Assigning a Progressive Role to Conservatism

In a thoughtful article for The Times, Dominic Lawson writes about the legitimate place of progressive thought within Conservatism, a history that is contrary to ‘the deep intellectual conceit of those on the left who imagine not just that they are the only people who can be described as “progressive”, but that anyone from a different political tradition has purely cynical motivations, even — or perhaps especially — as a reformer.’

Lawson cites the Victorian Tories William Wilberforce and the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, and includes Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith as modern examples.

Benjamin Disraeli, quoted approvingly, ‘had his own celebrated formulation of this political phenomenon [where principles of the left and right co-operated]: a sound Conservative government was “Tory men and Whig measures”.’

Yet Lawson concludes on a note of warning: ‘Like all elements of political jargon, the word “progressive” has, in any case, been steadily stripped of meaning.’

With no little satisfaction conservatives can support improvements in social and economic affairs, although constitutional innovation ought to be treated with scepticism, as outlined with great care by Edmund Burke.

He too, however, was not without an evolutionary instinct: ‘A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation,’ Burke wrote. ‘Without such means it might even risque the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve.’

Indeed, these were the origins of the modern Conservative party—which lie in its Burkean accommodation with the Reform Act of 1832—exemplified by Sir Robert Peel’s Tamworth Manifesto assertion that

if the spirit of the Reform Bill implies merely a careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper combining, with the firm maintenance of established rights, the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances, - in that case, I can for myself and colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit and with such intentions.

A spirit and intentions much recommended to the present Government.