Freedom and conservatism go hand in hand. Britain has considered itself a nation of liberty for centuries, with the origins of its current constitution reaching back to the middle ages. I have long believed that conservatism is about preserving a set of common values, including personal liberty, and in my new book “The Conservation of Liberty”, I present this argument by looking back at the history of Britain’s constitution, its most notable conservative thinkers, and key events across its history which have challenged those values.

Allow me to present an extract from the preface of the book:

“Conservatism is one of the most influential political forces the world has ever known. In the United Kingdom, it is arguably an integral part of the national social attitude: ‘small-c conservatism’ pervades the opinions of nearly every committed citizen, and an innate disliking of change appears to be commonplace among the citizens of this ancient isle… 

This little book is a study of British conservatism. It is an examination of its history, its philosophy and the author hopes, a standing point from which to look at conservatism’s future… Whilst politics must always be forward-looking, it is often prudent to look at the past, and to consider what was beneficial and what was destructive to the political system, and thereby choose the best course of action for similar events in the future. If anything can be achieved by this book, at the very least it is hoped that the myth of conservatism being an out-dated ideology might be dispelled, and to explain how conservatism is useful to everyone, not just the privileged few.” 

If Benjamin Disraeli was right when he remarked that he was “a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution; a Radical to remove all that is bad” then it could even be said that conservatism is one of the most revolutionary ideologies ever to sweep Britain – just in a very different way to most others; conservatism is a silent revolution, rising up to protect certain values and liberties wherever and whenever they are threatened. The Conservative Party and its political predecessors have been an integral part of this, but it cannot claim the mantle of conservatism solely for itself.

I will be donating all profits made from sales of this book to Mind, the mental health charity. I often talk about pragmatism, and how it is important for the Conservatives to help the vulnerable as best they can, not just limiting themselves to “compassionate” rhetoric. Two issues in our society which we neglect too much in my opinion are mental health and homelessness, which, in some cases, are related to one another.

Mind’s work has been so helpful to thousands of people who have suffered from mental health conditions, some of whom I know, but many of whom I have never met and probably will never meet; but if some small amount of good can come to even a few suffering people from my work – I will consider it to be a success.

Whether you hate conservatism or whether you love it – I hope you enjoy reading, and can learn something more about this varied and interesting philosophy.

If you wish to purchase and read the whole book, you can find it here in print, and here as an ebook.

Alex blogs at Burkeanthinker. Follow him on Twitter: @burkeanthinker

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In modern Britain we have been taught to pull back in repulsion at the very mention of “inequality”, but what does it actually mean, and can it always be so bad? I would argue not, and in a Britain led by the current establishment, we would do well to consider the roots of the Conservatives’ ideology once again.

A while ago I wrote about why I am a Conservative, and in it I mentioned that, in my opinion, the left-of-centre too often sacrifices liberty for the sake of equality. But what did I mean, and why do I scoff at that much-overused word, “equality”? Well, to put it bluntly, I think that the modern view of equality does not strive for any kind of meaningful equality whatsoever.

Humans are born unequal, and so they will continue to be unequal as long as there are humans on Earth. I have never bought into the idea of total equality, and hence have rejected the theories of Marxism and Socialism. By extension, I remain fairly suspicious of modern egalitarianism. Now, that’s not to say that I like a rigid social structure where an aristocracy has some kind of “divine right of kings” to dictate to the classes below them. It has long been a tenet of conservatism to believe in natural inequality, and it is really not so radical to suggest that it does exist. What I am saying is that some inequality drives society to better itself.

Let’s imagine a situation: everyone is equal, we all have the same amount of wealth, access to the same services, institutions, et cetera. It sounds wonderful, only there’s a big problem: now that everyone has the same, no one has anything to strive for anymore. No longer is there any desire to create wealth, no longer do people develop ambitions to run a successful business, or work themselves up the social ladder, since there is no point, as there is nothing to be gained. As such, society stagnates, wealth falls away, and in the end, we are all equal – in poverty.

In the 19^th century, the Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli developed the ideas of one-nation conservatism, a highly paternalistic ideology based on the idea that the ruling classes had a moral responsibility to look after the working class. As Conservatives for Liberty, we have a certain disdain for paternalism, and the modern rather socialistic interpretations of Disraeli’s solutions to social suffering are, in my opinion, seldom for the best.

That being said, there is a great deal of enlightenment in much of what Disraeli observed about British society. He observed that inequality existed, and recognised that due to human nature, civilisations will always put social hierarchies and structures in place in order to maintain stability, and allow certain actions beneficial to society as a whole to be rewarded, with each part of society working together, each part benefitting the other (the Organic or Natural Society).

The issue arises when these hierarchies and structures are used as a means of control rather than as a means of exercising meritocracy. Today, our political establishment often trusses itself up to appear to be pursuing egalitarianism, whilst at the same time trying to control our lives to disturbing degrees.

Take the idea of insisting on a 50:50 Cabinet: it would appear at first glance that more women are to be involved in government, but in reality all that is happening is that a certain group of human being (that which is biologically female) is being given a certain amount of privilege because of a group that they belong to, rather than their suitability for a task. We are, in my opinion, insulting women by reducing them to token symbols to be used in a grand game of political virtue signalling.

This form of egalitarian points-scoring takes place too often in modern politics, and sadly it also forms a big part of student politics today. Theresa May recently told the firefighters’ union that they needed to diversify…because of course…that will help them fight fires better…the British National Union of Students has a representative for this gender, that gender, this sexuality, that identity…

To me, this form of identity-based politics is one of the most socially damaging ideas ever to be pursued. Rather than encouraging all members of our society to come together as citizens and ensure our interests are represented and our democracy fulfilled, we are instead encouraged to align ourselves to our varied social groups: being a woman, a man, a person of colour, a gay person etc. The truth is that none of this matters. The only thing that matters is taking part in society together, working together, and making a better country together. Instead social groups are seemingly being used as part of an agenda to hurl us headlong into disunity, too keep us divided to divert our attention away from more important matters. In the words of Caesar, divide et impera.

I value personal freedom highly, but what is it worth if not used for others’ benefit? We need a natural society, where strong social structures exist, but are coupled with fluid social mobility to ensure that those who work hard or demonstrate great prowess in certain fields are rewarded appropriately. We don’t need token gestures and token signals from our establishment to make itself look good. That is purely cosmetic, and if anything, that is what makes us fundamentally unequal. We need to have the same opportunities based on our individual merits and ethics, not those which are handed to us on a plate for being part of a particular social group.

Alex blogs at Burkeanthinker. Follow him on Twitter: @burkeanthinker

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“Don’t despair, but if you must, work on in despair.” So wrote the man I quote far too much for my own good, Edmund Burke. It has been a stressful two weeks for the Conservative Party. But if my idol is to be followed, then I realise I should probably bring myself out of post-Brexit despondency over the Remain reaction and my party’s uncertain future, and start looking at things positively.

There is no way our establishment can ignore the democratic vote, and I am very confident that Brexit will happen. As to how fast, I am not certain, but I am confident that when it does, many new opportunities will finally be open to us, both politically and economically. But among the various petitions, demands, suggestions and observations that have been bandied around over recent days, I have been most intrigued by many calls for “reform” of our political system. The types of reform called for have varied from the outright undemocratic, such as outlawing referenda in the future and restricting all decisions purely to Parliament, to more familiar whining about the lack of proportional representation and the presence of an unelected upper house.

I am all for holding the politicians who put forward the arguments to Vote Leave to account – I did not vote leave in order to suddenly have all the things I hoped for swept from under my feet. It is part of the democratic process to hold our politicians to account, and I would hope that by doing so we all will receive the benefits we were promised. People have talked a lot about how immigration was a defining issue of the referendum, and it certainly was for a lot of people, but it was not solely about immigration, and for many, freedom of movement was not a problem they had with the EU. One of the most important ones for me was that very thing we must now hold in the forefront of our minds – democratic accountability. The EU was a politician’s dream: power without proper checks and balances, an institution which could gag members of its legislature from telling the people who voted for them what they were voting on among other worryingly illiberal conventions.

Now that we know we will be rid of the EU – we must be the democracy we claim to be. We must think about our democratic system, and realise that for Britain to be a leading light in liberty and democracy, we must avoid becoming the byzantine quagmire of bureaucracy that the EU was. We need to champion free trade with the rest of the world, we need to liberalise our civil service, we must do as much as we can to create as open a political system as possible. What with House of Lords reform having been on the cards for a while now, I am sure it is something that will crop up very soon, if not under the remainder of this government then surely under the next, once Brexit has fully taken place. I see such an action as being only the start of calls for massive political change by the Left.

This sort of “liberal agitation” as it was known amongst conservatives in the 19^th century, is not necessarily a completely bad thing. When people demand better representation it generally stems from a deep dissatisfaction with the political class – something which Brexit already represents, as I have mentioned before on this blog. We can already see that there are problems with the political class as it is at the moment, and that the vast majority of ordinary people want some form of major social change. On the other hand, caving in to “agitation” completely is seldom the best tactic, since such mass-movements can easily be infiltrated by radicals who represent a minority, and would seek to introduce such momentous change which may sound good on paper but would be destructive or undemocratic in practice. We need more democracy, but we must tread carefully.

Allow me to use two case studies: The House of Lords and first-past-the-post voting. I have, throughout my political activity, been generally defensive of the House of Lords against those who would seek to reform it. I generally applaud the meritocratic idea behind a House of Lords with the life peer appointment system. I have never supported an elected upper chamber, being incredibly sceptical of handing over another portion of our legislature to the established parties, only to be controlled by them and used as a rubber stamp on Commons initiatives without the same scrutiny that can be provided by a House of Lords with roughly 200 independent peers with expertise ranging from business to religion and the arts. Nevertheless, I fear that Lords reform is almost inevitable at some point in the future, and has been on the cards for while, even among some in the Conservative Party (despite many cries of “shame!”). As much as the traditionalist in me would be sad to see it go, there is a new opportunity in House of Lords reform. Let’s not work for an elected upper chamber, instead, let’s be even more radical than the radicals who call for a proportionally elected one. Let’s put the demos back into democracy.

Ideally, I would want an upper house which has the same amount of members for each constituent country of the UK, say, 50 members each for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But each member, rather than being elected, is drawn by a random lot of the people of those constituent countries, just like jury service. It would probably be prudent to include an opt-out of some kind so that people who wouldn’t want to take part could choose do so. We could also legislate so that employers of people who are chosen to take part for, say one or two-year terms, would be obliged to keep that person’s position in their job open for them upon their return to work once their Parliamentary term had expired. That way, we would have a very democratic chamber checking our elected politicians, and it would be mostly free from the influence of the party establishments. It could even be possible to allow some, for instance another 50 hereditary peers sit in for sake of tradition and to represent their interests – but of course this is all just proposition.

In terms of our voting system, FPTP is not very good in my opinion. I can understand why it might be chosen, considering that MPs are strictly elected to represent the interests of the constituents who elect them, and as such, each MP represents a small community within itself and is sent to Parliament on their locality’s behalf. However, FPTP does have a tendency to degenerate into a two-party system, is susceptible to gerrymandering and corruption, and eventually leads to contained party politics rather than regional and individual politics, and eventually, mass disaffection of large parts of society with the political system (remind you of anything?).

Proportional representation is all very well, but if you apply it across an entire country, you represent the people’s opinions at the expense of local representation. The UK rejected the Alternative Voting system in a 2011 referendum, and it is quite clear that many people would find a radically different voting system confusing, and do not appreciate the hassle of “ranking” candidates, and frankly, after years of simply placing an X next to your preferred party or candidate, I cannot blame them, not to mention the potential instability which would inevitably be the case in a truly proportional system, since if past UK elections are anything to go by, no political party would ever win a majority outright.

My preferred system would be one similar to that used in the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and NI Assembly, the Additional-Member or Mixed-Member system. A number of constituencies could still be used to represent local interests (perhaps reduced in number somewhat from the current 650) and a certain amount of proportionally balanced members to be drawn from the constituent countries based on vote share augmented to those constituency seats. This way we could more easily balance local representation with proportional representation of opinion.

In short – no system is perfect, but with seismic forces shaking our political system to its core, Conservatives need to be ready for change. People want something other than “politics as usual”, and it is the Conservatives who can provide it. We should not pander to the establishment in the name of democracy as the left so often does, we should not sign away our Parliament to the control of two or three major parties. Instead, let’s hold our politicians to account, let’s let the people participate and engage in democracy like never before. We need to be conservative in the face of those who would change our political system for their own benefit. We need to beat them to it – to conserve the British people’s connection with democracy we must be more radical than ever before.

Alex blogs at Burkeanthinker. Follow him on Twitter: @burkeanthinker

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The views expressed in this article are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Conservatives for Liberty

First of all, I would like to remark at what a revealing few days this has been, on all sides of the EU referendum debate. I have learnt a lot more about the nature of the campaigns on both sides from the fallout of this referendum than I did over the course of campaigning. Some of you may have noticed the title of this article, and yes it is a veiled reference to Edmund Burke’s masterwork Reflections on the Revolution in France. My piece won’t nearly be as long as Burke’s, but why write this now? Well, I feel that the coming months will be very challenging, and my inner conservative has been roused by the events of the past few days to begin tackling those challenges. There is a lot to discuss, and limited time.

Generally speaking, I do not believe the political campaigning for the referendum to have been Britain’s finest hour by a long shot. Of course, as a passionate supporter of Vote Leave, I was very happy with the result, but I have always been fairly critical of the way the Leave campaign went about its canvassing. I believe it took a far too subjunctive view of a Brexit, emphasising too much the mood of possibility and too little the hard facts and case studies which show the damage, both political and economic, that the EU does to Britain and to its partners outside the EU. Remain, on the other hand, put across a very negative campaign which focussed on near-apocalyptic scenarios which might have occurred if we left the EU. The campaigning is over now though, thank God, so I won’t comment the validity of either campaign’s facts – there will be time enough for that in the coming months.

There were many reasons why the British public was polarised by this debate, why there was such a close split between Remainers and Leavers. The vast majority of Remainers I believe, voted so out of a cautious attitude, and innate British small-c conservatism, and they did not wish to risk what they saw as economic stability, British jobs and relationships with other European countries. This is not necessarily a bad position to take, at least, in that I cannot knock the intentions of such voters, as much as I think their concerns are little to worry about. With the USA, Canada and even Germany saying they want special trade deals with the UK following Brexit, much of the fear about being “put to the back of the queue” for international cooperation appears to be null.

But ah, Friday 24^th was undoubtedly the most interesting of the entire experience. I awoke, part of me expecting to have been beaten by Remain, closely, but I was not expecting a victory for Leave, I was so wrong, and minutes later, a cheer from the rest of my family confirmed the reality. I was pleased, and I ventured onto social media expecting a lot of disappointment from those who voted Remain; a large number of my friends and acquaintances are Remainers, and a lot of them respected and understood my position as a Leave supporter, and I thought perhaps naïvely that despite people’s disappointment they would accept the result and now work with Leave supporters to receive the benefits of Leaving the EU that we were all promised. I couldn’t have been more shocked, and scared by what I saw.

Torrents of foul-mouthed abuse directed at Leavers, a near constant flow of accusations of racism and xenophobia, hatred towards the older generation, and a generally hostile atmosphere which, as a Leave voter, made me feel incredibly uncomfortable considering many of the people writing and “liking” such aggressive postures were people I knew. Later I saw University students calling for the older generations to be disenfranchised altogether, since apparently did not have the “education” or “high enough IQ” to take decisions like this. I saw calls for the referendum result to be overturned, for Parliament to block the result and for the Electoral Commission to be given powers to tackle “misinformation”. I was terrified and disgusted. Many people said they were “ashamed to be British”, I was ashamed to know people who behaved in such a disgraceful and disrespectful way.

As much as I do not wish to come across rude myself, I am afraid to say that this attitude among many young people, and even older, supposedly mature adult Remainers, is nothing more than childish. It frankly makes me despair for the future of our democracy. Yes, 75% of 18-24 year olds may have voted leave, by turnout among them was only 36%, compared to 58-81% among the older population. So of course, it’s young people who care about our democracy much more than those older than us.

Many Leavers, just like Remainers, were passionate and enthusiastic, and believed strongly in their opinions, and here is the crux of the matter. There appears to be a reluctance among the disappointed ones to accept the result of the referendum as being the triumph of a different opinion over theirs. They would, just as a religious fanatic decries adherents of other religions a “heretic”, decry the Leavers as “racists”, “xenophobes” and “bigots”, abandoning debate and descending into the most horrible abuse so as to encourage it by others. I know a lot of people who voted Leave, including a lot of my family, and I haven’t heard a bigoted comment from a single one of them.

From some on the Remain side, however, there has been a great deal of bitterness, contempt for the uneducated, talk of sewers bursting and this country becoming a nation of evildoers, fantasies about creating a new independent state that would exclude the rural, backward, “racist” parts of the country, and so on. If these people want to see bigotry, they should take a look at themselves. Quite frankly they are showing the largest display of bigotry in this country right now.

I fundamentally reject the idea that this debate was a result of the victory of racist attitudes. To paraphrase something that a Remain friend said to me recently: “Oh, you may not be a racist, but your campaign was comprised of a large number of them.” No, not at all, that is a gross assumption. Yes, there will always be some racists in a campaign like this, there will always be Britain First types who believe that only white British people deserve any kind of recognition and fair treatment by the state. But to say that the Leave campaign, and the rise of nationalism across Europe in general, is a sign of the rise of “racism” in the world, is I think a very misguided attitude.

This is not the victory of racism – in fact it is the victory of ordinary people against an illiberal elite. The elites have adopted such a strong “liberal” position on nearly everything that their liberalism is beginning to consume itself, and become fundamentally oppressive. Both the Labour and Conservative Parties which have presented themselves as our only political choices since the beginning of the 20^th century have in the last 20 years or so been so contained in their cosmopolitan and often metropolitan (and often, dare I say, London-centric) bubble that they have lost sight of the people who used to be their support base. I do not believe that the British people hate other cultures, hate non-British people, we have never been a nation to do that – instead, we have rejected a value-system.

The people who have been hardest hit by economic crises, made to pay for them and been given nothing back because they do not conform to the establishment’s criteria for special treatment, the working class, have turned around and sent a message to their leaders “We have had enough.” It’s just sad that the response of a large number of people appears to be that of a toddler whose parent denied them the chocolate bar they wanted – throwing a tantrum and demanding the result they want angrily, with as little respect as you like.

Despite all of this, we now have work to do, and positive work too. Let’s look forward to the benefits promised from Brexit, and seek to affirm Britain’s strong economic position in the coming months. The markets are already correcting, and the outlook is nowhere near as bleak as many feared. But as much as I look forward to these things, we must also look to our political system, ready our pens and our voices to speak out against those who would deny us of our democratic choice.

Peter Sutherland, a top UN official tweeted that “The younger generation in the UK has been sacrificed all because of distortion of facts & consequences. Somehow this result must be overturned.” People want to end “misinformation” in politics, which is a highly subjective word to interpret, have Parliament debate to overturn the result and other outrages. We must not allow a generation which has never been exposed to ideas which challenge their supposedly “progressive” assumptions to override our democracy.

I am hopeful that these frankly laughable petitions and tantrums will achieve nothing, especially with Cameron and Corbyn accepting the referendum result. We are after all, committed to our cause, absolutely necessary in this kind of affair, and which steels us against the shock and insults we have been subjected to, but also against the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to stand by and do nothing. Let’s use this as a chance to fight for more democracy, and less intolerance and illiberalism.

Alex is a student who will be reading for a Classics degree in October. When not studying the ancients, he devotes himself to politics and the philosophy of conservatism. He blogs at Burkeanthinker and you can follow him on Twitter: @burkeanthinker

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At Conservatives for Liberty, we defend civil liberties passionately, and our supporters back us because of that. We believe that individual freedom and having certain rights which the government should not curtail, are a fundamental part of living in free, democratic societies, and are also historically entwined with British values and rights afforded to British citizens for many hundreds of years. But as much as we may claim that liberty is a good thing – why should you believe us? What makes liberty, and civil liberties in particular, so great? Why wouldn’t it be easier just to have some authoritarian force telling us all what to do and making life so much easier for us all, after all, having to make our own decisions all the time is tiring…isn’t it?

So what are civil liberties in the first place? Today, we take many for granted, the most notable perhaps being freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and crucially, freedom of speech. The list itself goes on, but I’m sure you get my gist already. It was these ideas that the great classical liberals of the 18th century extolled. The founding fathers of the United States of America wrote their Constitution in order to establish and defend these rights for their people. One of the most famous revolutions in history pitted the forces of liberty against tyranny. But why would the founding fathers of America create a republican, liberal democracy in place of monarchy?

Liberty tends to be divided between two main schools of thought, which sometimes overlap, but are generally dichotomous. These are the concepts of “positive liberty” and “negative liberty”. Positive liberty is generally considered to be the granting to people the right to fulfil their own potential and act on their free will. The man who coined the terms, Isaiah Berlin, described the outlook of the positive liberal as “I am my own master”. A positive liberal will generally see social blights such as racism and sexism as constraints on their free will, and will pursue progressive social policies in order to allow certain people to have more of a voice in politics. Therefore, positive liberty has generally been associated with modern social liberalism, and the centre to moderate centre-left brand of liberalism that it is associated with. Negative liberty, on the other hand, is more of an “I will not be anyone’s slave” attitude. It is the belief that people should be free from external constraints imposed by others. For a long time, negative liberty was the brand of liberalism subscribed to by the greatest political philosophers, and its practice can be seen in the policies of more modern politician too; Margaret Thatcher famously held up Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty declaring “This is what we believe in!” These previous thinkers adopted a negative liberal position mostly because it is derived from a fundamental moral position, which I will explain below.

So it is generally considered that in modern times, social liberals have tended towards positive liberty while classical liberals tended towards negative liberty. Positive liberty is founded to an extent in modern egalitarianism. Negative liberty’s argument for freedom from restraint is founded in moral philosophy. When considering what is “right” and what is “wrong” by moral standards, many people are guided by different things. Different religions have different outlooks based on cultural and historical definitions of morality. In Britain, even though we are living in an increasingly secular society, it is would be fair to say that the vast majority of British people retain a sense of what is right and wrong, regardless of whether they are religious or not. I’m also fairly confident in saying that the vast majority of people would agree with me that any action which does harm to another human, especially if it is without any good reason, is morally wrong. It’s for these reasons that we have the law – to prevent people from causing harm to others, and punish them by removing them from society and limiting some of their previous freedoms as they learn how to be a part of a functional society.

Civil liberties that are most commonly upheld in Western liberal democracies are entwined with the concept of negative liberty. Guaranteeing freedom of speech, freedom of the press and other such freedoms guarantees no repression or restrict on an individual’s right to present his opinions and conduct his way of life as he sees fit. It was not initially out of ideology that the American revolutionaries rose up against the British, but out of a desire for moral treatment. If civil liberties are restricted then we, as people, are harmed. If our freedoms are restricted, then we are either living under a tyranny or we are on the way to living under one. Tyranny is fundamentally morally harmful, because it controls individuals – it does not allow them to blossom freely, it seeks to programme and control them in line with the tyrant’s own wishes. Tyranny does not allow for free intellectual progression, not for the sharing of ideas, and it often degenerates into the physical harming of those who dissent to it. Therefore, for the state to be truly moral, and refrain from the harming of its citizens intellectual and physically, it must firstly, guarantee civil liberties, and secondly, it must punish and seek to rehabilitate those who infringe upon the liberties of others, physically or arbitrarily.

Now of course, restricting people from infringing on the rights of others means that some freedoms have to be restricted. As Burke said: “Liberty too, must be limited in order to be possessed” – but never did I advocate anarchy. The boundary for liberty is drawn at harm, physical harm, and harm of human beings as entities. Today we, along with the majority of other countries in the world, have commonly accepted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and we have the means in the United Kingdom to uphold these rights through our own legislation. Why then do we allow our government to violate our right to privacy and begin to erode fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and freedom of speech?

Perhaps one of my favourite quotes of all time is that of the American revolutionary Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty or give me death!” as drastic as it sounds, it demonstrates the human desire for freedom, and our innate disgust of slavery, tyranny and maltreatment as a race. As our civil liberties become increasingly eroded by the passage of various “emergency” legislations in the coming months and years in both this country and abroad, it is only right to be there to speak out against those who would take away the liberties that we require to live in a progressive, functional country.

Freedom from restrictions on our fundamental liberal rights is what we need to fulfil our free will. As much as Isaiah Berlin liked to differentiate the two concepts of liberty, I think that in fact, once we are free from external constraints, the more people will be able to “become their own masters” and fulfil their own potential. The more we allow authoritarian forces to make decisions for us and abuse our freedoms, the more we are harmed as humans.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This article is part of our ongoing ‘Why I am a Conservative’ series, in which supporters of CfL talk about their beliefs and values. If you would like to take part please email blog@con4lib

As you may have noticed, there’s been quite a lot of squabbling within the Conservative Party over the issue of the EU referendum recently. The party leader is all for remaining within the EU as he clings to the terms of his “renegotiation”, that is to say, his failure to achieve the majority of reforms that he sought to gain, or that his party wanted for that matter; all this despite the fact that a poll by Conservative Home showed that the majority of party members were set to vote leave. Several prominent Conservatives have openly supported the Leave campaign: Boris Johnson, Daniel Hannan, Michael Gove to name a few.

But hold on just a moment – something that happened recently got me thinking. A few days ago I was walking with a friend (who is a member of the Labour Party and intends to vote remain) and we were talking about which way we would vote in the coming referendum. “But Alex, what are you?” he asked “I’m a conservative” was my stalwart response. “Yes,” he continued “and what do conservatives do? They preserve things; they don’t like change – and what would leaving the EU be? It’d be one of the most radical changes in our international situation for decades.”

His words stuck with me for a while – and I ruminated on them. He has a good point – in its most basic sense, conservatism is an ideology which is generally suspicious of change and wholly opposed to radical change on the basis that ripping up what is established in our constitution and way of life often causes more damage than good. So is it truly conservative of us to vote leave? Having considered the history and the facts, I think it is; and I think my Labourite friend has fundamentally misunderstood the values of British conservatism, and here is why.

I have studied the history of the British conservative tradition fairly intensively in recent months, partly out of interest, and partly to form the basis of a book I am working on covering the tradition. Over the course of this research, I have found quite a wide spectrum of conservatism which has taken hold of British politics over the past 400 years or so. However, what was by far the most interesting were the foundations on which the Conservative Party was founded, a party which certainly forms the cornerstone for British conservatism in the modern age.

The Conservative Party was founded to be an alternative to the aristocratic Toryism of the 18^th century, and its members in the early years were the sorts of people we might now call “classical liberals”. Characters such as Robert Peel and William Gladstone started out as Tories, but a new kind of Tory – those committed to the ideas of individual freedom within the constraints of natural law, free trade and the free market. Their conservatism came mostly from their Christian values, and their reluctance to endorse widespread reform in a time of great social upheaval. Since then, the Conservative Party has always been most successful when defending those liberal values – the values that our parliamentary democracy was founded on with the implementation of the Bill of Rights in 1688.

On these grounds, I find it very hard to find any of these figures endorsing a trans-national political union, which supersedes the sovereignty of our national parliament, and sets laws and regulations which increasingly seem to be to the detriment of the British people. With the EU run by a commission of unelected bureaucrats, several of whom have actually expressed contempt for democracy, the principles of democracy that Britain has stood by for centuries are being eroded.

My personal favourite expression of the EU’s anti-democratic agenda comes from former President of the Commission José Manuel Barroso: “Governments are not always right…decisions taken by the most democratic institutions in the world are very often wrong” in an amusing outburst of frankly authoritarian intent. The aims of the EU’s leaders therefore are clear – they want closer union until the nation states of Europe are federated into a single United States of Europe, which it seems, would not even be run democratically, if in Mr Barroso’s opinion, democracy is so flawed. This concept in itself should make the British conservative retch, as it seems this institution is completely devoid of any desire to spread liberal democratic values and by extension, British values.

David Cameron continued the Remain campaign’s scaremongering tactics recently, talking of a threat to peace if we left the EU. Whilst the idea of a Third World War being imminent if we left the EU (which wanted to create its own army, and support foreign intervention, there’s peacemaking for you) is laughable, we should not forget that the last group of people who sought to create a European superstate – the Nazis – were bravely defeated by British and allied soldiers in 1945. While the EU is not trying to introduce a superstate in as violent and discriminatory a way as the Nazis, it seems insulting to our Glorious Dead’s memory to rip up the values they fought for just for the sake of continued European Integration.

It would seem then, that it is in the interest of British conservatives to vote to leave on the 23^rd June. If we are to preserve our constitution, our rights and freedoms from a tyrannical overseer, we must do so. Maybe it would be different if we had secured genuine reform, or we actually had a strong influence in EU policy, but unfortunately we do not, and David Cameron’s failed renegotiation has shown that the other European leaders have a completely different agenda to the British people’s, and have no interest in accommodating for us. On this basis, it is not a radical act to leave the EU, it is instead a highly conservative one – it is an act of self-preservation without which we may see a completely different, undemocratic Britain in the space of twenty, ten, maybe as short as one or two years’ time!

I’m sorry Mr Cameron, but I’m afraid you are not being very conservative in your support for EU membership. Perhaps our Prime Minister wants to sell our democracy down the river for the sake of appeasing those in Brussels, or perhaps he is genuinely misguided in thinking that there is some value in our membership of the union. Either way, remaining within the EU is far more of a threat to our national values than leaving.

In the words of Benjamin Disraeli “I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution; a Radical to remove all that is bad.” If it is radical to shake off the shackles of the EU from our constitution, and endeavour to build a freer Britain based on the ideas that have been handed down to us for generations, then we must be radical. It seems to me however, that we might lose all that is good in our constitution by failing to vote to leave the EU.

Alex is a student who will be reading for a Classics degree in October. When not studying the ancients, he devotes himself to politics and the philosophy of conservatism. He blogs at Burkeanthinker and you can follow him on Twitter: @burkeanthinker

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With the UK local and regional elections having just taken place on May 5 it is a telling time for the force of conservatism in British politics. On the one hand, the Conservative Party has made an impressive gain in Scotland, pushing the Labour Party into third place to become the official opposition. On the other hand, the Conservatives look set to lose the London Mayoral election, and England and Wales are seeing large swings towards UKIP.

Meanwhile, in national government, the Conservatives are coming under criticism for various policies. In this challenging time for the ideology of conservatism, I think it might be interesting to resurrect one of the founding fathers of modern British conservatism: William Pitt the Younger, to examine how he might tackle policy-making for the Tories in modern Britain.

Whilst Pitt is perhaps most famous for his management of the war against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, his social policy is mostly overlooked, unfortunately so, since by looking at his policies we find the origins of the modern Conservative Party. Pitt’s character was something to be admired: he was resilient in the face of parliamentary unpopularity and criticism, and unlike many politicians of his time, he was frank and honest both in Parliament and in public.

So let’s imagine (with a healthy dose of artistic licence), William Pitt the Younger arrives in 2016, and is elected leader of the Conservative Party – what would he do? First, it is likely he would have pursued an agenda of public transparency, both in terms of his personal actions and of the government in general. When Pitt first became Prime Minister in 1783 at the tender age of 24, he was ridiculed by many satirists: “a kingdom entrusted to a schoolboy’s care” being the cry of one contemporary newspaper. But Pitt soon earned himself the nickname “Honest Billy”, and would definitely have supported moves such as David Cameron’s publication of his tax returns in a gesture of openness. Pitt wanted to offer an alternative to the years of corruption and secrecy that had preceded him, and in modern Britain where distrust of an establishment responsible for “dodgy dossiers” and unfulfilled promises is still prevalent, a sprinkling of Pitt’s attitude towards honesty would be welcome.

Pitt was also a fiscal conservative. When he became Prime Minister for the first time he was left with a ruinous pile of debt by his Whig predecessors, and a struggling economy. This doesn’t sound too dissimilar to the situation left by the last Labour government in 2010. Pitt’s Britain was very different to ours, it did not have the social services and large public projects of today that the government has to budget for, but his ideas of fiscal responsibility and his commitment to reducing the national debt is something that remains a cornerstone of Conservative policy even today.

Pitt was also a committed free trader, and removed many tariff restrictions to encourage mercantile trade, actually raising revenue from trade in his time in office. No doubt Pitt would have objected to the EU’s restrictive Common External Tariff, due to its restrictive nature preventing the UK from fulfilling its full trading potential – something that Pitt would always strive for.

Pitt also created a sinking fund for the purpose of paying off national debt, and creating a reserve for times of hardship. Pitt raised much of the money for this fund from the government’s tax revenues, though it should be noted that Pitt’s income tax was imposed only on the rich, who could afford such taxation. Today,  due to his strong moral position, a modern Pitt would still support a progressive form of taxation. It had been suggested that the revenue from North Sea oil should be used for a sovereign wealth fund, I could well imagine Pitt supporting such a move.

It is highly likely that Pitt, being staunchly committed to the British national principles of the supremacy of Parliament, national sovereignty and liberty within the rule of law, would have opposed the EU as a concept. In Pitt’s time the power of the monarch was being increasingly curtailed in favour of Parliament as the voice of the British electors, and Pitt, being a supporter of Parliament, would most likely be outraged at the idea of a supranational government subordinating the UK and passing down laws, especially considering that most of those laws are prepared by the European Commission, which is comprised of unelected officials and bureaucrats – the very thing that Pitt attempted to reduce to improve the efficiency of the British political system and economy.

Finally, a brief word on Pitt’s parliamentary conduct. Pitt was unpopular amongst the established elites in his time; a solitary character with an unhealthy fondness for port wine. But in Parliament, Pitt was a persuasive speaker, charismatic and a resilient debater, often achieving support for his bills by appealing to cross-party support. Indeed, he opposed the development of a strict partisan system, and his supporters were a coalition of Whig and Tory MPs. Through his policies, Pitt created a “new Toryism”, one based on responsibility and national integrity, but also distanced from the old aristocracy of the 18^th century. It was Pitt who made the Tories a party of ordinary MPs willing to stand up for British values at a time when they were threatened. It was these values, and his refusal to compromise on them, that gave Pitt his public support, and allowed him to manage Britain through a time of great change without much social unrest.

There are certainly things which Pitt would find shocking about modern Britain. Universal enfranchisement, women’s votes, party campaigning and funding would all seem alien and repugnant to someone like Pitt, coming from a time where elections were accepted to be foregone conclusions based on the wishes of the local aristocracy.

This article, however, is not about that, it is about the policies of a modern Pitt, in a modern Britain, and in a country where honesty and firmly-held principles are becoming more of a rarity in politicians, a modern Pitt the Younger is the kind of leader modern Conservatives need. As they say: true blue will never stain.

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