I wish people would stop writing off the next election – yes, the polls are bad now, but things change and there’s every chance of Labour pulling off a ’92. Less defeatism, comrade!

On to the content. Maybe I don’t have my ear to the ground, but I can’t sense *any* of mainstream politics being driven by big ideas. What intellectual influences there are, happen a little way off-stage – feminism, human rights, environmentalism.

Plus, as you hint, the clearest post-war case of thought influencing politics was Thatcher/Hayek. I don’t agree this was “straightforward”; the alliance between small business, old money, and social conservatism was politically something very new (and strange) indeed (look at how the Tories talked about Thatcher’s later policies before she won the leadership).

Back to the present, and the left seem as intellectually empty as the right. Of the 3 names you mention, Hutton is the only one still writing. He has his moments – although his China book was dire – but if this is the best hope of the left, we’re no better than the Tories.

I’d love to be proved wrong here – I’d love to hear about big ideas that are shaping the British left. But I guess that’s another post.

“Sadly, these are not my words, but rather a verbatim quote from John Stuart Mill. Such incisive invective would probably have made the Victorian philosopher a great blogger.”

Modern day Conservatives are more likely to agree with Mill than Labour.

Victorian Conservatives were economically protectionist, morally puritanical towards the poor and class-obsessed – basically socialists but without the pretense that they were speaking for the “workers”. They were indeed pretty stupid:)

As for Policy Exchange being funded by big business – lets just say tu quoque: http://www.ippr.org.uk/supportingippr/?id=2509

Nick – you beat me to it.

Of course Mill was comparing “stupid conservatives” not with the “left” but with liberals – people whose economic philosophy might today be called “neo-liberal”.

ie the kind of liberal who is not welcome to join the LC!!

Nick,

If I didn’t have to revise for my exams you wouldn’t get away with a post like that.

David,

I think most working-class people preferred the Labour Party in its ‘stupid’ era before it became an intellectualized middle-class party bent on multiculturalism and radical social liberalism. And remember, just because people are capable of mesmerizing sophistry, it doesn’t mean they’re not stupid. The New Left intellectuals still cling to their smelly little orthodoxies, still refusing to accept the most blatant truths about their own and other societies.

If you want a moderately coherent sense of Cameron’s philosophy – if such a thing exists – you could do worse than to read Kieron O’Hara’s “After Blair: David Cameron and the Conservative Tradition”.

Writing off the Conservatives as stupid is an outdated estimation, in my view. Better to understand them as selfish, or alternatively just short-sighted. Libertarianism is very much, it seems to me, a justification for a pre-existing impulse to shrink the size of the state that resides in most Conservatives’ subconsciouses; not that that means it doesn’t have important things to say, though.

The Conservatives seem to be broadly occupying the political ground, at least economically, that Gladstonian Liberals did towards the end of the 19th century, albeit their arguments are more sophisticated and their social and geo-political views less liberal. Nevertheless, the political spectrum has been dragged leftwards consistently over the past century, and the last 20 years has seen a comparatively minor shift back to the right.

The era of the most radical shift in public opinion on social issues was, of course, the 60s. Mainly, in my view, because the left managed to define tolerance as cool and social conservatism as uncool. With the weight of conformity behind social liberalism, that is what has led to its dominance; it’s now uncool to be a social conservative, ironically enough.

The Conservative frontbench isn’t stupid, though. Definitely cynical and misguided in many ways, it’s still an intellectual force to be reckoned with IMO. Especially when compared to the Labour frontbench, which seems to have considerably fewer heavyweights.

Modern day Conservatives are more likely to agree with Mill than Labour.

Sadly, at least in public, this is true. I think some of the leftwing Tories are far-more palatable than anyone in the cabinet. But then some rightwing fruit-bat says something offensive at a Tory gathering, and I remember why I’d rather torch my hair than be a Tory.

@ 1 DAN

The election might not be a write-off, but really, do we want another four years of New Labour?

Though a term under the Tories will be bad, the New Labour government will not be able to wrest power back by remaining centre-right, and will have to move back towards the left.

A collapse of the New Labour project may also vitalise the Liberal Democrats, helping them supplant New Labour as the second party in British politics.

Personally, though I will never vote for them, the Tories represent a much better chance of rolling back on the anti-civil-liberties agenda put forward by New Labour, not as good a chance as the Liberal Democrats, but unfortunately, as much as we might hope, I doubt we’ll have a Lib-Dem government in the next 6 years.

“But then some rightwing fruit-bat says something offensive at a Tory gathering, and I remember why I’d rather torch my hair than be a Tory.”

I agree and, for the same reasons but from different perspective, I am also unlikely to vote Tory.

‘Libertarianism is very much, it seems to me, a justification for a pre-existing impulse to shrink the size of the state that resides in most Conservatives’ subconsciouses.’

I am not so sure about that. I have never voted Tory and became a libertarian through reading philosophical criticism of the more dominant strains of left liberalism (chiefly Rawls) that due to my class background, I was chiefly exposed to. I definitely came in from the left. By contrast, while there are devotees of Hayek within the Conservatives, I think their general outlook is quite illiberal. They dislike the state not because its too big, but because it broadcasts values that are not to their taste.

Boris Johnson is a decent example of this, I was happily surprised to see him featured in the film Taking Liberties (made in 2007 but recently available on 4oD) speaking in a very positive, libertarian style.

First thing he does when he gains power, bans people from drinking on public transport. So much for him then.

I fear the majority of Tories are like Nick says, with the few genuine libertarian exceptions such as Alan Duncan.

Like Nick, I came to a libertarian standpoint from the left as well, I have yet to meet anyone who hasn’t.

Some people would say that the very essence of “conservativism”, to the extent that there is one, is precisely that it is quite conciously and deliberately anti-intellectual in the sense that it rejects the idea that policy ought to be based on “big ideas” or political philosophies. Certainly this is what you find in Edmund Burke, a figure who most conservatives seem to at least pay lip-service too, and who is probably the closest thing they have to an intellectual father-figure.

Interestingly, Burke would almost certainly have loathed libertarians, whereas he would probably have rather admired New Labour. Another point against the concept of a one-dimensional political spectrum…

I agree with Woobegone to some extent.

People who generally align themselves with the Conservatives are those who are generally skeptical of ‘catch-all’ political philosophies. The very idea that there is one coherent political doctrine that can be followed in all economic and social situations and solve all our problems seems ridiculous to the Conservative, and I would say rightly so.

The problem with Socialism and the left generally, is that it is convinced of its own infallibility. To this day, there are people within the Labour Party who are convinced that by following the writings of Karl Marx to the letter they will make the world a perfect place. If you think about that for a second, thats quite terrifying. Its the fundamentalist adherence to a dogma that has been proven time and time again to have enormous theoretical flaws which fosters the Conservative mistrust of intellectual philosophy.

I think it is unfair to say Conservatism is not intellectually coherent. I would say it is not intellectually dogmatic. And whilst I personally find it difficult to agree with much Tory economic policy, I understand the intellectual reasoning behind it.

I also consider myself a Libertarian, but decidedly more to the right than the left. I find it difficult to understand how someone from the left could ever be a Libertarian. Conservatism is generally Liberalism with a bit of patriotism thrown in. Socialism is a form of authoritarianism, related to Communism and Fascism (which are essentially two sides of the same coin). Anyone who advocates high taxation, laws which restrict freedom of speech and opinion (such as Race Relations laws), trade unionism etc. could never be a Libertarian. Libertarianism is the antithesis of collectism, which is the basis of the left.

A left wing Libertarian? Thats seems an oxymoron to me.