Preston Manning: What’s Next for Britain’s Conservatives?

What’s next for Britain’s Conservatives, after having suffered a major defeat in the UK’s recent general election, removed from office after governing for 14 years, abandoned by millions of voters who either refused to vote or protested by voting Reform UK, and replaced by a Labour government of which little is expected by a dispirited electorate?
The predictable advice from those who view Britain’s political landscape from the traditional perspective of left-right-centre is that the party must move “leftward” toward “the centre” and must especially avoid any association with anything that could possibly be labelled as “right-wing” extremism.
But there are other sources of advice, which may be much more relevant.
One of these is the experience of Canadian conservatism in which a Conservative government, after nine years in office, suffered a devastating defeat in the 1993 federal election, its representation in the House of Commons plummeting from 155 seats to 2.
Much of this defeat was attributed to the failure of the party to recognize the emergence of bottom-up, grassroots forces in Western Canada and Quebec—“populist” forces, if you will. The governing Progressive Conservative party chose to ignore or denounce these forces rather than seeking to understand and accommodate at least some of what they represented. When this accommodation eventually occurred, under new leadership, the realigned Conservative Party of Canada was returned to office for nine years under Stephen Harper and is again poised to replace Justin Trudeau’s Liberal-New Democrat alliance in next year’s federal election.
But the Conservative Party of Canada is only 20 years old, whereas the Conservative Party of the UK is 190 years old. British conservatives can therefore be forgiven for perhaps looking askance at the experience of the former, and more comfortably seek instruction on “what to do” from the far longer and deeper experience of their own party.
The part of that history which may be most instructive to British conservatives today comes from the party’s response to the bottom-up, grassroots—populist, if you will—movement at the beginning of the 19th century, whereby increasing numbers of ordinary Brits began to demand a say in who formed the government, demanding in particular the right to vote.
Today, the Reform Club and the Carlton Club still exist, a few blocks from each other, and it is the political ghosts that haunt both clubs that whisper the wisdom of acknowledging, embracing in part, and seeking to moderate and direct populist political energy rather than ignoring or opposing it.
Or will the party and its future leadership make a concerted effort to, first and foremost, understand what motivates populist sentiment in Britain? Will it enter into dialogue with, rather than avoid, those who best represent that sentiment? Will it seek to limit the extremes to which unfettered populism may tend, not by ineffective denunciations but by urging and demonstrating “prudence” as Gladstone once advised, and “informing the discretion” of the rank and file through educational efforts as Thomas Jefferson once advised?
Will British conservatives seek to harness populist political energy to the advancement of conservative principles and objectives as Disraeli once did, or will they reject that course as many traditional Tories once did? Only time will tell, but Britain’s future may well hinge on how, and how well, questions such as these are answered in the days ahead.