I wouldn’t say sceptical. I don’t see the Tories big tent approach as a bad thing in a two party system. It means the party can rapidly adapt and the leader cannot rule by decree. (Even Thatcher always had to keep an eye out for rebellions, and one got her in the end).
Thanks for posting this one, I really enjoyed reading it. Even if you’re not much into British politics, there’s plenty in here of interest. A couple bits I liked particularly:
This is a nice little reminder of how hard it is to make strategic decisions in politics. You’re open to criticism no matter which way you go. Requires strong leadership to be willing to make the choices, and strong PR to justify those choices to the public.
I think this analysis is spot-on in terms of tying the realities of economic inequality to pessimism about the future and then to populist politics. The one additional thing I’d add here is that the politics are populist in name only, at least in the USA. They talk a populist line, but deliver elitist policy.
Again, spot-on, both in terms of loss of local institutions and increased political polarization. I think a lot of local community is disappearing as a result of two things: economic weakness for the working class and the ability to get your social interactions elsewhere (Internet, mass media). And I don’t think the political polarization part needs any further comment.
What’s fascinating - and maybe you know this - is that Nick Timothy is not in good standing with much of the party. Part of that is (it is claimed) he had a great deal of responsibility for the pretty awful Tory campaign in this year’s GE, but also many of his ideas (which found their way, to much surprise of many Tory party members) into the manifesto he wrote.
There is much I like about Nick Timothy’s article too, even the parts I disagree with are quite interesting. In fact, it’s really the implementation of Nick Timothy’s politics in the form of Mayism that I think I dislike! But what’s really surprising to me is that what he makes sound obvious and core to conservative belief is really disliked by much of the Conservative party right now.
Anyway, glad you got something out of it.
Same is true for our “conservatives”…really the far-right wingnuts that have taken over the Republican party…on this side of the pond. They have very little truck with true conservative values.
I think there’s plenty of scope for argument that Timothy’s conservatism was jettisoned long ago. It really pre-dates Thatcher.
What today’s Conservative party are doing is anyone’s guess. “Fuck business” is the impromptu slogan thanks to the foreign secretary, and maybe that sums it up.
Responding to a quoted bit from Nick Timothy talking about England
In most Western countries, the working class is struggling, and so, increasingly, will the middle class. Educational attainment, especially among white working-class boys, is poor, traditional forms of employment are in decline, and opinion research consistently shows that people belonging to the majority ethnic group are profoundly pessimistic about the future. And this is understandable: many white, working-class communities in particular are in crisis.
I agree. The current GOP is populist only in rhetoric but, to many, it seems to be the only party that even nods their way. To quote from my favorite translation of the Dao De Jing
When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises
When it knows good as good, evil arises
By making everyone other than a cis white male a protected class legally and, perhaps at least as important, socially we’ve done a very good thing. We also set ourselves up for a push back not because the opposition is inherently deplorable but because we’ve given them no where else to go.
Seemed as good a place as any to put this:
Interesting argument.
(I often have a similar dilemma when considering Brexit - should I blame the rich liars who ran a campaign that broke the law, or the voters falling for an obvious pack of lies because they sounded good?)
Are there any positive descriptions of conservatism in this thread that don’t suffer from the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy? Everyone seems to boil down to ‘true conservatism is good for these reasons only there are no true conservatives now’.
The modern GOP is not a conservative party. This isn’t a scotsman fallacy. This is objective truth.
Things like the populist authoritarianism which drives that party now would have antithetical to the party in the past.
Yes, the question I’m asking is, when was the GOP a ‘real’ conservative party? Which conservative politicians were ‘real’ conservatives?
To me, someone like Kasich is a “real” conservative politician in our modern times.
From a policy perspective, Kasich seems largely indistinguishable from rank and file GOP members of Congress. I’d agree he doesn’t seem as batshit crazy personally as some of them, but it’s hard to think of a single policy or political issue where he isn’t solidly standard GOP.
He balanced the federal budget, and made it run with a surplus, then he did the same thing in Ohio.
He didn’t do that by himself. He’s against almost all legal abortions, and has defunded Planned Parenthood to show he’s serious about it; he’s against income tax; he advocated for the Iraq war, then claimed that he didn’t; he voted to impeach Clinton for lying about sex but did not pursue Reagan for Iran-Contra; he says climate change is real, then says he doesn’t know what causes it, then says that the government shouldn’t regulate it, that they should leave it to the private sector; he’s for privatized prisons; he’s for capital punishment; he’s for the criminalization of drug use; he’s anti-union; he says he’s not a free trader, but he’s voted for every trade agreement presented to him; he’s for the surveillance state; he’s for privatized education; he’s for more military spending, he’s for the drone war, he’s an Iran hawk; he opposed gay marriage and weakened Ohio’s protections against discrimination of gays; he’s against birthright citizenship; his first cabinet in Ohio had 22 members, all of them white; he’s an active suppressor of voting rights. By what standard is he different than the median GOP member of Congress?
He’s not a Nazi! So he’s got that going for him at least.
He was the chief architect of the balanced budget in the 90’s, and he specifically vetoed spending from his own party while governor in Ohio. He wasn’t an omnipotent ruler in either case, but he absolutely played a critical role both times.
You go on to name a bunch of conservative positions, but I’m not sure why. I mean, sure, you aren’t going to agree with conservative positions. That’s fine. I don’t agree with lots of them.
He actually acts on his principles, rather than just giving lip service to them. He ACTUALLY cared about balancing the budget, rather than just saying he cared about it and then spending like a drunken sailor when in power.
As governor, he has also demonstrated a pragmatism that goes beyond dogmatic “government is bad” nonsense you get from the lunatic fringe of the right wing, where he did things like expand medicaid and increase assistance for the homeless and the mentally ill, because he pointed out that not only is it the christian thing to do to care about the weak in our society, but it actually make fiscal sense by saving the state money.
Again, you don’t like conservative positions, I get that. That’s fine. But the biggest problem with the GOP right now isn’t that they are conservative. It’s that they merely give lip service to conservative ideas, while in actuality just supporting populist authoritarianism. For instance, going along with Trump’s disasterous trade policy? That crap is nonsense from the FAR, FAR left. 2 years ago, no one other that Bernie Sanders would have advocated for this kind of insane abandonment of global trade. Yet now that’s a major pillar of the GOP. Or embracing Russia, that’s something that you’d have only seen from nuts like Jill Stein, but now here we are.
The evidence that Kasich has principles and sticks to them is decidedly mixed. From a policy perspective, how would Kasich vote differently than the median GOP member of Congress? I can’t see any daylight between them.
Concrete example:
the GOP in Ohio tried to put something into their budget that prevented any of the wealthiest districts from losing state funding as a percentage of what they were getting previously from the overall state educational budget.
Kasich vetoed this part of their budget, because it served no purpose other than to try to keep rich peoples’ money in the hands of the wealthy. Wealthy districts did not need additional state assistance, while poor districts did. So by vetoing this, he was able to make a more efficient budget without sacrificing funding for the poor districts that needed it most.
Laughably, he was actually attacked by the left for doing this, because he “cut educational funding!” Few folks actually bothered to dig into the details of the budget.
Regardless, that would be an example of him fighting against his own party, using a concrete example from his governance.
I’m unfamiliar with the example. Can you provide a link to the details?
Also, still: On what current policy issues would a Congressman Kasich vote differently than his GOP colleagues?