Crisis of the conservatives

What do two of the prominent conservative parties — the Republicans in the United States and the Conservatives in the United Kingdom — tell about the state of conservatism in the English-speaking world in particular and in the world at large? It shows that conservatives in these two parties have tied themselves up in knots. The conservatism of David Cameron impelled him to argue for Britain staying in the European Union, while the conservatism of people like Boris Johnson, now the foreign minister in Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet, stood for an older, antiquated kind of conservatism of a Britain lolling in isolation, with a hatred of free trade which involves Britain being one of the many spokes in the system. 

Cameron was a forward-looking conservative, a progressive if you like, though many would call it an oxymoron. Johnson would fit the label of a conservative who is a social snob and an intellectual poseur. While Cameron and Johnson with their opposing viewpoints can claim to share social and cultural values of English upper class upbringing, it is Theresa May, Cameron’s successor, who breaks the conservative mould as it were, coming as she does from an unprivileged middle class, a grammar school student, who made it good. She does resemble Margaret Thatcher in many ways, but is less dogmatic. May, however, speaks the language of equal opportunity for all, and she draws the line on the question of immigrants. And she has a perfect answer for that: the people of Britain by voting to opt out of the EU have said no to immigrants and she has to abide by that. But as one who was on the side of those who argued for Britain staying in EU, she was open on the idea of immigration.

American conservatives compared to their British counterparts are indeed a different kettle of fish. They are evangelical Christians unlike the English conservatives who stand firmly with the established Church of England, with the monarch of England heading it instead of the Pope. These might seem extraneous factors to an Indian political watcher but they are part of the intrinsic framework of being a conservative. So, when Republican vice-president candidate Mike Pence said that he was Christian, conservative and Republican in that order, he was revealing his cultural biometric data as it were. 

The political turmoil among the American conservatives is as riven as that of the English ones, but very different. American conservatives are more identified with inner America of the mid-West — with the farmers, church-goers and socially conservative. They are almost country-cousins of the liberals from the coasts — east and west. The American conservatives feel they are up against the elite, especially those in Washington. The mindset and the situation is indeed replete with ironies of the delightful kind. In the 19th century, Andrew Jackson, the Democrat from Texas and the seventh president, showed sufficient contempt for the power elite of his day, bringing the braggadocio and rough manners of the frontier-man. American conservatives today bring the Jacksonian flavour.

The other irony is that it was the Republican Abraham Lincoln who believed in the principle of equality and the moral untenability of slavery. His Democratic rival, Stephen Douglas, too harped on the abolition of slavery but preached what today would be considered multiculturalism. Lincoln would not go there. All that Lincoln wanted to do was to defend the Union established by the Constitution. Today’s Republicans and conservatives do speak for the Constitution but they have irretrievably lost the moral fibre of Lincoln. Strangely enough, the Republicans speak like the old Confederates, that is mainly for the whites without saying so.

The American conservative claim to be unabashed and unqualified believers in the free market economy is too simple-minded at a time when the market economy is caught in a tail-spin. Their sense of nationalism lacks sophistication. It becomes difficult to distinguish American conservatives from the far-right groups in England and in Europe.

The crisis in American conservatism is the fact that they do not know what to do with a hustler like Donald Trump who has entered their midst and who has taken over the reins of power in their own house. The conservatism of the farmers and respectable middle classes of the small towns is stumped by self-made plutocrat Trump. They are not comfortable in his company. He lacks modesty and they believe in frugality and modesty, the old Protestant virtues.

The state of conservatives becomes a key question of the times because liberals and socialists have been turfed out in many countries, and when they get an opportunity to be in office and manage the economic turbulence, they seem incapable of managing the situation as was the case with the far-left Syriza in Greece in 2015. The British Labour Party by reverting to its pre-Tony Blair avatar of an inveterate opponent of the open economy has effectively marginalised itself, leaving the field to a Conservative Party which is grappling with the challenges of the economy, though without much success.

Is there anything in all this for the Indian conservatives? Yes, there is. The Indian political conservatives are caught in the same confusion as the rest of the crowd elsewhere. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a medley of lower middle class and middle class conservatives, lower middle class and middle class socialists, and a host of lumpen elements. The liberal middle class and the working class is not with it. The market economy rests on the shoulders of these two classes. The BJP is quite keen to ride the bandwagon of open economy and somehow preserve its cultural purity. But when the economy is in trouble, they do not know how to handle it. The BJP does not subscribe to social values in the sense of high culture. It belongs to the demotic end of the spectrum. Indian conservatives are as unhappy with the BJP as the American conservatives with the Republican Party of Donald Trump. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi is offering the prospect of a workmanlike conservatism of German Chancellor Angela Merkel kind, pragmatic and open-ended as far as it is possible to be so. Indian conservatives, like their counterparts in the world, are clueless about the brisk changes, driven mainly by liberals, overtaking the economy and society.