Putting some stick about: House of Cards and parliamentary whipping

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Andrew Defty

the-house-of-cardsThe recent glossy American remake has brought a new audience to the political drama House of Cards, but the original BBC drama from the 1990s has been a feature of our first year politics course for a number of years, and does bear repeated viewing.

House of Cards was first broadcast in November 1990 and coincided with the end of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, and the subsequent leadership contest which saw John Major become Prime Minister. The BBC drama was based on a novel written by Michael Dobbs, who was the Major’s Chief of Staff and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. A role for which Dobbs was rewarded with a seat in the House of Lords, where he remains.

House of Cards certainly caught a particular mood in the early 1990s and the similarities between Thatcher’s downfall and some of the events in the drama were not lost on observers at the time. Aside from creating in Francis Urquart one of the more monstrous caricatures in British political drama, it highlights, in particular, the precarious position of the Prime Minister, for whom the real threat so often lies not with the Opposition but in one’s own party. Dobbs, who was working on Major’s leadership campaign at the time, later claimed that work in the campaign office came to a standstill when House of Cards came on the television. Geoffrey Howe, the Conservative Deputy Prime Minister whose resignation sparked the crisis in Thatcher’s leadership in 1990, later wrote in his memoirs that at the time some assumed that he was orchestrating a conspiracy like that created by Francis Urquhart in the programme (G. Howe, Conflict of Loyalty, p.658). Although those who are familiar with Geoffrey Howe may find the comparison risible.

Another similarly improbable comparison may be made between Urquart and John Major. In the insomnia-defying memoirs of Nigel Lawson, the former Chancellor makes an interesting observation that Thatcher had wanted to appoint John Major as Chief Whip (the position occupied by Francis Urquhart) but that Lawson had persuaded her to bring Major into into the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Lawson observes that had Major been made Chief Whip, like Urquhart at the beginning of House of Cards, there would have been no possibility of him succeeding Thatcher as Prime Minister.

While the drama is in some respects, of its time, House of Cards has now entered political mythology. Phrases such as Urquhart’s ‘put some stick about’ and ‘you might say that but I couldn’t possibly comment’ have entered the political lexicon and are often repeated by MPs and political commentators who consider such things to be the height of wit and learning. It has also become something of a by-word for political conspiracy. Dobbs’ drama certainly came back to haunt John Major who suffered considerably at the hands of his own backbenchers, something which was not lost on the Opposition. For example in a parliamentary exchange in 1995, Tony Blair, then Leader of the Opposition, taunted Major about the divisions in his ranks:

Tony Blair (Lab – Sedgefield) If the divisions are so deep and irreconcilable that the Conservatives cannot govern themselves, why on earth should they be trusted to govern the country? Did not the Foreign Secretary get it right in Cannes during the summit, when he said that those divisions were damaging Britain? Does the Prime Minister–who at least is behaving with some semblance of honour and integrity throughout this–know what was happening while he was trying to represent Britain abroad? The friends of the Employment Secretary and the friends of the President of the Board of Trade were twisting the knife, striking deals and briefing the papers in a way that would have made Mr. Francis Urquhart blush. That is what happened while the Prime Minister was in Cannes. Has not the last week exposed the real Conservative party, in all its deceit and squalor? It is an ungovernable party that is unfit to govern, and the sooner that this country is rid of the Conservatives–all of them–the better for Britain. (Hansard – Commons, 28 June 1995, col.897).

Whether the Whips still enjoy the kind of control demonstrated by Urquart, if indeed they ever did, is a moot point. A recent piece on the Total Politics blog argued that the powers of the Whips have been eroded since the 1990s. Recent years have seen their powers of patronage diminished by a shift in control over select committee appointments to Parliament, while as mentioned in a previous post, the Coalition government has meant the rewards of Ministerial office are more thinly spread than in the past. The growth in the number of special political advisors also means that Whips no longer have a monopoly when it comes to providing the PM with advice about talent and troublemakers within the Party, and as the TP post suggests the real masters of the dark arts are now often the media advisors. Nevertheless, it is clear that much of the mystique around the Whips remains, and it is something which Party Whips, and the media, seem more than happy to perpetuate. Moreover, unlike some of his predecessors, Michael Gove, certainly has something of the Francis Urquart about him, and like Urquart his appointment as Chief Whip may well have come as something of a disappointment. One can’t help wondering if it is an appointment the Prime Minister will come to regret.

 

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Will there be more? David Cameron must walk a fine line to prevent further defections to UKIP

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Andrew Defty

There is an axiom in politics that, when managing their own party, Prime Ministers need to accommodate three groups of MPs: those who are Ministers; those who want to be Ministers; and those who have been Ministers, but are now sitting on the backbenches. In general it has been the latter group which have tended to cause the most difficulty, while Prime Ministers have usually been able to rely on the support of the those who have been rewarded with a Ministerial position, and even more so those backbenchers who still aspire to Ministerial office.

The recent defections of Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless, however, suggests a shift in this delicate balance. Both Carswell and Reckless are backbench Conservative MPs, and relatively recent arrivals in the House of Commons. Carswell was first elected in 2005, while Reckless arrived at the last general election. These are the kind of MPs on whom the Prime Minister should be able to rely for support. Their defections highlight a number of problems facing the Prime Minister in the run-up to next year’s general election. In the past, even for the most outspoken or disloyal of backbench MPs the options have been fairly limited, either exile on the backbenches or stepping down and seeking power elsewhere, the devolved assemblies or local government, for example. The rise of UKIP, however, has given disgruntled Conservative backbenchers with little hope of Ministerial office an opportunity make waves and quite possibly to remain in Parliament. He may be the only UKIP MP in the House of Commons, but by switching parties, Douglas Carswell suddenly looks like a big fish in a small pond. Rather than being a relatively obscure backbencher, he is now the UKIP frontbench. For some on the Conservative benches this may now seem likely an attractive prospect.

Will there be more? Those who have been too close, or even apologists for, Carswell or Reckless, are likely to be viewed as perhaps the most likely to jump ship. However, they are not the only ones. The possibility of moving from the backbenches to the front pages will almost certainly be appealing to others, particularly if they think they can hang onto their seats. There will be a number of Conservative MPs now considering whether their best chance of remaining in Parliament lies with Nigel Farage and not David Cameron.

Aside from the rise of UKIP one of the reasons that Cameron has found it so difficult to maintain the support of some of his backbenchers is that he has less to offer than previous Prime Ministers. In the past, a combination of threats and rewards have usually been enough to bring recalcitrant MPs back into line. Telling recently elected MPs that they have no chance of Ministerial office, as Cameron apparently did to Reckless, can, however, backfire dangerously. Another problem that Cameron has faced throughout this Parliament is that sharing power with the Liberal Democrats has meant that the number of Ministerial positions available to the Prime Minister to reward loyal MPs has been more limited. Many Conservative MPs have struggled to adjust to the notion of being in coalition and they resent the fact that Ministerial positions are held by what they view as second-rate Liberal Democrat MPs. Cameron has not enjoyed the support of a Prime Minister who led his Party to election victory, in part because he didn’t, and those who have been frustrated by a lack of recognition of their abilities may also be more likely to defect.

Moreover, this is not a problem which is likely to go away. If the Conservatives lose the general election and, as is widely expected, UKIP win a small number of seats, defection to UKIP may well continue to look like an attractive option. If the Conservatives only win enough seats to form another coalition government, Cameron (or his successor) will be forced to share the spoils of victory again, with the risk of an ever growing number of frustrated Conservative backbenchers left thinking they have been passed over for Ministerial office.

A further danger for the Prime Minister lies in shifting his Party further to the right in order to militate the threat from UKIP. While such a move may prevent further defections, it is likely to alienate others within his Party who are already concerned about the direction of policy. This group is largely comprised of MPs, such as Dominic Grieve and Ken Clarke, who have held Ministerial office under Cameron but are now sitting on the backbenches. While they are unlikely to defect, as noted above, disgruntled ex-Ministers are often responsible for the most savage and wounding attacks. Moreover, the possibility of the Liberal Democrats walking out of the coalition and seeking to salvage something from what will almost certainly be a disastrous general election for them, also increases the nearer we get to next May.

In seeking to prevent further damaging defections in the run up to next year’s general election the Prime Minister must walk a fine line if the Conservative Party or the coalition is not to implode.

This piece earlier featured in The Lincolnite.

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Who Runs Britain? Poll – 10 October 2014

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Andrew Defty

The results of the first Who Runs Britain? opinion poll of this year are as follows:

voting intention

The other parties supported gained one vote each. They were: Left Unity; Libertarian; Monster Raving Loony; Socialist; Socialist Worker Party.

The figures were calculated as follows.

In calculating the percentage support for each party the I would not vote responses were excluded, ie the total used was 40 not 42.

In calculating the percentage of I would not vote responses, the figure for all responses was used, ie the total used was 42.

What does the poll tell us?

Important health warning: we should be careful about drawing any general conclusions from this poll beyond what it tells us about the voting intentions of those studying the level 1 politics module, Who Runs Britain? at the University of Lincoln in October 2014.

Professional polling organisations carrying out similar polls generally use a sample of around 1000 people, from across the UK, weighted to reflect factors such as sex, age and social class. Not only is the sample used in our poll very small, it is also somewhat unrepresentative of the rest of the population in a number of ways including: it is younger, it is not balanced according to gender, and probably contains few homeowners, people in full-time employment or indeed taxpayers, but consists entirely of students, and moreover, students who are interested in politics. In short it is in many respects rather unrepresentative of the population as a whole.

Small polls such as this become particularly problematic because relatively small changes in the number of responses to a particular question can lead to apparently significant changes in the percentages. Converting number of responses into percentages can create a false impression of the strength of support for a particular response, consequently it is always a good idea to look at the numbers involved as well as the percentage. A recent example of this involved a poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft following the Scottish independence referendum. This showed that 71% of 16-17 year olds voted in favour of independence, while 73% of over 65s voted no. This was widely reported at the time as indicating that the young had been deprived of independence by older voters. This was a large poll involving 2000 respondents, however, a closer look at the results revealed that the group of 16-17 year olds polled comprise just 14 individuals, while the over-65s comprised the largest group with 488 respondents.

Even if we set aside problems with the sample, because of the nature of the British electoral system it is difficult to assess what a result such as this would mean if it were reflected by voting in a general election. The system of first-past-the-post, which is used to allocate seats in British general elections means that the proportion of the vote won by each party is less important than the number of seats won. Under this system the country is divided into 650 constituencies of roughly equal size (in terms of population) each of which elects one Member of Parliament. The winning party is the one which wins the most seats. In order to win a seat a candidate merely needs to attract more votes than any other single candidate. This can, and often does, mean that a seat is won by a candidate with less than 50% of the vote, as long as the remaining share of the vote is divided between more than one other candidate. It also means that party’s can, and usually do, win a general election with less than 50% of the popular vote and that a proportion of the vote which is some way short of an absolute majority is usually transformed into a large majority of seats in parliament. For example, in the 2005 general election, Labour won about 35% of the popular vote, but won 55% of the seats in parliament, in the 2010 general election the Conservatives won 36% of the vote but only 47% of seats in Parliament.

The Who Runs Britain? poll does not reflect voting across the country and does not take account of the different constituencies in which those polled may be voting. It is impossible therefore extrapolate with any certainty about what this result would mean in terms of seats won in a general election. Nevertheless, it may be fun to indulge in some speculation about what these results might mean by comparing them with other polling data.

The National Picture

Despite all the caveats above, perhaps the most striking thing about this poll is that it is quite similar to recent national opinion polls (see table 1 below). There were three national polls which completed surveying on the date of our poll: Survation for The Mail on Sunday; Opinium for The Observer; and YouGov for The Sunday Times. Two of those polls put Labour ahead of the Conservatives, while the third, Survation, put Labour and the Conservatives neck and neck. The nearest poll to ours was the Opinium poll for The Observer, which had Labour seven points ahead of the Conservatives, compared to eight points in our poll.

All three polls have the Liberal Democrats polling in single figures although none as low as the 5% in our poll. Liberal Democrat fortunes have fallen significantly since they polled 23% in the 2010 general election, with poll ratings often in single figures. However, none of the major polling organisations have had them as low as 5% in national opinion polls since 2010, although they have dipped to 6% on a number of occasions. There may be very particular reasons why the Liberal Democrats have polled so badly in our poll, about which more below.

Perhaps the biggest difference between recent national polls and our poll is the fortunes of the UK Independence Party. UKIP have been polling in the mid to high teens for the last six months or so, and outpolling the Liberal Democrats for most of the last year. However, the 25% support for UKIP in the Survation poll is the highest UKIP has ever polled and is also somewhat anomalous. Survation polls have tended to show considerably higher support for UKIP than other polls with previous polls in the low twenties. The peak of support in this poll however, is also a reflection of the fact that the Survation poll took place entirely on Friday, the day after UKIP’s victory in the Clacton by-election which saw the return of their first MP. There was in contrast, very little support for UKIP in our poll. This may in part be explained by what we already know about the average UKIP voter which is that they tend to be older and are less likely to be educated to university level, although the latter may be explained by the former, ie if you are older, particularly over 60 you are less likely to have gone to university.

The level of support for The Green Party in our poll is also somewhat different from the national picture. The Green Party won 1% of the vote in 2010, which was enough to secure them a seat in Parliament. However, although their fortunes have increased a little since then, they are still polling in the low single figures in national polls. The relatively high level of support for the Greens in our poll, perhaps reflects their key support among young voters.

polls(Source: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/voting-intention-2)

The Local Picture

It is also interesting to compare these results with some more local data. In the 2010 general election Labour lost the seat of Lincoln to the Conservatives with a 6% swing from Labour to the Conservatives. This was the first time since 1997 that the seat of Lincoln had changed hands, reinforcing the impression that Lincoln is a ‘bellwether’ constituency, that is a constituency which reflects what happens in the rest of the country, i.e. win Lincoln and win the general election. Obviously, the indeterminate outcome of the 2010 election might lead us to qualify this somewhat. Nevertheless, Lincoln is a key marginal seat, the current Conservative MP, Karl McCartney, has a majority of 1048 and Lincoln is 18 on Labour’s list of 106 target seats for the 2015 general election.

lincoln

Another interesting thing about Lincoln is that the University and most of its students are located within one constituency. If one considers the size of Mr McCartney’s majority and the fact that there are over 12,000 students at the University of Lincoln the student vote could prove decisive. If the results of our poll were replicated across the University, Labour would get around 1000 more votes than the Conservatives. Although this would almost be enough on its own to wipe out the Conservative majority in Lincoln, we do need to keep in mind a number of factors: firstly, we don’t know how students in Lincoln voted in 2010; secondly not all students will vote and they won’t all vote in Lincoln. Typically turnout amongst students is generally quite low, and because students who are not from Lincoln also have the option of voting in their home constituency, the student vote tends to spread out across the country and as a result is rarely decisive in particular constituencies. Nevertheless, it may be that in the wake of the introduction of increased tuition fees, in the next general election the student vote will be more organised in which case in seats in places like Sheffield, Bristol, Cambridge and Lincoln, it may prove decisive.

Previous cohorts of Who Runs Britain? students

Perhaps the most interesting comparison, for me at least, is with previous cohorts of students on the Who Runs Britain? module. I began polling first year students on this module in 2009, a year which, like this year, had to include a general election. I polled each cohort at the beginning of their degree, and then on a number occasions throughout the year, usually five times a year in total. The table below compares this October’s poll with the previous five cohorts of students polled in October.

As a cohort the 2014 intake is a little more supportive of Labour than last year’s intake, which was perhaps closer to the national opinion polls than any previous cohort at this point. Interestingly, if we just look at the relative support for Labour and the Conservatives, this poll is almost the exact reverse of the poll in October 2009 which was also a general election year. Polls of the 2009/10 cohort did track pretty close to national trends throughout the year.

cohrt

The tracker poll below shows the result of every poll I have conducted since 2009. If we look at the tracker poll, perhaps the most striking thing in these polls has been the decline in support for the Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrats enjoyed a high level of support amongst the 2009 intake and their support increased in the run-up to the 2010 general election. In the final Who Runs Britain? poll before the 2010 general election the Liberal Democrats secured 28% of the vote, six points ahead of the Conservatives. However, from this point Liberal Democrat support went into terminal decline. They still managed to secure 15% of the vote in October 2010, but the announcement in November 2010 of the introduction of £9000 tuition fees, which the Liberal Democrats had promised to oppose when in Opposition appeared to seal their fate, at least amongst students on this module. In the final three polls of the 2010 cohort (February, March and May 2011) only one student voted Liberal Democrat, and only once (in March 2011). The Liberal Democrats have fared little better since, no more than three students have voted Liberal Democrat in any individual poll since November 2010, and then only twice. The two votes they secured in this poll suggests their fortunes have not improved.

It is hard to know who exactly has benefitted from this decline in Liberal Democrat support in these polls. There has certainly been an increase in support for other smaller parties most notably the Green Party, who have been outpolling the Liberal Democrats on and off since 2011, as they have in this poll. But there is also some evidence that support may have shifted to some of the other smaller parties.

Tracker

Turnout

Perhaps not surprisingly given that this is a poll of politics students, only two people declared that they would not vote if there were a general election tomorrow, and only one was undecided. This suggests a turnout of over 95% of those polled which is much higher than at any general election since the Great Reform Act of 1832. Turnout at general elections in the UK since the Second World War has generally been between 70%-85%, although in recent elections it has been lower. Turnout at the 2010 general election was 65% up from a record post-war low of 59.4 in 2001. However, if instead we calculate turnout on the basis of the number of students who should have been able to vote the figure drops somewhat. There are 55 students on this module but only 42 were in the lecture at which the poll was taken, and only 40 said they would vote, which provides a turnout of 73%. This is still higher than recent general elections but lower than I would expect for a first year lecture at this time of year and considerably lower than the 90% turnout for the same poll conducted last year!

Polling on a written constitution

I also polled on whether Britain should adopt a written constitution. This will form part of our submission to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s inquiry on a New Magna Carta. The results of this poll were decisive with the majority of students, 83% or 34 out of 41 students, irrespective of party, stating that they did not believe that Britain should adopt a written constitution. Only 6 students supported the idea, while 1 was undecided. Supporters of the Green Party were the only group to express significant support for a written constitution.

wc

There is not a significant amount of polling data on attitudes towards a written constitution. Research carried out by the Constitution Unit at University College London, for the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee does summarise recent polls on the question, all of which indicate strong support for a written constitution. In particular the periodic ‘State of the Nation’ poll conducted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that in four polls between 2000 and 2010, between 68% and 80% supported the adoption of a written constitution. Although the UCL research cautioned that these data do not perhaps reflect what the public would think after a prolonged debate on the issue, including what would presumably be a strong ‘no’ campaign. They also note that while polls tend to indicate support when the public is asked about whether or not Britain should adopt a written constitution, there is little evidence for a strong public appetite for this, pointing to the 2008 Hansard Society Audit of Political Engagement which showed that respondents ranked ‘Britain’s unwritten constitution’ as the least pressing constitutional problem affecting the UK, far below issues such as Britain’s membership of the EU, how political parties are funded and House of Lords reform.

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You think this lot are bad: errant MPs and a word on punishment

Posted on October 7, 2014 by Andrew Defty

rotten parliamentThere is a widespread, and not entirely unjustified, impression that most parliamentarians are venal, self-serving individuals whose sole motivation is self aggrandisement and personal gain. While this is a view with which many, including myself, would disagree it can at times be frustratingly difficult to maintain a defence of parliament and its members. The parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009 revealed that while administering its own expenses regime MPs had been allowed to claim thousands of pounds for second homes and incidental expenses as diverse as cat food, duck houses and pay-per-view pornographic movies. The fall out from the expenses scandal led to a number of Ministerial resignations and saw five former MPs (David Chaytor, Jim Devine, Eliott Morley, Eric Illsley and Denis MacShane) and two Peers (Lords Hanningfield and Lord Taylor of Warwick) sent to prison for offences relating to expenses claims. More recently the Liberal Democrat Cabinet Minister, Chris Huhne was imprisoned for perveting the court of justice in a case involving shifting responsibility for a speeding fine.

These are all serious offences and it is right that parliamentarians should be treated the same way as any other citizen. However, I am currently in the process of reading the two volume history of Parliament by the Labour MP, Chris Bryant, and have been struck by the catalogue of crooks, rogues and ne’er-do-wells who have previously inhabited the Palace of Westminster. Compared with some of their predecessors, recently parliamentary offenders appear as little more than children caught with their fingers in the sweetie jar. The examples are numerous but the following extract which describes a catalogue of sixteenth century parliamentarians may well illustrate the point:

Then as now, of course, neither ability nor clerical status guaranteed moral rectitude. Thomas Martin who sat for various seats between 1553 and 1558, was accused of living with a syphilitic priest and committing buggery; George Acworth, son-in-law of Bishop Horne, held several clergy livings but was ‘put from his place for the dissolute life he led’; Richard Topcliffe so delighted in the practice of torture that he drew gallows in the margins of books; William Darrell had an affair with Sir Walter Hungerford’s wife and threw his own wife’s maid’s newborn baby on the fire; Christopher Perne stole gold buttons, was sent to Marshalsea for ‘pickery’ and was deprived of his seat of Grampound in 1566 as a ‘lunatic’; Francis Keilway stole his mother-in-law’s silver; Sir Richard Rogers and Robert Gregory were pirates; Walter Lee was a notorious swindler; Lewis Lashbrook was a forger and blackmailer; and John Killigrew’s reputation for cattle rustling, trafficking and smuggling while sitting for Penryn embarassed his older, wiser and duller diplomat brother Henry, but was easily exceeded by his son John (also Penryn), of whom it was said: ‘He kept not within the compass of the law, as his father now and then, from fear of punishment did.’ C. Bryant (2014), Parliament – The Biography: Volume 1 Ancestral Voices, (London Doubleday), p.150.

Of course in previous centuries errant parliamentarians were often treated in a somewhat more robust fashion than today and many of those described by Bryant end up on the executioner’s block, or worse. Today’s parliamentary offenders may well be grateful that they do not share the same fate as the MP, Sir Giles Mompesson, who in the seventeenth century was found guilty of taking money for licensing ‘disorderly alehouses.’ Bryant tells us that Mompesson was stripped of his knighthood and expelled from the House, fined £10,000, imprisoned for life, and most bizarrely, ordered to be dragged up The Strand with his face in a horse’s anus!

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Big C and small c conservatism

Posted on October 6, 2014 by Andrew Defty

CcAlmost without exception, at some point early in each academic year, in one of my first year lectures I will make reference to someone being ‘conservative with a small c’. Until recently I assumed that everyone knew exactly what I meant by this, although there is no reason why they should, but I have occasionally sought to clarify things by refering to the difference between big C and small c conservatism. I am, however, far from convinced that my attempts to explain have helped a great deal, not least because they are usually delivered as a hasty digression from a lecture on something entirely different. My suspicions were realised a year or two ago when one of our first year students observed that he had been following the lecture in question, but that I had lost him when I started talking about big C and small c conservatism. In hope as much as expectation I will attempt a more considered clarification here.

The word ‘conservative’ may be used as an adjective or a noun. Conservative the noun, or big C Conservatism, refers to the Conservative Party, or a member the Conservative Party. Conservative the adjective, or small c conservatism, refers to an opposition or resistance to change, a preference for things the way they are, or to put it another way a tendency towards conserving things.

Now here’s the tricky bit. Just because one is conservative doesn’t necessarily mean one is a Conservative, and it is perfectly possible to be a Conservative without being conservative.

People become members of the Conservative Party, at least in part, because they are in some respects conservative. By which I mean, Conservatives and Conservatism as a political philosophy, tend to be opposed to rapid or what they would perceive as unecessary change. Conservatives tend in particular to be in favour of conserving the long-established structures of British society – the Monarchy, the House of Lords, the armed forces, the Union – and also stand up for what some would argue are ‘traditional values’.  Insterestingly when they talk about these things, Conservatives often conflate them with British institutions and values, as if being British and Conservative (or indeed conservative) are the same thing, but that is a question for another day. However, not all Conservatives can be described as conservative. Some radical Conservatives, like Margaret Thatcher, for example, advocate fundamental change particularly in economic policies and social policies, which were based around rolling back the state. Indeed, some have argued that Thatcher’s policies marked such a radical breach with previous Conservative thinking, that she was not Conservative at all – put simply she was not conservative enough to be a Conservative.

Similarly, one can be conservative and not be a Conservative, or a supporter of the Conservative Party. I am deeply conservative, I always buy the same kind of shirts from the same shop, I holiday at the same place every year, change unsettles me and my first instinct is to resist it. I am not, however, in any way a supporter of the Conservative Party. More significantly, when in his 1999 Labour Conference speech, Tony Blair referred to the ‘forces of conservatism’ which were holding back British society, he was not talking about the Conservative Party (which had been roundly defeated anyway in 1997), but to those who were resisting Labour’s public service reforms from within the public sector, those on the left resisting Labour’s criminal justice agenda or those holding back peace in Northern Ireland. The Conservative Party, he argued, were only part of the problem, it was those conservatives, who were much more numerous and arguably more influential than the Conservative Party, who were the real problem.

So big C Conservatism, a political philosophy, not to be confused with small c conservatism, a state of mind. Clear as mud? Don’t anyone mention liberalism…

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