Analysis of UKIP's bedrock support shows that the desire to get out of the European Union is only one — and not the most important — of the factors behind its success. Immigration is a more significant issue. Mass immigration has disrupted the lives of individuals and communities, and they resent it. The economy, too, is important. Predominantly working-class, male, white English people — from among whom UKIP enjoys strongest support — resent the loss of solid, well-paid, quite technically demanding jobs, in favour of poorly paid, part-time, non-skilled employment. The state of the NHS and public services are bugbears, because of remoteness, shoddy standards, indifference, and because private health, like private education, is still far beyond the means of ordinary people. There is a deep and bitter well of resentment among the aspirational working class and the lower middle class, what Margaret Thatcher called "our people", who have fallen out of love with the Conservative Party, and are increasingly out of sorts with much of modern Britain. In this, they are not alone. To regard contemporary modernity as profoundly repulsive is by no means proof of diminished intellect, but arguably of heightened sensibility. The politics of protest may not be an effective response, but it makes us feel better.
At about the same time as Cameron spoke about "fruitcakes", he also described UKIP as "the stop the world I want to get off party". This was unwittingly insightful. It was not an original thought. (Although not stupid, Cameron has probably not had an original thought in his life, which makes him rather conservative, though not in a good way.) He was echoing what, for example, Michael Gove had written in The Times in October 2002 during that year's Conservative Party conference. After praising the then party chairman, Theresa May's disastrous "nasty party" speech, Gove urged that the party cease to be "a shelter for those uncomfortable with the modern world" and suggested that "Tories who want to stick to the past, with their prejudices to keep them warm, are made uncomfortable". He should be satisfied. Those Tories became so uncomfortable that they left altogether.
The young Tory modernisers wouldn't have minded, though they may do now. This is because they were at war not solely with what they thought — in some cases rightly, in others not — were the inadequacies of the Conservative Party. Of more significance was their wider animus against traditional behaviour, ingrained beliefs and unreformed institutions. Their aim, throughout, was to modernise not just the Conservative Party but Britain, and the goal in both cases was to eliminate the hold that conservatism with a small "c" enjoyed.
The culmination of that long campaign was the recent measure to legalise same-sex marriage. Those who imagine that its sudden emergence on the government's agenda was the result of tactical blundering are mistaken. Cameron doubtless regrets the consequences, not least the nationwide flight of traditional-minded Tories to UKIP. But the measure itself, as a symbol of the social and cultural upheaval that modernisers — both in the Conservative Party and in the Church, incidentally — have planned for decades, was perceptively chosen as a weapon to crack conservative skulls.
Britain is not a Christian country. Christianity is, essentially, faith in the Risen Lord, and by that definition most British people are not Christians. The use of "Christian" as an epithet to refer to anything else is a sloppy, even sinister, devaluation of the meaning. But Britain is still, in some respects, a conservative country. There are, of course, more separate, divergent traditions — national, cultural and religious — than there were in the past, and their ultimate political and social complementarity is questionable. But there is certainly a lot of conservatism. David Cameron's problem is that having radically alienated those conservatives who dwelt in his own party, he has few means left of drawing on the support of others. In this dilemma, opportunistic identification with the Church of England has little to offer him, and less still, be it said, to Anglicans.
At about the same time as Cameron spoke about "fruitcakes", he also described UKIP as "the stop the world I want to get off party". This was unwittingly insightful. It was not an original thought. (Although not stupid, Cameron has probably not had an original thought in his life, which makes him rather conservative, though not in a good way.) He was echoing what, for example, Michael Gove had written in The Times in October 2002 during that year's Conservative Party conference. After praising the then party chairman, Theresa May's disastrous "nasty party" speech, Gove urged that the party cease to be "a shelter for those uncomfortable with the modern world" and suggested that "Tories who want to stick to the past, with their prejudices to keep them warm, are made uncomfortable". He should be satisfied. Those Tories became so uncomfortable that they left altogether.
The young Tory modernisers wouldn't have minded, though they may do now. This is because they were at war not solely with what they thought — in some cases rightly, in others not — were the inadequacies of the Conservative Party. Of more significance was their wider animus against traditional behaviour, ingrained beliefs and unreformed institutions. Their aim, throughout, was to modernise not just the Conservative Party but Britain, and the goal in both cases was to eliminate the hold that conservatism with a small "c" enjoyed.
The culmination of that long campaign was the recent measure to legalise same-sex marriage. Those who imagine that its sudden emergence on the government's agenda was the result of tactical blundering are mistaken. Cameron doubtless regrets the consequences, not least the nationwide flight of traditional-minded Tories to UKIP. But the measure itself, as a symbol of the social and cultural upheaval that modernisers — both in the Conservative Party and in the Church, incidentally — have planned for decades, was perceptively chosen as a weapon to crack conservative skulls.
Britain is not a Christian country. Christianity is, essentially, faith in the Risen Lord, and by that definition most British people are not Christians. The use of "Christian" as an epithet to refer to anything else is a sloppy, even sinister, devaluation of the meaning. But Britain is still, in some respects, a conservative country. There are, of course, more separate, divergent traditions — national, cultural and religious — than there were in the past, and their ultimate political and social complementarity is questionable. But there is certainly a lot of conservatism. David Cameron's problem is that having radically alienated those conservatives who dwelt in his own party, he has few means left of drawing on the support of others. In this dilemma, opportunistic identification with the Church of England has little to offer him, and less still, be it said, to Anglicans.
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