Brexit Diary: Is There, on Primrose Day, a Conservative Leader Worthy To Wear Elijah’s Mantle?
Never has there been a time when the party more painfully needed someone in the mold of Disraeli.
“I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution,” Benjamin Disraeli declared as a young man seeking election to Parliament. And, he added, “a Radical to remove all that is bad.” Fitting words to remember this Primrose Day — a day once set aside by British Conservatives to commemorate Dizzy’s death and to celebrate his political principles.
Few Tories today remember or celebrate Primrose Day, alas. The Earl of Beaconsfield emerges as the culmination of the Conservative ideal. Never was there a time when the party more painfully needed someone in the mold of Benjamin Disraeli more. Nor a leader who exemplified the basic impulse of Beaconsfieldism, “to preserve all that is good” and to “remove all that is bad.”
Yet such a message presents a double-edged sword for the Conservative Party. In support of the good, Brexit supporters propelled Tories to majority government in 2019, in the midst of parliamentary debates that threatened the success of Brexit. Boris Johnson was the leader who promised Britons all the benefits of leaving the European Union: secure borders, parliamentary sovereignty, lower taxes, and less government interference.
Now those same Brexiteers’ are equally eager to remove the bad: To cashier Prime Minister Sunak and those same Conservatives for breaking the Brexit promise. Both legal and illegal immigration runs unchecked, the bureaucratic “Blob” ignores the will of the people — as do their MPs — taxes are at a 70-year high, and government interference in the lives of ordinary citizens only increases.
Witness the deleterious effects of Government-mandated pandemic shutdowns, climate change policies in respect of fossil fuels, the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions, and the cost-of-living increases thanks to the state’s inflationary policies. Conservatives lost their way when they neglected Disraeli’s own doctrine for political success:
“As a statesman I should say that it is impossible to refuse popular demands well matured and energetically supported.” Techne UK polling for the “Daily Express” demonstrates just what these demands may be, and how far Conservatives have fallen in popular esteem. The Government trails the opposition Labour Party by 23 percentage points, 45 percent to 22 percent.
When political forecaster Electoral Calculus translates these figures into actual seats, it gives Labour 500 seats at the next general election, an overall majority of 350, to the Tories’ grim 55-seat rump. Reform UK, the party co-founded by Nigel Farage, holds its lead over other third parties with 13 percent of the vote. By Electoral Calculus’s estimate, Reform does not win any seats.
A more hopeful story emerges on examination. The Techne UK survey shows that while the Tories have retained 40 percent of their Brexit vote, the party lost as much again of its 2019 vote share due to its perceived rejection of conservative principles. Of that 41 percent, the Government is losing 19 percent to Reform, 12 percent are boycotting the election, and 10 percent are uncertain.
If this disgruntled cohort of 2019 right-leaning voters can be coaxed back to the Conservatives, the party would have 81 percent of its previous strength and, as the “Express” says, “potentially be in a competitive position to take on Labour.” Sober-minded Conservatives, eyeing the future under a Sir Keir Starmer administration, agree.
“It is so obvious what we need to do,” one senior Tory told the Express. “We need people from the right back in the cabinet and real conservative policies instead of pandering to the One Nation wets.” To wit: “We need a leader who can do a deal with Nigel Farage. We need him in the tent because our voters love him.” The Tory Party needs to listen to its natural constituency.
First among its demands are for Conservatives to be truly conservative again. As Disraeli’s near-contemporary, Pope Leo XIII, wrote: “When a society is perishing, the wholesome advice to give to those who would restore it is to call it to the principles from which it sprang.”
The pontiff added that “for the purpose and perfection of an association is to aim at and to attain that for which it is formed, and its efforts should be put in motion and inspired by the end and object which originally gave it being.”
The Tories need an ally who is “plugged in” to the popular mood. “Daily Express” polling indicates that Nigel Farage at the helm of Reform UK could be that man.
Can he and Conservatives, though, come to an agreement that will fulfill Disraeli’s personal dictum to pursue the good and purge the bad of British politics? No less important this Primrose Day, the Conservative Party needs a leader like Disraeli, deserving to wear Elijah’s mantle.
