Quintin Hogg’s Case for Conservatism
80 years ago a fellow of All Souls College and a Conservative MP set out to write the case for Conservatism. His book is long and complex, combining a short piece on Conservative philosophy with a longer section on Conservative ideas. It is followed by a third section with an attack upon socialism and a fourth supplies an agenda for the defeated Conservatives in 1947. The book provides some brilliant phrases and insights into conservatism. It mixes these with personal experiences, a wish to draw on sweeping notions of history and to quote from Disraeli, Mill and others. Penguin the publishers state in the front of the book that he wrote a much longer work than they commissioned and he declined to shorten it.
It is sometimes contradictory, as when defending some Labour nationalisations in the Ideas section but offering a rough tough critique of nationalisation in his demolition of the socialist case. The book sees conservatism through the eyes of an English Conservative party supporter, not considering conservatism abroad . It was much locked into the debates and circumstance of post war UK. It was a statement from Conservative defeat, a plea for the Opposition to the new government to be heard and pointers to the changes that would need to be made as the Conservative party adapted to the new post war circumstances. He rightly saw that the problems of the 1950s would be creating enough investment and business capacity to meet demand and handling the new prosperity on offer, not still trying to overcome the poverty and depression of the 1930s.
Quintin Hogg captures the essence of conservatism in both defending the collective inheritance and seeking change through freedoms and free enterprise. I met him in 1972 when first elected to All Souls. We disagreed about the Heath government he served in. He was unhappy with my opposition to the wage and price controls they introduced. He disapproved of my scepticism about joining the European Community. It was an irony that his own words condemning governments that cease to be accountable for new laws and taxes came to apply to the EU membership which he supported.
He made a good case for limited and accountable government. He saw the importance of the role of Opposition in Parliament and the need for a government with a large Parliamentary majority to listen to what others were saying. He opposed the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of too much law and bureaucracy. He saw fascism and communism are similarly dangerous creeds based on exploiting state power and controlling or harming the people they governed.
It is time to update the case for conservatism.
August 23, 2025
We it rather depends on your definition of Conservatism. The Conservative Party to my mind has not been remotely Conservative in any real sense since Thatcher foolishly appointed John Major as her Chancellor and let him take us into the ERM with a view to joining the EURO. Even before that we had essentially state monopolies in Schools, Universities, Healthcare,Telephones… and hugely rigged markets in Transport, Housing, Energy, Banking, Investment, Fishing, Farming…
The laws of economic growth are essentially Conservative (small state, low regulations, low simple taxes, freedom of choice, virtually no rigged markets, law and order, deterrent for crime, freedom of speech… The Con-socialists since Thatcher(words left out ed)are the same as Labour but not quite as bad.
August 23, 2025
Since Thatcher appointed John Major as Chancellor and then let him joint the ERM was all I said was it not?
August 23, 2025
Nicholas Parsons would have challenged your John Major line on repetition in Just a Minute without hesitation.
August 23, 2025
But not on it’s veracity.
August 23, 2025
LL,
You have obviously not listened to ‘Just a minute’.
August 23, 2025
The problem is we haven’t had a Conservative government since Margaret Thatcher. We’ve had wishy washy social Democrats like continental Europe until this Marxist shower that’s in now.
Todays young don’t know what it’s like to live under Conservative government and hopefully seeing Trump in action will convince them to vote for one.
The only remote Conservative party is Reform so let’s give them our support.
They couldn’t be any worse than what we’ve had for the past 15 years and possibly could be much better.
August 23, 2025
Off topic. As high pressure continues to dominated over Britain Milibrains beloved windmills are providing just 1.28gw of power. Just imagine if this was a frosty December morning. He’s now offering £116 per mwh ro build more of these useless mach.
It has also been revealed that BP are refusing to run their CCGT plants in the North East because payments for maintaining hot standby bring in more profit. Insane.
Reply Yes good point. I am writing about our dire energy policy for Telegraph for Monday
August 23, 2025
No wind = no electricity
No wind = more criminal migrants
It’s almost like the Establishment’s Uni-Party WANTED to destroy the UK.
August 23, 2025
This is surely one of the most powerful arguments for Conservatism possible. In any capitalist country it must always be that if you don’t produce there is no income.
If Conservatism is not bound at the hip to capitalism then it is as nothing.
August 23, 2025
@Lifelogic – agreed but we live in a World that those we empower and pay can hear themselves to the exclusion of all others. Their minds are close and devoid of thought. One is minded to think that what is best for the Country is only what’s best for personal self-esteem and ego as long as someone else pays
August 23, 2025
Mogg was on Any Questions and pointed out that the HMRC section that deals with voluntary contribution only gets about £250,000 PA for comparison the Charities get about £11,000,000,000 PA. So not many people think of the Government is a worthy Charity.
But then when they spend circa £1.5 trillion on the net harm Covid lockdowns, net harm Covid Vaccines (see the damning statistics from Japan on deaths and the Czech Republic on live births…) and on Net Zero insanity. Then even more on propaganda & covering up and lying to the public on these matters then who would want to give them even more to waste or do even more net harm.
August 23, 2025
How much of the Charity income is from the Government?
Has any charity achieved anything positive yet? Cure for Cancer?
We have reached the point where professionally run charities must be outlawed.
Volunteers all must be the yardstick for all Charities.
August 23, 2025
@Lynn Atkinson – governments don’t have money of their own, just access to your wallet. But I get your point 25% of charity income is funded by the taxpayer. Yet their organisers nowadays get paid more than the would in real jobs. That begs the question is a charity about paying someone a wage or doing good?
August 23, 2025
Indeed get taxes down from 45% to 20% which is about right anyway and abolish charitable tax relief. Plus a middle man government to steal money off people in taxes waste perhaps 20% in costs and then give the remainder of this tax payer’s money to charities is not needed. Let people decide for themselves which charities deserve support and cut out the expensive middle man!
August 23, 2025
I think the country knows it needs Conservatism and it wants everything Donald Trump is doing. It wants economic growth again, lower taxes again, an end to illegal immigration, reduced levels of legal immigration and a focus on opportunities for the working class who have been financially compressed the most for too long (ie wage compression, rental inflation and elevated taxes due to mass, low-skilled immigration since 1997).
Donald Trump identified all this and he won the 2024 elections convincingly. Indeed he actually gave Keir Starmer electoral advice whilst in Turnberry recently ‘Politics is pretty simple… whoever does these things: lower taxes, keep us safe, keep us out of wars, stop the crime, and in your case, a big immigration component… the one that’s toughest and most competent on immigration is going to win the election.’ He’s right of course and this just needs to be delivered for the British people.
August 23, 2025
The county does know and have Sunak not cut and run six month early, ditched net zero, ditched the ECHR, not appointed tax to death Hunt and had attempted to control immigration he would have done far, far better. Alas he was essentially yet another deluded global socialist.
August 23, 2025
Sunak called an early GE because he was worrid that the Rwanda plan might work and he knew that Labour would win and cancel it immediately. Why otherwise did he go to the country 6 months early and before the Rwanda plan became live? It’s success may well have delivered for him electoral success.
August 23, 2025
Paul
Unfortunately Our Prime Minister is not really listening to Trump or anyone who has commercial common-sense, he looked totally bemused, vacant, and lost when Trump was making those statements, he only came to life when he attempted to defend the Mayor of London “he is a friend of mine”
Just about sums it up.
With the present government in control (out of control in reality) the Country is lost.
The sad fact is the Conservative Party is no longer even a small “c” Conservative Party.
Reform are the nearest to the original Conservatives, hence why they are getting a growing amount of support.
August 23, 2025
Alas he is no friend of London where shoplifting, phone thefts, mugging and knifings are out of control. Let us see how Notting Hill goes this year. Another example of two tier policing in action.
August 23, 2025
Yes there has been no Conservative option for most. In a few constituencies there was a Conservative Candidate so those voters were lucky.
We need to make the Moral case for Conservatism, then we need to present that option to the electorate.
Rupert Lowe can’t do it on his own.
August 23, 2025
@Paul Freedman +1, we all know that, and that’s not me being contrary its common sense. But we have a Parliament so wrapped up in self they cant hear the question let alone the answer
August 23, 2025
See:-
How Conservatism Can Save Our Country by David Starkeywww.youtube.com › watch
and
The Strange Death of Conservative England by David Starkeywww.youtube.com › watch
Good to see that the political prisoner of Lord Hermer and Two Tier Kier – Lucy Connolly has finally been freed after over a year in jail – see the interview in the Telegraph with the excellent Allison Pearson. A small fine was the most she should ever have suffered and in my view not even that.
But she was coerced into pleading guilty by not being given bail and told she would therefore have to serve more time by pleasing not guilty than guilty. A heads you lose tail you lose even more system! Rather like the car fine system where you pay half if you pay early but is you challenge it you have to pay the full fine, possible costs and waste load of your time unpaid. Heads you lose Tails you lose even more! One way “justice”!
The three appeal court judges who said there was “no arguable case” that the initially sentence was excessive should resign! As should the six who absurdly denied Lucy Letby her appeals against the 15 absurdly unsound convictions. Did they really think all 15 were “perfectly safe convictions” not one was!
August 23, 2025
The Justice system is captured. So are the police. It’s very frightening.
August 23, 2025
Indeed and many of the charities, quangos and the international quangos!
August 23, 2025
I hope that perhaps the USA ambassador reads this forum, and that the Lucy Connolly case is brought to the attention of Donald Trump and J.D.Vance, and that perhaps sactions are brought against Starmer, Hermer and others.
August 23, 2025
I understand she is meeting the American Ambassador.
August 23, 2025
The country has changed since Quentin Hogg’s day. The class system, still obvious in the 1970’s, with it’s origins in the Norman conquest has been eroded. The age of deference to your “betters” has, thankfully ended
Thinkers like Edmund Burke, a key figure in the Whig party, provided the philosophical foundation for conservatism by emphasizing tradition, organic social structures and gradual change – in opposition to the radicalism of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
Labour’s origins were different; socialism was born out of the hundreds of Victorian “working class” children who lost their lives down Yorkshire coal mines, up chimneys or in Lancashire textile mills. Trade unions were violently opposed by the “upper class” but also became part of the Labour movement.
The Tory party has still failed to understand the scale or the reasons for the 2024 election defeat. Conservatism was decisively rejected by the electorate, who wanted change after 14 years of chaos and reduced living standards. The export industries and the industrial base of the country were lost – along with millions of jobs -under the conservative leaders Margaret Thatcher and John Major in the 1970/80’s
People have long memories, especially if they bought their council house and then had it repossessed.
Reply More industry was lost, jobs shed and mines closed under Labour. The 1970s were devastating. All Labour governments put unemployment up.Big falls in unemployment 2010-24
August 23, 2025
We didn’t have Conservatism from 2009 – 2024. We had Globalist Liberalism …. the same Agenda Blair had been imposing since 1997.
THAT’s what was rejected, not conservatism.
August 23, 2025
Agreed, too true…
August 23, 2025
Exactly so!
August 23, 2025
@Donna – agreed. and the parliamentary group, hanging their hat on conservatism, wants more of the same continuity of failure. They never heard what the nation was saying to them and clearly they wouldn’t even know what conservatism is.
August 23, 2025
@Sakara Gold – ‘The class system, still obvious in the 1970’s’ I don’t recognise that, the class system is a recent Socialist/Labour construct invented to create a divide so as to gain traction for their idealogical purpose.
Its a bit like those that pander to diversity, equalities and inclusion they have been invented it to put one sector of society on a platform to highlight that they believe in discrimination first. If everyone is equal but different what and why is that a problem, other than for those that want to lord it over other and manipulate. A bit like the ‘Gang’ culture of Parliament it detracts for the true purpose of what a democracy is
August 23, 2025
Sir John,
Yes indeed, we do need Conservatism in order to save what’s left of our nation.
We have become a very divided country in recent years as the bind weed of the left has taken control of more areas of our state. Even our current monarch and his likely successor seem to be left leaning.
Since the 1960s,the left have been taking over our institutions. They started with education,in order to control what kids are taught. They then moved into the media, in order to control what news makes it to the public’s ears. They then waited to get elected with a big majority as in 1997,at which point, they altered our relationship with the state and other nations.
They politicised our laws and our courts and enacted so many new laws that no ordinary person could possibly know what the law actually was.
I fear that our national identity has moved too far left for us to move it back to our normal, Conservative mindset.
Even if we got a right of center party into power, it would be blocked at every turn by those of the left that have infested our institutions.
I like to describe myself as a traditional Conservative with a conscience but I fear that I am a species on the endangered list.
August 23, 2025
+1
August 23, 2025
Cliff I believe you are in the majority.
That’s why the option had to be removed from the political choice.
August 23, 2025
Lynn,
Thanks Lynn… I am not so sure about being in a majority now. I am sure I am amongst my peers (65+ British born
) but, I am not so sure once you look at the values and beliefs of the under forty cohort. They’ve been “got at” and have suffered our nation’s so called education system or indoctrination system as I prefer to call it.
As more of my generation reach their ultimate destiny, so the number of us right of center diminishes.
In 1968, we moved from East London to Berkshire to start a new life. At that same time we thought about taking up the “Ten Pound Pom” scheme and to be honest, today I regret not taking the Australian option.
August 23, 2025
@Cliff.. Wokingham. +1
August 23, 2025
In an extremely disturbing development, following Trump’s private chat with the war criminal Putin in the presidential limousine in Anchorage last week, the US Defence Secretary Hegseth has initiated a further round of sackings in the US intelligence community
Hegseth has fired Lt General Jeffrey Kruse, who led the Defence Intelligence Agency, the head of US Naval Reserves and the head of US Naval Special Warfare Command
Trump continues his campaign of retribution against his perceived political opponents. Yesterday FBI agents searched the home and office of John Bolton, who was Trump’s National Security Advisor in his first administration, apparently involving allegations of the criminal release of classified information
We should remember that the FBI also raided Trump’s Mar-e-Lago Florida home in 1922, where highly classified documents were discovered stored in his toilet.
August 23, 2025
It was Biden who had classified documents in his toilet. He was deemed by the legal experts, ‘incapable of standing trial’.
All Presidents have a right to remove and keep classified documents, Trump did NOTHING illegal.
Bolton was never the President.
August 23, 2025
All too true. Kemi Badenoch needs to produce such a treatise in shorter form to set out her vision even if not all the policy detail. If she has no vision she cannot appeal to voters. To be void of a vision when her party had been in office for 14 years demonstrates a complete lack of any idea of how to govern and the direction of travel. She is and will fail and even worse runs a divided party. That is why I and so many of my friends and ex Conservatives will vote Reform.
Reply I am publishing the essence of my conservative vision tomorrow
August 23, 2025
Tim
Perhaps Kemi believes that she can only change her Party slowly, otherwise they will/may push her out for going too fast too soon.
Sadly she has to make huge criticisms and some apologies for errors of what her Party did for many of the 14 years of which she was a part, before she makes a new case for a new direction.
August 23, 2025
Look forward to reading it. The foundation for a Party?
August 23, 2025
“It is time to update the case for conservatism.”
It seems to me that is precisely what Mr Farage and Reform UK is attempting to do.
After all, the Not-a-Conservative-Party had 14 years to do it and (depending on your point of view) either refused to do it or failed abysmally.
For me, it starts with the notion that the UK is an independent nation which should not be governed by “international laws” such as those created by the EU, the ECHR or the ICJ. There should be no taxation without representation and therefore laws which are created outside of the UK by people who are not democratically accountable to the British people should not be enforceable in the UK, or its territories.
Since the Not-a-Conservative-Party refuses to accept that the result of the EU Referendum meant LEAVING the EU (not becoming partially detached) and also refuses to leave the ECHR* I do not expect to ever vote for it again.
* Rumour is that Badenough is waiting until the CON Party Conference to make a spectacular announcement on membership of the ECHR.
Reply The Conservatives have already said they will legislate to stop ECHR applying to migration cases, something I and other MP s tried to get Sunak to do.The Conference will set out how much international law, not just ECHR, needs to be rolled back and how you could do that by asserting UK law.There is a complex web of treaties and international conventions to sort out.Its not just easy slogans we need.
August 23, 2025
Reply to reply.
You see, it appears that to you (and probably the Not-a-Conservative-Party) that it’s the AMOUNT of foreign law which should be enforceable in the UK.
Whereas I think the answer is NONE. A Sovereign Independent Nation should not be subject to laws made outside the UK by people who are not accountable to the British people. At best, the UK should commit to “take note of” international conventions relating to the treatment of minorities, refugees, asylum seekers etc. And when it comes to the EU, none of their laws should be enforceable within the UK.
Reply Agreeing to some treaties as on nuclear weapons, trade rules etc can make sense. All should have as a legal base UK Statute and be reversible by exiting the treaty.
August 23, 2025
Response to Reply.
Yes that is correct. Of course all Treaty Law is reversible. Unfortunately most MPs do not know that. We could easily have been out of the EU without the massive risk of a Referendum with a biased and very rich and powerful local and international State weighed in solidly against us.
We certainly need a European Security Treaty which includes Russia.
August 23, 2025
The update is well in progress.
The old Conservative party is nearing terminal decline.
Reform UK is leading the way ahead.
August 23, 2025
Dear Sir John,
Will you write it?
If you do, I’ll buy it.
Reply Yes I will write it. Summary of case will be published here tomorrow.
August 23, 2025
The problem is that Conservatism ran itself over between 2010-2024.
Cameron split himself off from traditional Conservatives in trying to ape Blair (After Hague also tried it and failed).
Johnson fooled us into thinking he’d recover the situation from May, who was herself just too scared of being disliked. Real Conservatives wouldn’t have splurged on Covid, stopped traditional energy sources and messed up immigration so badly. Perversely Sunak was probably closest to being an old fashioned Conservative, but by then the die was cast. Conservatives won’t conserve or maintain anything. They’ll lie, tax, look after their own while trying, still, to ape Blair. It’s over.
Reform is untried, untested but fortunately has 4 years to show their mettle while Labour in all its guises ruins things further.
August 23, 2025
I agree with all you have said.
Unfortunately the unsackable leadership of Reform (because they own it) will reveal that they have no mettle.
We need to bury this failed Conservative Party and start again with people of substance.
August 23, 2025
I shall be interested to read your updated case for Conservatism. But it is not just that it needs updating, and I think this in itself is questionable, except in presentation: the bulk of the truths of the Conservative case are eternal. What the Conservative case has been in desperate need of for decades is a leadership that truly believes in it and is determined and able to promulgate its message. The only conceivable exception was Liz Truss, but she had failed to take on board Harold MacMillan’s maxim that “Politics is the art of the possible”.
August 23, 2025
Yes she insisted on going to war with both Russia and China!
Nuts in May.
August 23, 2025
I believe true Conservatism reflects the human state.
The human race probably recognised thousands of years ago that a balance had to be found between private activity and socialised activity.
I think true Conservatives have that balance about right and this balance is in tune with the People’s wishes.
August 23, 2025
Both Labour and Conservatives have both lost plot original values and reason de etra – aka reason to exist.
When I was at school in the mid 60s a certain budding future Labour MP Chris Mullin introduced a Conservative MP who said Conservatives basically “conserve the best of the old and the best of the new”.
Well I think many people would have trouble identifying these rare people today. So sad indeed.
In the meantime it seems Trump is appearing comprised by Putin and just as unreliable as Biden, even sadder.
And Labour inherit the seeds of their own naivety.
August 23, 2025
Don’t worry about Ukraine. There will be no ‘security force’ no negotiated settlement.
Just deal with the reality which is that the European wing of NATO have already given Ukraine security guarantees individually, but they refuse to go to war with Russia. Must be because they think they would win?
We need people to speak to the Russian President so we understand that He wants Security Guarantees from NATO, which has attacked him, again via Ukraine.
August 23, 2025
Political theorising is all well and good but most people associate the modern conservative MP since 2010 with the likes of Rory Stewart and Anna Soubry, rather than John Redwood and Craig Mackinlay. The return of James Cleverly hardly augurs a sea change – even if he undergoes an apparent damascene conversion like Robert Jenrick!
August 23, 2025
Apologies for the US style AI intervention that seems to change my English writing into something else.
August 23, 2025
I too got to meet Quintin Hogg when he came to Lunch at my in-laws. We were both out off place with the situation and finished spending an hour or so in a corner have a long conversation. I found him very insightful and engaging about everything.
That is the type of person the Tories need to find if they are ever to find their way back. They have to abandon their Socialist WEF doctrine, get rid of what some call ‘Wets’, the Liberal Democrats/One Nation limps. These people as Socialist simply wouldn’t understand what a Conservative is. The reason some of us suggest names like the Uniparty, the Con-Socialist, etc is in recognition that the term Conservatism just doesn’t exist in the Parliamentary Party and it is in hope that one day we may get another Conservative Party.
We need a centre ground party that works with the people that elected them. A party that works to keep the people and the country safe and secure. This endless fight that Parliament and its leadership has taken up against the People and the Nation has no place in a Democracy.
Quintin Hogg a Conservative, the type that CCHQ and the Parliamentary Group calling themselves Conservatives fight to keep out of their ranks. Until that situation changes the have no way back, just extinction.
August 23, 2025
No we DONT need a ‘centre ground’ party. We need a Conservative Party which holds its ground no matter where the others drift to – thereby moving the scale.
Therefore we need sound people who can hold their ground and do not need to be the most popular person in whichever room they happen to be in. No narcissists.
That is why Trump seems to flip flop.
When he was in a discipline where everything was negotiable he was a winner. But in politics a lot is NOT NEGOTIABLE. Putin and Netanyahu and Powell and Thatcher all were/are capable of holding their ground and when further negotiations are impossible, fighting for it – dying for it.
August 23, 2025
People try to paint this group calling itself a government in parliament as some sort of out of hand extremist cult. Yet it has more than 50% of the Support from the HoC and the HoL it is not a government acting in isolation
In the first instance it has to be recognised the destruction of the UK Society started with Blair. Got stuck in a financial trap that we are all still paying for by the incompetent Brown. Cameron was thought by some to come in and change things, he talked a good talk, by pretending to be a Tory, yet he wasn’t he was a Liberal Democrat and clueless, compounding the situation not changing a thing. Then came May, a soft touch by those fearing conservatives might come forward, but a disaster and by her actions and support of a similar Parliament a traitor to the electorate – putting ego above job. Then bumbling Boris, who moved to the Darkside cancelled the UK’s future by banning everything that earned the Country money without reason or contemplating finding an alternative. He was never a Conservative, a school mate of Cameron with a Socialist upbringing. Then we got Sunak/Hunt the disaster twins, that couldn’t hear or read the mood of the country, they changed nothing they refused, they managed nothing they refused, but they did teach Reeves how to fiddle the books and confuse, which is why their directions opened the door and continue today. Reeves has another 4 years in which to enact the Hunt two-step to make things look better than they are just before the election
Those that call themselves conservatives rather than just another faction of the Uniparty, think that as they had the collective responsibility while in cabinet and what the party needed was continuity, more of the same for the party and the country is the best. Total delusion. They even try to fumble their responsibility for the Countries woes. The high taxes, high borrowing, the out of hand energy prices and then of course the criminal invasion of the Country. At any time whilst in power they could have changed any of those situations, they had the collective responsibility, the power – they refused.
As already mentioned today we need representatives that work with the people, people that can hear the people. We have had around 25 years of Parliament fighting the people, the excuses are to thin to ignore
August 23, 2025
It certainly is time to re-establish conservatism Sir John, it is over 15 years late and counting.
I am not sure we will still have the option to elect a true conservative party in four years time, what ever title it runs under. I am not sure under the present nation destruction policies being progressed by Labour we will still be an independent country in four years time, or even allowed to select who is in control of state affairs….
August 23, 2025
Quentin Hogg’s book sounds interesting. I’ll see if it is still in print. It is a simple fact that in the previous years of con-lib, then conservative government the leaders were not true conservatives. They did not govern on conservative values and paid the price at the GE.
The problem remains in that too many of the opposition conservative MPs today are not true conservatives.
A big part of the problem was David Cameron removing the right of local parties to choose their candidate.
I hope Kemi Badenoch can return the party to being conservative, but I wonder if the leader needs to be someone who was not involved in the last government. At least Kemi can now say, “Labour has done more damage in 14 months than the Conservatives did in 14 years.
August 23, 2025
“Labour has done more damage in 14 months than the Conservatives did in 14 years.”
Labour have been even more appalling than I expected of them but I do not think this is true. Just the £400+ billion borrowed and spent on net harm lockdowns and net harm covid vaccines is one hell of a lot of damage as are the millions of low skilled, net cost immigration levels and the 14 years of climate alarmism amd May’s moronic net zero bill just nodded through by the dire “Conservative” Tories. Plus the vast tax increases from Osborne, Hammond, Sunak, Hunt…
REPLY
August 23, 2025
Sounds a bit long even for his publishers! Perhaps a David Starkey or Milton Friedman video or two instead!
August 23, 2025
People were sick of wars in the 1940s and beyond and it is understandable that there was a desire to have countries co-operate and trade with each other, with the logic being that trading nations are less likely to go to war.
The eu may have worked if it had remained as a fairly passive network allowing free trade.
The problem was that some organisations become power-hungry and try to over-reach. We have found the same with the U.N. and with judiciaries at home and abroad.
The WTO and NATO, by contrast, have refrained from trying to take too much control and have been useful organisations as a result.
August 23, 2025
Quinton Hogg was a Christian Conservative. He believed in something greater than himself (God – but also family and country).
Modern Conservatism is more secular and atheistic. Doesn’t really believe in anything concrete. Just money (and in a very short-term one-dimensional way) as a way of defining ‘success.’ Like Scrooge before his conversion.
Atheists might do good to others. But this is ad hoc. It’s not a philosophy in the same way someone such as Quinton Hogg saw Christian values as being essential to Conservatism (and connected to Christian values, the best values of the Greco-Roman world also in decline and that I am sure Hogg would lament, too, if he were alive today).
August 23, 2025
Hogg would not do well in politics today. Lord Hailsham would be far too posh.
He would be unable to resort to a ‘Call me Dave’ approach, or a Boris Johnson comedy toff persona.
August 23, 2025
Germany knew there was a situation that needed sorting, so…
Rejected asylum seekers in Germany could be stripped of their right to a lawyer to speed up deportations.
Friedrich Merz, the chancellor, will abolish a rule that automatically assigns a lawyer to asylum seekers awaiting deportation, even if they have lost their final appeal.
All it takes is political will, something the along for the ride UK Parliament refuses to contenplate
August 23, 2025
Hello John,
Good to meet you again yesterday and as you will recall I mentioned about rewriting what being a “Conservative” meant. I look forward to hearing from you more about it.
Kind regards
Paul
Reply Good to catch up yesterday. See tomorrow’s blog which is my summary statement of Conservatism.
August 23, 2025
It’s not a question of conservatism. It’s a question of policies. The right policies for the benefit of the indigenous people of the UK, which has not been in place since 1997. Unfortunately the majority of Parliament, the Civil Service, the BBC, the educational establishment and the judiciary have pursued the very damaging twin policies of Net Zero to sabotage the economy and the mass immigration of people who bring with them their own alien and opposing, cultures, laws, practices and grievances causing, as the PM says, for us to become a nation of strangers.
August 23, 2025
Conservatism is a political attempt to encapsulate and perpetuate those qualities that make us British irrespective of colour or class origins. Sadly the party that uses the name conservative has drifted too far to be credible, from these qualities, to be replaced by a party that gives every indication that it recognises such qualities and will make every effort to ensure they are revived.