’t vote for us. The leadership “The Party”, our government, The MPs over the last Parliament in particular, one way or another did not connect or represent the PEOPLE.
In government we did lots of Unconservative things that damaged us all, our communities, our health, our wealth, our children, our futures: lock downs, excessive furlough, hidden taxation, unnecessary regulation, excessive immigration pushed on us with the threat “You’re a racist!” if you dare to complain, years of weakness in the face of woke nonsense, Net Zero fantasies that were clearly going to damage those who least can afford to pay, Quangos pressuring policies, lefty educationalists writing secret sex-ed lessons that we parents are not allowed to see, the list goes on and on.
All this postering, and “Pseudo-Toryism” drove us directly into the hands of the politics of envy, Labour’s playbook, and all because we as a party were too concerned with looking ‘cool Britannia’, modern, progressive, bossy, and quite frankly, Unconservative. Surely Disraeli would have been appalled by it all!
His views would be seen now as extreme Right + Old Buffer Tory, (not even Old Whig), and certainly not One Nation Conservative.
Here’s a question: if we know why Disraeli was a Tory and not a Whig (Summary from above: Tories hate hypocrisy and have a heart) why are we so divided as a party?
Which one of us, having thought about why we are Conservatives does not feel it emotionally first, and intellectually second? Surely, at the heart of every Conservative is the desire to be authentic and know what it is to be British and to love the idea of that.
In my mind’s eye, I can see Disraeli, wandering in the early evening across St James’ Park, magically transported now to 2024, looking around him for familiar signs of the country he loved. Would he say to us, arriving at dinner a little late for a Party fundraiser, “I want my country back”? I think he might.
Away Pseudo Toryism!
Give us the Authentic version we all crave. Give us some politicians with heart, even just a few with convictions, who care for real people they know, don’t want to change things for change’s sake, and find great joy and happiness in Our Nation’s Story.
Perhaps then we can all be One Nation Conservatives.
