Conservatism After the Flood: Old Wine, New Bottles?
| Published date | 01 June 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20419058241260787 |
| Author | Emily Jones |
| Date | 01 June 2024 |
28 POLITICAL INSIGHT • JUNE 2024
Britain’s Conservatives have been
described as the world’s most
successful political party. Indeed,
the Tories have been in power for
the past 14 years. But there are signs that the
Conservatives’ once ironclad unity is starting
to fray.
The emergence of Liz Truss’s Popular
Conservatives, the New Conservatives, and
the National Conservatives, is taken by some
as evidence that the Tories have abandoned
conservative values altogether, in favour of a
radical right politics. Projects such as Brexit,
and vocal support of Truss and others for the
accused US insurrectionist Donald Trump,
seem to suggest a party that is all too willing to
upend the constitutional status quo.
The Conservatives are widely predicted
to lose the next election by some margin.
The May mayoral and local election results
provided further evidence for an impending
Conservative wipeout, even if it remains
to be decided how well Labour and other
smaller parties will fare. So what exactly does
it mean to be a Conservative in 2024? What is
conservatism conserving these days? Are the
Conservatism After
the Flood: Old Wine,
New Bottles?
With polls showing the Conservatives facing electoral wipeout,
what does the future hold for the dominant party of British politics?
Emily Jones investigates.
Conservatives – and small-c conservatism more
broadly – having an existential crisis?
Identity crises
Despite what fevered journalists might report,
the current moment is not unprecedented in
Conservative Party history. Persistent bouts of
identity crises and reinvention have been the
hallmark of conservatism throughout the entire
20th century.
Back in 1955, T.S. Eliot posed an apt question
to the London Conservative Union: ‘what is the
literature of conservatism?’ The Anglo-American
poet was asking which writings ‘thoughtful
Conservatives’ should have read, and which
authors’ work established ‘what conservatism is’.
Eliot recognised that the task at hand was
one of construction, that while some political
© Victoria Jones / Alamy Stock Photo
Political Insight June 2024 BU.indd 28Political Insight June 2024 BU.indd 28 23/05/2024 15:2923/05/2024 15:29
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