The negligence of ‘not in my lifetime’

It is sometimes said, correctly, that conservatism is more an attitude than an ideology. And for me there have always been certain individuals who embody that attitude. The late and much-missed Tessa Keswick was one such person, and for some reason a remark of hers has recently been in my head. A few years ago we were at a friends’ house for dinner, with an eclectic group. At one point we were all debating something or other and one slightly left-wing woman at the table said: ‘Well, it’ll all be after my time, so I don’t see why I should care.’ If my eyebrows raised, Tessa’s positively shot up. After the meal the two of us debriefed. ‘That is one of the most shocking things I’ve ever heard,’ Tessa told me. I agreed. There was something so completely wrong about it that we both felt slightly nauseous.

And there is something seriously wrong about such a position – something positively immoral about putting off decisions that you can’t be bothered to take, or are not courageous enough to tackle. Why should those who come after you – whether your own descendants or not – be forced into a worse state of affairs simply because of the selfishness and short-termism of your own actions?

Yet in so much of what dominates our politics this instinct seems to prevail. For instance, on the issue of piling up national debt there is almost nobody who talks about this, or appears to see it as a moral issue. I know there are economists who insist that you can keep borrowing and borrowing and as you do the pie will grow so the debt will not matter. And I know there are those who think that the ‘emergencies’ since 2008 are so uncommon that of course we had to keep printing money.