Thursday, August 28, 2014

Douglas Carswell was never a Conservative

Paul Goodman (with whom I was at university some centuries ago) writes on Conservative Home:
Douglas Carswell has never, as far as I know, been a Tory – that’s to say, a believer that authority in Britain originates from its institutions: the Monarchy, Crown in Parliament, the Church of England. For as long as I’ve known him, he has always been not exactly a Whig but certainly a radical.
But then I said much the same on Liberal England two years ago:
Large parts of the Conservative Party now model their approach on that adopted in America. Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell, for instance, two of the more thoughtful new members of the party's right, owe little to traditional British conservatism and take many of their ideas from American libertarian circles. Some of their less intellectual colleagues have merely adopted the paranoid tone of Tea Party campaigning.
To be honest, that isn't exactly what I said. Before cutting and pasting I had to correct a typo and two grammatical errors. But my argument was sound.

2 comments:

Frank Little said...

- just as Mrs Thatcher was not really a Conservative.

Anonymous said...

Indeed. The 'High Tory' element of the Conservative Party (aka 'men in grey suits') have a truly appalling track record of selecting leaders (let alone being effective Ministers!).

In my 60 years, they've had one outstanding one, two competent managers (from wildly different backgrounds) - and at least six who were losers/walking disasters: Heath being, until brown, the worst PM in UK history - at least back to 1800.