Xander West is an independent writer and author of the Grumbling Times substack.
In August 1867, the magazine Fun, a lesser-known competitor to Punch, published a cartoon of Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, and Benjamin Disraeli presenting the heads of their Liberal Party opponents on a platter to Queen Victoria. It was published shortly after they had ‘dished’, or outwitted, the majority party by passing the Second Reform Act with more radical reforms than any Liberal had seriously contemplated.
This was a revealing capstone to a momentous yet thoroughly confounding parliamentary affair. For Disraeli in particular, as Chancellor of a fortuitously created minority government, to take control of the constitutional legislative agenda defies conventional logic about how to wield power over the Commons – namely, a solid majority. Although the recently defeated government was adept at challenging logic for all the wrong reasons, there is something to be learnt from Disraeli’s tactics for the currently recovering Conservative Party to use its diminutive position to some advantage.
Whilst certain details regarding the Second Reform Act are superfluous to the subject at hand, the American historian Gertrude Himmelfarb’s meticulous 1966 paper entitled “The Politics of Democracy” is recommended for readers interested in a fuller dissection of events and motivations.
The Liberal government of Lord John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, initiated this episode by proposing a Reform Bill in 1866 which argued for a modest increase in the franchise to skilled workers, often deemed ‘artisans’. By all accounts, this reform or something approximating it would have been widely accepted, satisfying a range of opinions from so-called “advanced liberals” like Walter Bagehot and John Stuart Mill to the arch-reactionary Thomas Carlyle.
The Conservatives also had no reason to oppose the bill in isolation, save for its possibility to entrench a long-term pro-Liberal electorate, an arithmetic they had struggled against since the Peelites defected twenty years prior. Disraeli used this reason alone to position the party against reform, then took advantage of the Adullamites, a dissident Liberal faction coined disparagingly by the Radical Liberal John Bright, to narrowly defeat the government.
These Adullamites were not an illiberal or reactionary group as some historians have claimed, since they opposed reform on the same principles as their colleagues supported the bill. Robert Lowe, their ringleader, believed the Liberal bill would force a series of franchise expansions that would ultimately introduce an electorate beyond the party’s control.
The Benthamite utilitarian philosophy of most Liberals at the time, forcing them to account for the precise effect of each decision on the precarious balance of relentlessly self-interested individuals they saw as society, did little to assuage their anxieties. Its proponents, led by William Gladstone, the Commons Liberal leader and later Prime Minister, thought they could fix and settle the constitutional question there, but Disraeli thwarted this hope.
Russell’s government resigned after the defeat and Derby took charge. Disraeli, as previously mentioned, became Chancellor whilst presiding over the minority government in the Commons. By March 1867, Disraeli had introduced a Reform Bill of his own, and with it, the supposed anti-reformer became quite the opposite.
Unlike the wealth or property rental value qualifications Liberals had mostly proposed until that point, Disraeli blindsided even the Radical Members of Parliament by supporting household suffrage, the enfranchisement of male ratepaying heads of household. Shortly thereafter, virtually all the “fancy franchises,” plural voting designed to keep some balance of voting power between the classes, were jettisoned.
Similarly, the ratepaying requirement was ditched through a Liberal amendment allowing tenant household heads the vote that Disraeli accepted without objection, a move which doubled the already one million due to be enfranchised. Disraeli called all the Liberals’ bluffs, since his desire to ‘dish’ them on electoral reform was far more genuine than Gladstone had realised before reform-minded MPs were effectively forced into voting it through.
Himmelfarb’s most plausible explanation for such an unprecedented turn of events was that Disraeli, already a proven opportunist from the 1866 Reform Bill, saw a chance to bring about the Tory Democracy envisioned in Coningsby and Sybil in one fell swoop, the hitherto chimerical alliance between the landed aristocracy and working class. He believed the latter were naturally deferential and conservative in temperament and thus would vote for what he saw as the national party that would champion that social order.
This foundational theory of one-nation conservatism has been only intermittently proven at elections since; indeed, the Liberals increased their majority and returned to government under Gladstone in the first election held under the Second Reform Act. Nevertheless, Disraeli’s outflanking of his numerically superior opposition undoubtedly produced a new paradigm in British politics and stands as a landmark event in Britain’s political development.
Today, whether the present government can be outwitted, by attempting to further any of their more desirable policies in legislation, is contingent on the practical solidity of their landslide majority and their willingness to abide by manifesto promises.
Exploiting weaknesses in the former and relying on the latter are both currently doubtful. For the sake of clarity, directly imitating Disraeli’s actions, through an attempt to outbid Labour on completing their wreck of the constitution, would be extremely unwise for anyone seeking to rebuild a Conservative Party worthy of its name.
However, if we assume the government will not abrogate much more in the future, areas including planning and NHS reform are sufficiently aligned to offer some opportunities. There would be several benefits to this approach over a more unthinking opposition, one which will be inevitably incapable of voting government bills down.
A capable future leadership must reassert the Conservatives’ natural competence or at least an intention towards competence. Similarly, Labour made relatively successful overtures on the economy from around 2022 until the election, involving abstentions on certain votes and plenty of talk in the media, which ostensibly supported the broad strokes of Conservative taxation policies.
One main party’s dislike of the other is presumed by everyone, thus constructive action to the limited extent possible in opposition provides some hard evidence to the electorate of what a future government would try to achieve. Moreover, a more discerning opposition can demonstrate a renewed interest and commitment to principles, especially those exclusive to the often-neglected conservative philosophy.
Principled support of something, when it could be simply ignored for having originated from another party, will be at least as meaningful as principled opposition. Disraeli’s actions are proof of this, as well as those of Robert Peel in founding the party in 1834. Despite what some may think, actual conservative beliefs are quite remote from the contemporary platitudes collectively referred to as ‘Conservative values’ and are more effective as a governing ideology.
This exercise in historical comparison might appear quaint to a few readers, even if the subject is one of the greatest Conservative statesmen. However, what is conservatism if not respect for the past and its repository of wisdom?
In 2024, part of the existential task the Conservatives face in opposition is relearning who they are and what they believe at a fundamental level. This will not happen with an intellectual memory that knows little before 1980, or a keen instinct to conserve institutions so long as they were created after 1997.
Only once Conservatives show themselves to have overcome this malaise in opposition can they harbour any hope of re-entering government or ending the threat of a motivated but ultimately vacuous Reform. No more can Conservatives spend terms in government alternating between aimless wandering and running into brick walls from lack of conviction outside the Blairite milieu, or host ministers who bizarrely act as passengers to their own failures for the sake of media airtime.
The next party leadership must assume the Conservatives will cease to be a viable political force if they do not rectify the avoidable mistakes of their predecessors. To reconstitute the party with a restored confidence in the philosophy which shares its name might seem “a leap in the dark,” to quote a Punch cartoon shortly before the Second Reform Act was granted assent, but in that course, it will be sure to find a successful landing.
