There is no longer a need for the Conservative Party
What we are witnessing is the emergence of a new dimension of `the national interest' - one, moreover, of which Labour can plausibly claim to be the most reliable guardian
Initially, the Conservative Party took on its modern form towards the end of the 19th century with one overriding but largely, for reasons of good taste, unstated purpose: to persuade the newly franchised proletariat (that is, the property-less masses) to elect a parliamentary majority either in favour of property (and its corollary, inequality) or, if opposed in theory, as the Labour majority was in 1945, too timid in practice to do anything about it; and that is what the Conservatives have achieved so successfully that, with the old pro-socialism Labour Party now transformed into the new pro-capitalism Labour Party, there is no longer any serious political threat to property to save the nation from. In other words, as we move into the new Millennium, the Conservative Party has outlived its raison d'etre.
Why so, you may ask? What is wrong with national sovereignty, for a start, or individual liberty, or defence, or law and order or even back to basics? Nothing is wrong with them, of course, so long as they are understood as little more than rhetorical glosses on the party's rather less high-minded basic appeal, which was, as I say, to the desire of all property and would-be property owners, small as well as great, to hang on to what they had already acquired and to grab everything else that came within their reach. What is the point of being so cynical? Simply to emphasise the truth, which so many contemporary Conservatives still seem unable to grasp, that with New Labour having swallowed the cake proper - that is, the property issue - none of these subsidiary Tory themes, which were little more than cherries on the cake, amounts to very much in terms of winning votes, as John Major found when the once reliable back-to-basics firework proved such a damp squib.
Will the even older Conservative chestnut of defending national sovereignty do any better? This is a more difficult one and, while certainly worth a try, an over-heavy reliance should not be placed on it. For it is well to remember that, so long as the threat from Brussels was only to national sovereignty, it made no great impact on the public mind, only beginning to do so when transformed by the single currency issue into a threat to sterling - that is, to property. Indeed, even now, with the euro's prospects looking pretty bleak, many of the hard-edged financial brains in the City and in big business, not to mention small investors, are still of the view that, in the long run, their property would be more threatened by staying out of the single currency than by joining in.
Certainly this applies to membership of the European Union itself, which is why New Labour's enthusiasm for the project still appears to the property-owning classes as a more prudent course than the Conservative one of increasingly outright opposition. To many of that great constituency, a policy of prudence, more often than not, is much to be preferred to a policy of patriotism, as the Conservative Party, in the old days, was the first to understand, if not admit.
The cause of freedom and democracy, too - which during the Cold War years of communist totalitarianism were so much part of Conservative rhetoric - "getting the government off our backs" and "rolling back the frontiers of the state" - no longer rings true in the way it used to do. For while there was absolutely no doubt about the sincerity and authenticity of the Conservative hatred of communism, there has to be a great deal of doubt about its hatred of authoritarianism.
I remember in the 1960s, when trade union power was beginning to become a serious problem, addressing a newly formed "true blue" body called the Freedom Association and being amused when the first question asked afterwards - which quite gave the game away - was: "Does the speaker agree that what we need here is a British Franco?" Of course the speaker agreed, but was too canny to say so. For the Conservatives, belief in parliamentary democracy was always conditional on that system of government seeming the best way - because the least likely to provoke revolution - to secure property and to preserve the old inequality. Better to have half a loaf, so to speak, than no loaf at all. Nevertheless, deep down the nation always knew that, if ever a parliamentary majority did seriously challenge bourgeois hegemony, only the Conservative Party could be trusted to react by force if necessary, with or without parliamentary consent.
No doubt William Hague's Conservative Party, if in power, could still be trusted to do the same. But what is wholly unprecedented is that Tony Blair's New Labour Party, with Jack Straw as the Home Secretary, is beginning to look equally convincing, if not more so, in that authoritarian role. This is an extraordinary turn-up for the book; not so much a case of stealing the Tory clothes as stealing its suit of armour.
Almost literally so, since it is also beginning to look as if the Armed Forces may be about to have reason to see New Labour, for the first time, as its natural ally rather than, as in the old days, at best a half-hearted ally with pacifist inclinations. For if the use of the Armed Forces to prevent or punish genocide, or comparable crimes against humanity, in foreign countries, becomes settled Nato policy, as New Labour - judging by its militancy over Yugoslavia - seems to want, the defence card, which used to be a Conservative ace, will also quite quickly become a New Labour one - another major role reversal in danger of turning the anti-moralistic foreign policy Conservatives into the doveish peace party, and the pro-moralistic foreign policy New Labourites into the hawkish war party.
What we are witnessing, I believe, is the emergence of what, in effect, amounts to a new dimension of "the national interest"; and one, moreover, of which New Labour can plausibly claim to be the most reliable guardian. In the old days, when vital national interests were limited to such considerations as maintaining the balance of power, preventing the Channel ports falling to a potential enemy, keeping the imperial sea routes open or safeguarding the nation's oil supply, it was always the Conservative Party - many of whose leaders came from families, such as the Cecils, Stanleys and Churchills, with experience of power politics going back to the age of Elizabeth I - that naturally had the edge. Indeed, power politics was what the old ruling class families were largely for: to produce statesmen and diplomats who would lie for the country abroad in times of peace and soldiers who would die for the country abroad in times of war.
True, from time to time even the Labour Party would produce a hard-line statesman, but when it did, as in the case of Ernest Bevin at the onset of the Cold War, it came as a surprise, rather as it did if the Conservatives produced a soft-liner on the social services. Thus it was that, in periods of great danger, the nation slept more safely in their beds if the Tories were at the helm. For they were the genuine realpolitikers, unlike the Liberals or Labourites, who tended to be guided more by their hearts than by their heads.
In the television age, however, when the sight of foreign horrors on the news can deeply disturb the British people, keeping them awake at night with agonised consciences, governments have a duty to be ruled by their hearts rather than by their heads. Not always, of course; clearly, white suffering in Kosovo raises the temperature of moral outrage much more quickly than does black suffering elsewhere. Questions of distance from these shores obviously also come into the equation. Arcane questions, indeed; but enormously important ones, since the welfare of the nation in future may well depend as much on governments developing a fine sense of when the national interest requires military force in defence of a moral or ethical cause, as, in the old days, it did on them having a fine sense of when it was needed in a defence of a territorial or strategic cause. For if the public desperately want to see their country do its bit in putting an end to some horror overseas and are frustrated in this noble aim, the resulting pains of guilt and anguish can weaken the nation in its spirit, quite as badly as having its oil supplies cut off can weaken it in its body.
And here Mr Blair and the new establishment seem to be in their element, as much as Mr Hague and his colleagues, operating on the old wavelengths, seem to be out of theirs. It is too often the same nowadays. Mr Blair seems to be instinctively ahead of the game, unerringly able to take the nation's pulse, which the old elite, alas equally instinctively, now seems quite unable to do.
Will the great cause of saving us from European federation reverse this current trend, and restore to the Tories their historical office as keeper of the national interest? Even before the Yugoslavia crisis, there seemed some reason, as I have said, to doubt this. How much more, with Mr Blair's judgment there vindicated, must this be so today?
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Carl Remick