Whatever Happened to the Conservative Party?

摘要

IT HAS been widely observed that something has gone awry with the Conservative party. Where once its watchwords were pragmatism and economic competence, solicitous commentators now point out that the party is dominated by a fixation with leaving the EU that has, at best, only a nodding acquaintance with the realities of modern capitalism. But the idea that the Conservatives recently took a wrong turn relies on a rather fuzzy historical contrast between an earlier, less doctrinaire conservatism and the ferocious euroscepticism that has recently become synonymous with the party. Michael Oakeshott has even been pressed into service by broadsheet columnists to illustrate this point. Unlike the Jacobins on the Conservative benches who will only settle for their ideal Brexit, Oakeshott argued that to be conservative 'is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to Utopian bliss'.