Brexit has ended Thatcherism. And about time, too

A Conservative government is raising taxes to fund the NHS and telling business to pay its workers more. The world is upside down, and classical liberals are furious. Steve Baker, one of those MPs, tweeted a picture of a pile of books including Hayek, Popper and Von Mises and said ‘This is what we believe’, reminding us of a time when Conservatives sought to shrink the government, not grow it. Until recently, most of us thought Margaret Thatcher and Conservatism were synonymous.

We were wrong. While Hayek, Popper and Von Mises are definitely part of the conservative canon, and classical liberals part of the family, they dominated the right at a specific moment in response to specific challenges — i.e. the threat of communism. Absent that danger and they have no special claim over the Conservative party. In fact, it would be deeply unconservative if they did, for conservatism is not an ideology but an instinct, summarised by William F. Buckley’s image of a man standing athwart history shouting ‘Stop’.

During the reign of Thatcher, that ‘stop’ was aimed at over-mighty trade unions and state bureaucracy. Today it is against cultural wokery, obviously, but also against the very free-market anarchy that Mrs T unleashed in her bid to destroy socialism. By breaking with classical liberal dogma, Boris Johnson may have brought his party full circle.

Modern conservatism was born during the 17th and 18th centuries, in reaction to the Enlightenment. Liberals emphasised the wonders of the scientific method, reason and liberty. Conservatives were not necessarily opposed to these things but preferred to root progress in inherited attachments, such as place, hierarchy and church. Forced to defend institutions that had hitherto been taken for granted, they used novel arguments to justify their loyalty to ancient ideas, insisting, for instance, that we should keep our monarchs because they are actually better for liberty than a revolutionary republic.