The classic line is: "If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart, and if you are not a conservative when old, you have no brain." Of course, as with every quote, it is misattributed to Winston Churchill.
While a funny quote, I've always thought people take it too much to heart. A friend recently said a very tender comment to me that I really appreciated. He said he feels bad for me as I'm always known as the 'tory' - a derogatory term for conservative. Even though I am the kindest guy he knows.
He's right in that I am often known as the ‘tory’. It is less of an issue for me at work, as people are very bipartisan about politics. But when I mention work to someone new, the next question is always "and for which party?"
This always makes me cringe, as the answer can lead to adverse reactions. Most people, thankfully, are happy to talk about politics and can recognise that beyond politics, we are still human.
This is usually more often the case with people older than me. But at a fête in France after I mentioned to someone roughly my age that I worked for a conservative they immediately responded, "I don’t know why people are so mean about it; we should be able to have friendly dialogue and understand each other's point of view."
We never really established politics, but I imagine her’s were far different from mine. But she was more than willing to talk about it. She was however, the exception.
More common with people my age is my experience flathunting. One day, I met a landlord who was bright and bubbly, and was more than happy to let me live there. Until at the end she asked what I did for work, I of course told her, and at which point she immediately said, "As long as it is not for a Tory". Rest assured, I did not get that flat.
I can't really complain because it was my own choice. I personally hold conservative beliefs. This is not actually - as typical of most young conservatives - a result of parents (whom I would have described as non-political growing up) but rather a mix of a childhood in the Middle East and self-reflection.
As mentioned previously, I grew up in Dubai, a place of pure authoritarianism where freedom - in the political sense - is non-existent. Free speech isn’t a concept and there are no elections.
From this, I developed strong opinions towards the value of freedom and democracy. Something many in the UK consistently undervalue. That was the basis of my political beliefs going into university, and I fear to report I would have considered myself closer to libertarianism. However, once I had spent time in the UK, read widely, and frankly grown up a little, I turned to more traditional conservative ideals.
I was speaking to an American who said to me that she couldn’t understand why I was a conservative, as the policy positions I held tracked liberal in the US. I think that is true; I would probably reluctantly vote Democrat in the US.
But this is because my conservatism tracks far differently than the popular faux American reactionary conservatism. And as a result is hard to articulate to an American, as it is so based in heritage and culture - which they, of course, lack.
Conservatism to me is defined by the quote from Edmund Burke, British Statesman, on society: "a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
Real conservatism is based on the instinct to preserve and improve what is of value, not in human society in the abstract, not in societies in general, but in one’s own society. It is a philosophy of reform, not reaction, of collective benefit, not the entrenchment of sectional advantage. It seeks to challenge injustice by addressing social ills, but is sceptical of radical schemes to overturn the social order or extend the limits of individual or collective human power. Its focus first is on the legacies and continuities of a specific past as a guiding resource, not as a programme for the future.
Jesse Norman MP
The problem is that, whilst those are a lot of pretty words, it's hard to translate that idea into policy and hard political reality. Therefore, it would be easiest to split this into two articles. One on the more theoretical understanding of why I am conservative, using the House of Lords as a key example (as too few people really appreciate the Lords), and then a second on the actual policy prescriptions.
The House of Lords provides the greatest distinction of my politics versus someone who is a liberal or a socialist. The House of Lords is a hard institution to explain to Americans, but frankly, everyone finds it hard to understand.
The House of Lords forms the second half of the British Parliament and is the upper house. It currently has 805 members and is the second largest legislative chamber in the world, only beaten by the National People’s Congress of China.
It is also made up entirely of unelected members: 692 life peers - people nominated for a peerage, 92 (but currently 88) Hereditary peers - people who gain their place by birth, and 25 Lords Spirituals - Bishops of the Church of England.
Upper houses - or - second chambers - are not unique to the British Constitution. For example in the US, you have the Senate, a upper house with a different electoral setup. It's also not unique to have unelected upper houses; the Senate of Canada is appointed.
But it is unusual to have an upper house that is enormous, appointed for life, has clerics in its membership, and has members granted membership based on birthright.
To be frank, the House of Lords was actually weirder. Prior to 1999, every Hereditary peer had the right to sit in the House of Lords, meaning the membership was actually 1,330 peers. As well as this, there were 12 Law Lords who, after 2007, formed the Supreme Court - yes, the highest court in the land sat in the House of Lords (Which we should return to).
To most people, the House of Lords is an entirely indefensible institution that entrenches the privilege of the elite and perpetuates the class system. I, however, adore the House of Lords.
The House of Lords, as a body, is relatively underpowered; they only have the ability to delay legislation by one year and have no power over finance bills. They also can't delay manifesto commitments. Yet the House of Lords plays a key role in legislation because most of the bills that come from the Commons are, frankly, poor. The Lords often have the task of cleaning up the bills after they are rushed through the Commons; they are known as the revising house.
The fact of the matter is that politicians are busy, extremely busy. They are pulled in every direction by everyone. Their constituents want them to go one way, their party members want them to go another, campaign groups are constantly on their tails, lobbyists (not as bad as Americans) are often chasing after them, their own staff pressuring them, and of course, the Whips - the chief enforcers of their party - chasing/bullying/persuading, all depending on your perspective, of course.
Unfortunately, this means that politicians have very little time to pay attention to the bills in front of them. So when the Division Bell rings across the estate - another lovely quirk of the British Parliamentary System is an expansive system of bells that ring to indicate a vote, they also exist in some pubs and restaurants outside of the parliamentary estate - during which you have 10 minutes to get into a division lobby and vote, the vast majority of MP’s won’t have a clue about what they are voting on
Compounded by often multiple votes a night MP’s heavily rely on the Whips to tell them how to vote. Meaning that our legislators are not actually legislating, and the consequence is Bills are often passed with extreme haste and little to no backbench scrutiny.
This is where the Lords provide a ‘sober second thought’ to legislation. The Lords are extremely effective; they take their scrutinising function very seriously; its debates are less partisan and often of much higher quality than in the Commons.
The House of Lords has this reputation of being filled with old white men who do very little and collect their £300 a day. And that the members appointed are often just political stooges chosen by the Prime Minister. Most would contend that a house with no elections therefore has no democratic legitimacy and should be replaced with an elected upper house. I strongly oppose this on two accounts.
Firstly, the reality of the British Parliament is that whilst it looks bicameral, it is essentially unicameral. The House of Commons passes legislation and the House of Lords acts as an advisory body. The House of Lords can’t pass legislation without the Commons. But the Commons can pass legislation irrespective of the Lords.
However, once you have two elected houses, you immediately run into problems around legitimacy. If both houses are elected, neither will bend to the will of the other and the result of which will just be gridlock and partisanship, a problem common in the American system.
But my second problem is the contention that democratic legitimacy flows only through elections. That would immediately invalidate unelected institutions such as the Bank of England, the Supreme Court, and the OBR. Something I think most who are against the House of Lords are unwilling to do.
It also fails to recognise an uncomfortable fact about the Lords: in some sense, it is more representative of the public than the Commons. The House of Lords, as part of its structure, has members that are called "crossbenchers" - these are members not aligned to any particular party. Making up around 20% of the House of Lords membership, they provide invaluable expertise on a wide variety of issues. And because they are appointed, they are insulated from political pressure on their opinions.
An important detail is also that no one party has a majority in the Lords. The result of which is that the Government sees far more defeats; for example, between 2020 and 2024 in the House of Commons, the government saw 5 defeats, all - bar one - were inconsequential. In contrast, the Government in the House of Lords saw 296 defeats on key pieces of legislation. This unique composition of the chamber means the House of Lords often times has greater scrutiny of executive power than the House of Commons.
To stop waxing lyrically about the House of Lords, my point is that it is an institution that has evolved over time with progressive and gradual change that has given it a vital role in the British Constitution. It is the embodiment of careful conservative values in preserving and improving the value of existing institutions in one’s own society.
There is currently legislation going through to remove the remaining 92 Hereditary peers, and I have no doubt that the Labour government will eventually reform the House into a stodgy elected house of the regions filled with second-rate politicians. To me, this would ruin the delicate balance of the British constitution, which has evolved over a millennium. Alongside the Modernisation Committee, it's another step towards standardising British politics into an amorphous blob, aiming to mimic a 'serious country', rather than valuing tradition and heritage which give countries their unique identity and worth. Which is exactly what my politics oppose.
Loved this piece