British conservatism and the international: free trade, the Anglosphere and Brexit

The opening chapter examined – and challenged – the idea that conservatism was simply a “positional” doctrine, adapting to change in a pragmatic, gradualist and peaceful manner. This depended on circumstances and conservatives were prepared to fight with “the fanaticism of a Crusader” (Hogg 1947: 76) to defend their values if they were threatened. These values were above all the promotion of virtue and excellence but crucially these could only exist in a hierarchical elitist order. This preparedness to fight was something like what Huntington had in mind when he talked of a doctrinal conservatism. But in Britain – and more specifically England – there would appear to be some strong grounds for suggesting that conservatism is simply a positional doctrine, or what Oakeshott (1962) called conservatism as a disposition (Freedland 2019; Saunders 2019). This is in part because the circumstances have been so different from those in continental Europe. In short, Britain had no 1789 or 1848, and in the 30-year crisis from 1914 to 1945, the political order was much more stable than in much of Europe (and indeed a case can be made that the greatest potential threat was external, namely the fear of German invasion in 1940). A further reason is that the Conservative Party itself has pragmatically adapted to wider social change in ways that appear to conform to positional, rather than doctrinal, conservatism. This chapter addresses – and questions – this characterization of British conservatism (and Conservatism). It particularly suggests that conservatives have been particularly animated by the question of decline , and that this has always been intimately related to Britain's role in the international order – and that Brexit is the latest manifestation of this doctrinal conservatism. This chapter therefore focuses mainly on how the question of decline links to questions of the international. Its particular focus is on free trade and the Anglosphere, the latter idea having changed over time, but which refers to the assumed “values, peoples or histories of the core five countries of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA” (Kenny & Pearce 2018: 5). It should be stressed, however, that these values and histories are highly selective, and indeed the countries that form part of the Anglosphere have changed over time.

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