Andrew Gimson

The Conservatives: A History by Robin Harris

If David Cameron and his friends wish to know why they and their policies are so despised by some Conservatives of high intellect and principle, they should read Robin Harris. His book is a marvel of concision, lucidity and scholarship, with penetrating things to say about Peel, Disraeli, Salisbury, Baldwin, Churchill, Macmillan and the rest. But much of its savour derives from Harris’s disgust — the word is not too strong — with the various forms of bogusness, including intellectual cowardice veiled by complacent politeness, which recur so often in the history of the Conservative party.

Harris recognises the ‘note of genius’ in Disraeli, but scorns the pious, posthumous ascription to him of an overriding concern for social reform: ‘What really mattered to Disraeli in the course of his career were the monarchy, the landed interest and, above all, national prestige.’ As Salisbury said in the Lords in tribute to his old chief: ‘Zeal for the greatness of England was the passion of his life.’

For Harris, Salisbury is ‘probably the most recognisably and intelligently conservative leader the party has ever had’. Salisbury did not believe in democracy, having written while supporting the losing side in the American Civil War: ‘Every community has natural leaders, to whom if they are not misled by the insane passion for equality, they will instinctively defer.’ Yet he recognised the importance of ‘villa Toryism’ in the new suburbs, and of party organisation as the means to mobilise it and win elections.

In 1903, Salisbury arranged the smooth succession of his nephew, Arthur Balfour, to the premiership. The party accepted its new leader with enthusiasm, but as Harris writes: ‘The unanimity of welcome represented a peculiarly Conservative mix of good manners, complacency, self-delusion and hypocrisy.’ Balfour led the party to the smash of 1906.

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