part the task of leadership is about the renewal of revered British institutions. The most important is the Union of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, but there are other more surprising elements of a common wealth, such as the monarchy and the Church of England. Action will also be needed to protect the indispensable institution of free speech against the threat it faces from technology – or rather, the threat it faces from uncivil argument conducted too freely on social media platforms. But there is also a task of moral leadership to be undertaken which involves helping to define the sort of nation we wish Britain to be, who is a member of this nation, and what we expect of its citizens. There is no aspect of our life in common in which this form of leadership has failed us more comprehensively than in the argument about immigration. Britain is leaving the EU in large measure because nobody has yet managed to articulate a coherent position on immigration which wins the British people over to the manifest need for this country to remain open to the people of the world.
Britain has a claim to be the most successful multi-cultural experiment on the globe. That does not mean its integration has been perfect – far from it. Indeed there is more we should expect from people of all backgrounds if we are to forge a common life governed by rules adhered to by all. The stringent application of the law is critical for any liberal society. That would then, in turn, permit the most extensive personal freedom in private for worship and style of life. In The Wealth and Poverty of Nations David Landes has argued that a liberal and open culture is one of the reasons that Britain became a global force in the first place. To be open and receptive to the world is to be an influence in that world. At a time when the United States of America is led by a President who appears to have no enduring appreciation of diplomatic friendship and when Britain has chosen to abandon its long institutional alliance with the various forms of the EU, the question remains – the final question Britain faces – of what its place in the world should be.
10 What Is Britain’s Place in the World?
Britain is a small country that has stood tall in the world. The economic might that was once imperial has been translated into political and diplomatic power. Britain has always been an active participant in world affairs, on rare occasions alone but more usually as a signatory to and presence in international alliances. Through the economic institutions of the Bretton Woods settlement (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), NATO, the Security Council of the United Nations and, until recently, the EU, Britain has sat at the top table when the decisions that shaped the post-war world were made. The fear is that this era is coming to a close.
The combination of a more isolationist America and Britain’s departure from the EU might conceivably be a disastrous one for a small island just off the European mainland. Already the pressure for the structure of international government to be a better reflection of the shift of economic power to India and China is raising the question of whether Britain’s status might be an anomaly. The standard retort has been that Britain translates into European for the Americans and mediates with America for the Europeans. Both sides of that formula are now in jeopardy and Britain is left to contemplate a more modest future. There is, of course, a case for modesty. Britain could decide to retreat to the second rank of nations, attendant princes to the main events. The appetite for British involvement in the troubling problems of the world has receded since the intervention in Iraq. Quietude, masquerading as realpolitik, is a tempting option.
It is a temptation that should be resisted. It is part of remaining open to the world that Britain should in no way retreat. Today’s worldwide threats to democracy are severe enough without one of the established democracies voluntarily ceding a position of authority. The case needs to be made to the British people for why it benefits them, as part of a world of pervasive connections, if Britain acts as a moral force for good in world affairs. Of the many things that make Britain the fine nation it is, that concern about the world beyond its own borders is something that we should take pride in.
The Poverty of Philosophy
These ten questions define the condition of Britain today and by the very fact of their having to be asked they arraign the political class for having no viable answers. Though most of the British public do not follow politics in all its intricate detail, the inadequacy of the answers offered has clearly got through. The 2017 general election was a contest that nobody deserved to win, which is why nobody did win. Mrs May asked for a large majority and was rebuffed. Mr Corbyn sought a victory and was denied. It was a stalemate and it holds a lesson that goes beyond a single general election. The old political parties are moribund, perhaps even defunct. The solid social collectives that gave them life have fragmented and dispersed. The axis of politics has tilted; where once parties had firm class foundations, now they do not speak for coherent blocs. Political allegiance is more fluid and volatile but, trapped in their old structures and tribal modes of thought, the main political traditions do not know how to match the times. Silent on the future, the Conservative party and the Labour party are staging a contest to see which of them can most efficiently turn back the clock. The Conservative party is lost in thrall to a fantasy of the utopia before 1973, the mythic year in which Britain lost its identity in the alien embrace of the European project. The Labour party has returned to 1983’s attempt to recreate 1974. Beneath these attempts to turn back time lies philosophical poverty. The poor leadership of the two main parties is not a cause of their troubles; it is a consequence, because neither old-time Conservatism nor revivalist Socialism have any answers to the condition of Britain questions.
The political Conservative is hampered by a characteristic lack of ambition. When dramatic change is required, as it is now, it is not wise to look their way in search of it. Indeed, it is not always obvious that a Conservative wants anything much from office beyond the holding of it. Excessive risk-aversion is coupled, in a conservative cast of mind, with a complacent acceptance of the status quo. This amounts, at its worst, to a colossal failure of imagination, the inability to conceive of the world beyond a narrow horizon. Austerity’s justification was drily economic; its damage was sadly human. The Conservative understands the fiscal discipline but is less able to widen the enchanted circle to include those affected. The very existence of the doctrine of ‘compassionate’ Conservatism draws our attention to the fact that compassion is not intrinsic to the creed. It is not true that the Conservative does not care. It is sometimes true that the Conservative does not care enough. Instead, the contemporary Conservative has cared excessively about an idea of the nation which bears no relation to the reality of modern sovereignty.
The Labour paradox is that it is a party that talks about a radical future but which is captured by its own past. Labour won its place in British politics after the First World War and its place in British history after the Second. War is a crucible in which endeavour is collective and sacrifices shared. Harold Wilson recorded in his diary that Labour lost the 1951 general election at least in part because the people sniffed that they actually liked rationing. Curtailing consumption was the short road to equality. In The Future of Socialism Tony Crosland upbraided his party for its joylessness, its hair-shirt tendency. There is a finger-wagging bossiness to Labour politics which knows what is good for you. It is no coincidence that it was Douglas Jay, a Labour economist and politician, who declared that, in matters of food, the man in Whitehall really does know best.
The left is prone to the hunting down of heresies and to doctrinal fighting because it is a textual religion. There is no pantheon of traitors on the political right to match the persistent Labour myth of treachery. Ramsay Macdonald was the first of the type, of which Tony Blair is the most recent, especially in his adventures in foreign policy which have enticed the left into a comfortable fool’s position in which all conflict is ultimately traceable to the guilty west. This is the stance of a pressure group rather than a political party which is a serious candidate for office. The Labour party is always more comfortable within its own vintage history than it is in adapting to events. A decade after the 2008 financial crash, Labour still cannot describe how it is possible to conduct social democracy at low cost. Instead, it simply wishes extra money into
