Book Review

The arts of power

The Strange Death of Tory England

This is an elegant essay on a very big subject that is, obviously, of particular interest this week of the British general election. The Tory party, in one form or another, has been around for so long that it has seemed to be an alter ego of England herself. But analysing Toryism as a set of consistent political doctrines is a pretty useless exercise. A Conservative disposition should avoid ideology, for it knows that an understanding of human variety and a sophisticated awareness of historical fluidity are at the base of all successful political activity. Sceptical about human progress but also often bigoted about human prejudices, at various stages in its history both for and against free trade, veering sometimes towards economic protectionism in the defence of the empire and of cheap food, fond of the landed interest but aware that England’s economic power was based on heavy industry once and on financial services now: Tories have embraced and discarded a very large number of formally contradictory political and economic beliefs. The only apparent sub-stratum seems to be a subtle understanding of the arts of power – something which to the party opponents seems to be a sinuous Machiavellianism and to its supporters a proof of the Tory understanding of the great English continuities at both a psychological and institutional level.

The decline of such a formidable force is therefore not just a story about the internal workings of one political party but part of a possible wider and deeper narrative about the condition of England. And it is to the author’s credit that he keeps an attuned and journalistic ear to the ground of that particular terrain. Significant institutional failure – whether it’s the empires of Spain, Portugal and Rome or, at the more bathetic level, of the Tory party – is the result of both the external barbarians pressing in and the internal forces of dissolution welling up. It is in one sense greatly to the Tories’ credit that they failed to understand the exact and complete nature of New Labour barbarianism – that party’s complete abandonment of soul and heart to City finance, American power and obsessiveness with media presentation. But it is to the Tories’ discredit that they became so introspective a bunch of operators that they ceased to notice how quickly England was changing. The old subtlety had left their political bodies and left them a mere inert mass of matter spasmodically twitching at its nerve ends, as it tried to re-connect with the materialistic and hedonistic democracy which they had themselves largely created.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft brings a mordant touch to his largely melancholic story of decline without ever justifying the “death” alluded to in his title. Spouting some nasty stuff about immigration – but also responding to a widespread distrust of the Prime Minister’s once near-messianic style – the Tories have put up a better show in this General Election than they have done in the last 12 years. But to the deeper question of what is the point of the Tory party – of what it is really for – there still remains no answer.

Wheatcroft has written an enjoyably condescending study of his subject. His gift for the happy phrase takes him far and the lushness of some Tory characters provides him with excellent material – but this subject by now deserves a more analytic approach.This is a leader-writer’s book – written at some distance from events and deep, metaphorically, within a clubman’s leather armchair. But the concepts and the categories that shape this book are very limiting – and often seem tired. The author, by the bold allusiveness of his chosen title, places his work in the lineage of George Dangerfield’s classic work – The Strange Death of Liberal England. And a really significant work of political history should tell us something new about either the political elite or the political masses or, ideally, both – as Dangerfield did. Rehearsing the stale old observations about the conflict between Tory gentlemen and Tory meritocrats really does seem rather primitive intellectually at this point – even allowing for the fact that this is a book written at so great and necessary a speed that it must have discouraged serious thinking.

“Tory Death” studies seem likely to evolve in the years ahead. And there’s a mass of serious work to be done on why people voted Tory and then stopped. In the development of those studies this is a genially prepared hors d’oeuvre which leaves us wanting more.

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