:: Conservative Revival ::

:: Friday, December 28, 2001 ::

Dominus Illuminatio Mea
Talking of charitable giving, as I was over on The Edge, it's an important part of Felipe Fernández-Armesto's argument about the state of Oxford in the new Spectator. He points out how a combination of state and internal bureaucracy, combined with a new PC attutude, have ruined Oxford's unique selling proposition. The problem is made even worse by the attitude to charity:

When asked for money, old members’ meanness is a European vice, which keeps universities poor; Oxford’s constituency — rich and morally indebted, after an education which, for most students, was cheap or free — is disappointingly unproductive. In America benefactors get help from the tax system: this is the acceptable face of economic liberalism. Alumni who pay about £80,000 for a degree course at an ivy-league college go on supporting their universities for the rest of their lives. Oxford, it seems, is, to most British students, barely worth the £3,000 it now costs for three years’ tuition. Colleges’ most imaginative initiative has been to get students to cold-call old members — an undignified form of prostitution that annoys potential benefactors. Real success begins by welcoming emotional investment. A friend of mine has given £50,000 to his old Oxford college, where his son was refused a place. An American friend has given $10 million to his alma mater, Brown University, where his son turned down the offer of a place (but later enrolled in Brown’s graduate school). You can’t buy a place at either university, but Brown has a better relationship with alumni because it properly treasures continuity.

Fair points all. Charitable laws really need to be a focus of the Conservative Party's reforms.
:: Swordsman 12/28/2001 08:30:00 AM [+] ::
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Faith and Freedom

Useful contribution from Damian Green in the Telegraph:Faith schools are part of the solution, not the problem. He's been to Holland to see how they do things there, where a majority of children are in religious schools:

The key to the different organisation of schools in Holland is freedom. Article 23 of the Dutch constitution guarantees freedom of education. They interpret this as the freedom to found schools, to organise the teaching and to determine the principles on which the school is based.

So anyone who can gather enough pupils to make a viable school is entitled, as of right, to public funds both to create the buildings and pay for the pupils. What the Dutch call the private sector in education is not fee-paying, but simply run by non-state bodies.

This principle is important. It seems to be the combination of faith and freedom that brings the best results, not just in education. In US communities with strong religious beliefs and strong attachments to the 2nd Amendment, for instance, crime is virtually non-existant. In that case faith protects internally, while freedom protects from the external threats. It's a combination we used to have in the UK. Now, of course, we have neither (cross posted to The Edge).
:: Swordsman 12/18/2001 08:26:00 AM [+] ::
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An image of Britain

Lot of good stuff in Janet Daley's article, What Blunkett should have said on race relations. I've already said something with an international flavour about it on The Edge. This, however, seems important to the Party:

Had he been less eager to sound as if he were criticising the minority communities, and perhaps more ready to embrace the belief in prosperity that his own Old Labour instincts must repudiate, he might have said something like this: Britain is a free and wealthy country.

We want everyone who comes here to share in the personal liberty and prosperity that now extends - in a historically unprecedented way - to the great mass of the population.

Many members of ethnic minorities already contribute greatly to this endeavour, with their belief in hard work and family life. We would like the others to do the same, even if that means putting a bit of official pressure on them to emerge from their ghettos.

I still think our best slogan of recent years was "Britain Strong and Free". We should be making the most of saying that the UK is the 4th Largest Economy in the World, and that, thanks to 20 years of reforms, most of them Conservative, we all share in it: compare consumption levels now with 20 years ago. We also have a tradition of personal liberty, hinging on things like Trial by Jury, which can only sustain this level of success. Let's keep those liberties and our own control over our economy and we'll keep on being the 4th largest economy, whatever Europe does. Plus we've shown how strong we are by playing with the big boys in Afghanistan. We're a rich, powerful, free country. No other country in the world, with one exception, can say that. Is that what replaces God, King and Country: Wealth, Power and Liberty? Could be.
:: Swordsman 12/12/2001 08:59:00 AM [+] ::
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New Forum for New Ideas?

Conservatives for Change is, well, not here quite, but on the way:

Our objective is to translate enduring Conservative principles into contemporary policy ideas. Our approach is underpinned by a belief that today's Conservative Party should be compassionate in its outlook, committed to equal respect for all our citizens, internationalist in perspective and enabling not restricting. We aim to provide a forum for the many thousands of conservative-inclined people who have become disaffected in recent years with the Conservative Party or with party politics in general.

That's a message the country wants to hear. Let's hope it works.
:: Swordsman 12/10/2001 08:12:00 AM [+] ::
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War, Retrenchment and Reform

In the absence of peace, IDS has taken the other two precepts of one of Gladstone's administration and turned them into a workable formula for his leadership. This Spectator article underlines how successful this has been. As Oborne says, he has made virtually no impression on the wider public, but, as I argued below, he has escaped the negative characterisations so damaging to Hague and to Major towards the end of his days. Here's Oborne's conclusion, and accurate it is:

"Of course, the real tasks lie ahead. Duncan Smith has yet to articulate a profound personal vision that will reconnect the Tory party to the British people as a whole. His Tories have yet to frighten Labour at the polls. He has made no forward move against the enemy. But he has taken advantage of the temporary suspension of domestic politics to build an impressive base from which advances can be made. Above all, he has made none of the early and fatal mistakes from which William Hague never quite managed to recover. Duncan Smith could not reasonably have hoped for a better first three months."

Hear hear.
:: Swordsman 12/06/2001 07:45:00 AM [+] ::
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To the Barricades!

Janet Daley writes that the Tories have rediscovered the joys of revolution. If so, jolly good! It has been my contention throughout this Blog's short history that the modern conservative party is a fusion of Tory and Whiggish elements. The Whiggery is best at producing new ideas. The Toryism is best at defending old ones and highlighting idiocy. Both elements need shots in the arm: under Major, then Hague, the Whiggish element dried up while the Tory element lost its way and strayed into corruption and populism, both of which are vices Toryism is prone to. But if the Whiggish element is bolstered, then the Tory element needs to be too. Nevertheless, this is a start:

The Tories forgot for a while that, in their most stupendously successful period in modern history, it was they who were the revolutionaries: cutting swaths through what we all called "the post-war consensus" to liberate the populace from the hugely well-entrenched vested interests that restricted everyone's freedom.

Well, whisper it softly and cautiously: that may be all over now. The party is really, really interested in new ways of thinking again. Not since the days when Keith Joseph distributed copies of Hayek's Road to Serfdom to every member of the Tory front bench has there been as much genuine intellectual excitement at the top of the party. The party, politics in general, and maybe eventually the population, will be the better for it.
:: Swordsman 12/05/2001 08:35:00 AM [+] ::
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End of an Era

Melanie Phillips has written her last column for the Sunday Times. Dammit. Her article is a heartfelt plea against co-habitation , and a goodie it is too. Here's the point that too many bone-heads don't acknowledge:

People who cohabit choose not to get married precisely because they do not want the responsibilities that come from making a binding commitment. The results of this retreat from commitment are proving disastrous for children and for society and are a huge challenge for politicians.

Yet increasingly politicians who observe these changes are saying they have no alternative but to go along with them. They should draw a quite different lesson. If people are subjected to a tide of unremitting propaganda with no informed attempt to expose the lies, they will have no way of realising the truth and therefore no reason to avoid destructive and even self-destructive behaviour.

Labour politicians are happy to see the family disintegrate because the family is the greatest bulwark of all against state control. Conservative politicians, motivated either by fatuous libertarianism or a collapse of nerve, are busy burying their heads in the sand.

But if politicians don’t try to minimise social harm, what on earth is the point of their existence? The anti-family movement is taking us back to the pre-modern era, before society invented the rules of modern civilisation to curb the chaos of antisocial behaviour. Indeed, the BSA concedes this by calling for a revival of “common- law marriage” which was abolished in the 18th century.

I'm going to post an "article" in which I'm going to try to work out a coherent approach to Conservative family policy that allows for a more socially "liberal" approach that some have been calling for and tackles the problem of misbehaving MPs. I'd be grateful for comments when i do post it.

BTW, anyone know where Mel P is going to be writing in future?
:: Swordsman 12/03/2001 09:00:00 AM [+] ::
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A Mission Statement

Great comment on AndrewSullivan.com today:

To paraphrase Oakeshott, I’m a conservative in politics so that I might be a radical in many other human activities.

If we're looking for a "mission statement," here is the first line. The defence of Trial by Jury (see a recent commentary on The Edge for more on that) could form a useful centrepiece in such a re-launch.
:: Swordsman 12/03/2001 08:38:00 AM [+] ::
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