But what if the Conservative Party had not been quite so hysterical about Irish home rule — would we have then been able to preserve some kind of political federation across the British Isles? Can't we now recognise John Major's opening to Irish Republicans as a classic example of Conservative statecraft? What if Margaret Thatcher at the height of her powers had offered devolution to Scotland —would that have secured a continuing place for the Conservative Party in the affections of the Scottish people?
Sometimes doing nothing is the most imprudent form of Conservatism. Disraeli's enormous gamble in 1867 was believed by many Conservatives at the time to be very dangerous — Dean Scruton might well have opposed it — but looking back we can see that setting our faces against expansion of the franchise would have been far more dangerous. David Cameron's bold offer of coalition to the Liberal Democrats is absolutely in that tradition.
Captain Scruton, fresh from brave service on the North West frontier between 1860 and 1940, would surely have placed the Empire at the centre of his account of what he wanted to preserve. But now we recognise that Macmillan's decolonisation was wise Conservative statecraft, whereas Enoch Powell's memo to R.A. Butler after the war on how to retake India now seems delusional. A strategy of accommodation is of course not always right. Many Conservatives sympathised with a Halifax strategy of compromise with Hitler in 1940, but thank heavens for Churchill. Thanks to Margaret Thatcher in 1979, we did not accommodate ourselves to what looked like the inevitable but fought to turn the tide. How do Conservatives decide when to accommodate and when not? This is where political judgments come in. Statecraft matters and the Conservative Party is still around because we have historically been rather good at it.
All these dilemmas are still confronted in the day-to-day business of politics today. Roger Scruton's advice on how we approach these decisions would be interesting. He offers a few examples himself but without really digging as deep as he could. He does not like the EU. We are all familiar with the objections and of course there is a need for reform. But can't we also think of it as the concert of Europe in permanent session? Disraeli was right to go to the Congress of Berlin to represent Britain interests and British statesmen should still be there.
Given Scruton's own heroic work in the Eastern bloc he should reflect on the role of EU membership in the extraordinary success of liberation of Central Europe. Instead he says that freedom of movement stripped them of their middle class. Even today, despite the economic failures of the eurozone, people in Ukraine are willing to die for the opportunity to link to and eventually to join the EU. Scruton and the hardline Eurosceptics might not agree with it, but the arguments for European engagement seem to me to be recognisably Conservative and in a tradition which stretches from Wellington and Canning to Hurd and Hague.
Sometimes doing nothing is the most imprudent form of Conservatism. Disraeli's enormous gamble in 1867 was believed by many Conservatives at the time to be very dangerous — Dean Scruton might well have opposed it — but looking back we can see that setting our faces against expansion of the franchise would have been far more dangerous. David Cameron's bold offer of coalition to the Liberal Democrats is absolutely in that tradition.
Captain Scruton, fresh from brave service on the North West frontier between 1860 and 1940, would surely have placed the Empire at the centre of his account of what he wanted to preserve. But now we recognise that Macmillan's decolonisation was wise Conservative statecraft, whereas Enoch Powell's memo to R.A. Butler after the war on how to retake India now seems delusional. A strategy of accommodation is of course not always right. Many Conservatives sympathised with a Halifax strategy of compromise with Hitler in 1940, but thank heavens for Churchill. Thanks to Margaret Thatcher in 1979, we did not accommodate ourselves to what looked like the inevitable but fought to turn the tide. How do Conservatives decide when to accommodate and when not? This is where political judgments come in. Statecraft matters and the Conservative Party is still around because we have historically been rather good at it.
All these dilemmas are still confronted in the day-to-day business of politics today. Roger Scruton's advice on how we approach these decisions would be interesting. He offers a few examples himself but without really digging as deep as he could. He does not like the EU. We are all familiar with the objections and of course there is a need for reform. But can't we also think of it as the concert of Europe in permanent session? Disraeli was right to go to the Congress of Berlin to represent Britain interests and British statesmen should still be there.
Given Scruton's own heroic work in the Eastern bloc he should reflect on the role of EU membership in the extraordinary success of liberation of Central Europe. Instead he says that freedom of movement stripped them of their middle class. Even today, despite the economic failures of the eurozone, people in Ukraine are willing to die for the opportunity to link to and eventually to join the EU. Scruton and the hardline Eurosceptics might not agree with it, but the arguments for European engagement seem to me to be recognisably Conservative and in a tradition which stretches from Wellington and Canning to Hurd and Hague.
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