Guest Contributor Carl Packman asks whether British Conservatives are suffering from the "epistemic closure" that has beset their American counterparts
Julian Sanchez, a journalist and fellow of the American libertarian think tank Cato Institute, has in recent times received prominence for, among other things, the use of the term “epistemic closure” which he uses to describe the so-called “conservativism” of such enfant terribles as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. For Sanchez these “shock-jocks” represent a misinformed political view that has come to be inexplicably linked to conservative thinking – despite appearing more like crass populism; alien to the noble history of conservative thought.
This type of base politics is not limited to the US alone. Conservatism in the UK suffers from its own epistemic closure – which has even held a tight grip on the policies of the British Conservative Party (of which more in a moment).
The history of conservatism has brought about many figures which we all – left and right – can take inspiration from, for their intellect and loyalty to principle over party tribalism. Disraeli, whom this blog pays homage to, had many sympathies with the Chartists of the 19th century, and called for an alliance between well heeled aristocrats and the working class against the rise of merchants and new industrialists with a bent for exploitation.
Disraeli, in opposition to other Tory comrades, felt a protectionist model was needed in order to protect corn prices against less expensive foreign imports, causing a split in the Tory Party in 1845-6. To jump ahead a few years, this was precisely the same attitude that informed Euroscepticism within the ranks of the Conservative Party, in particular Enoch Powell's plea for the electorate to vote Labour back in its Bennite days, coloured by Euroscepticism, his protest against Britain under Mrs Thatcher gaining membership in the European Economic Community (which she only opposed later on after the Labour party realised that by being in the EEC they could restore the union laws that Thatcher had gotten rid of).
Powell, in another famous speech in Shipley, raised the roof by shouting: "I was born a Tory, am a Tory and shall die a Tory. It is part of me... it is something I cannot alter". For him, there was no contradiction between being a Conservative and calling for other Conservatives like him to vote for a party committed to principles he felt were more in line with his own than those practiced by his tribe.
I am not suggesting either Disraeli or Powell were right, nor am I suggesting there is parity between them, but what they do share is a willingness to rise above the politicking of the day; to remain true to their principles.
And there is a great tradition within conservative thinking to reject the political thinking of the day – not because they contain bad ideas, but because they may be ill-formed. Edmund Burke, the foremost conservative philosopher, has been written off by many as a mere anti-enlightenment thinker, though this couldn't be further from the truth. In fact Burke recognised very well how complex society is, and how unpredictable human nature can be, which informed his decision to oppose what he saw, in his contemporaries, as a desire to mess around with the “political and social arrangements that have stood the test of time” (as
philosopher Jeremy Stangroom recognised, writing on the Irish statesman).
Burke as a conservative, rather than simply having an unceasing aversion towards political conceptions of natural right, was a political realist - at ends with the political idealism attributed to certain thinkers at the time, now associated with enlightenment.
Back on topic, Peter Hitchens, in his book
The Cameron Delusion, noted that the “main enemy of conservatism in Britain is the Conservative Party”. Hitchens is right, but not in the way he thinks. For him, today's party serves to appease the fashionable left, but what he seems ignorant of is the socially liberal values, to which all parties of the establishment have signed themselves up to, have themselves served the test of time and are in fact correct (gay rights is one case in point).
In fact, conservatism being absent from today's Conservative Party is in many ways symptomatic of the epistemic closure which has consumed it. Rather than explore conservative principles, the Conservative Party is obliged to appeal to an audience whose interest in politics is limited to illegal immigrants supposedly destroying British culture, the European Union doing much the same, recycling bins, political correctness, health and safety and other nasties for the political misanthrope.
The Conservative Party knows that during elections, particularly locally, if they were to neglect the demographic enthused by this kind of politics, then a game-changing portion of their vote will be swallowed up by such smaller parties as the United Kingdom Independence Party.
For whatever the real views of the Conservative policymakers, they know their party is held up in no small part by epistemically closed politics.
This is also one impression of the Conservative's election disappointment last May, under the socially liberal Cameron who some Conservative critics find rather wet. In spite of the fact he is now Prime Minister, he has only been able to achieve this with a leg up from the Liberal Democrats. Being in opposition at a time when the Labour Party were at their most unpopular, after an unpopular war, during a financial recession, the timing should have been political gold for the main opposition. But this was not to be.
Cameron was supposed to be the modern Disraeli – his
critics see him more as
Dahrendorf.
Despite the name, the Conservative Party is stuck to a set of low politics which, if they were to ignore, would remove a large chunk of their electoral appeal. There is a long way to go before conservativism returns to the Conservative Party.
Carl Packman is a London-based writer and blogger for
Raincoat Optimism and
Though Cowards Flinch