This house believes conservatism is the answer | Cambridge Union

[Music] [Applause] uh ladies and gentlemen welcome sorry about the delay i'm sure you're used to it by this stage of term um this is my presidential debate and presidential debates are slightly ceremonial so we have a few things to get through before we kick off the debate proper um most importantly we have the handover process which is where i offer the officers for easter term to come and take up their positions so without any further ado i would like to welcome james appiah to replace david kwan as a qualities officer congratulations james uh oliver ud is replacing lara brown as the speaker's officer [Applause] [Music] christopher george is replacing sam hunt as our debates officer uh that of course leaves me one uh handover to complete but before i do i just had a few words that i wanted to say um it's been a enormous pleasure and privilege serving as your present this term and i'm very conscious of how lucky i've been we've had some great times together from our debates to the merchant of venice in week five and of course robert de niro several weeks ago in a moment i'm going to get the chance to stand up and speak for something i believe in i'm sure none of you will be surprised about the content of that speech but irrespective of my views on anything i hope you have felt as members this term that i've stood up for the rights that you will possess the rights to intervene to scrutinize and participate in what goes on here the right you all have to express your views in this chamber i've been quite stirred by the engagement that members have shown this term particularly from people who are completely new to the society we have tackled difficult issues like ireland ukraine and our national past with dignity and respect we've disagreed with conviction but with politeness and we have demonstrated why we are so important still if our public discourse was a little less like twitter and a little more like what goes on in this chamber society would be far better for it my parting wish is that this continues that we keep that spirit of debate alive and on that note it is my complete delight that i pass on the baton to someone who couldn't be more deserving of this office that she is about to take up betty ryder hi good evening everyone as james explained this is the presidential debate which is not only the last bit of term but also a celebration of the whole of lent um i'm so sorry but before we begin i'd like to congratulate james um so one more round of applause please you've done a fantastic job well done i'm so happy to be here and to be president please know in the coming months i'm going to do everything i can to make the union the most enjoyable and welcoming place for everyone so the motion before the house this evening is that this house believes conservatism is the answer before we hear from our amazing guests i'll quickly run through how the debate will work uh first we'll have a round of paper speeches one in proposition one in opposition then i'll open the floor for floor speeches these can be one to two minutes we'll have another round of paper speakers and then after that we'll open the floor to floor speeches once again um i should note paper speakers should take 10 minutes while floor features are one to two minutes and it is your right as a member to interrupt at any time by saying point of information uh you can repeat this but please note if the speaker hears you and doesn't want to they don't have to take your point without further ado let's begin with our first proposition speaker james vitale james is the outgoing president of the cambridge union he is occasionally a final year phd candidate in politics at christ and supervises students in the department of politics he operates exclusively through phone calls and dinner parties [Applause] madame president ladies and gentlemen i know what you're all thinking what an idiot what an idiot why is he running this motion this evening he probably has more chance of turning varsity into a reputable student publication then carrying this motion this evening well perhaps things aren't that bleak but you get the point all i can say is that this motion is of art improvement on another suggestion i had which was to go with this house with kisatori uh i fear the counters at the no doors this evening would have would have had an insurmountable task on their hands had that been the motion um this is a longer speech than i had intended uh and for that i'm sorry john i'm sorry to everyone but the truth is i didn't have much time and i didn't have enough time to write a shorter one um lord howard has promised me that his speech and remarks will be shorter so thank you very much i'll take up your time gladly i've given a lot of speeches during my time here some have been short others longer some have been easy some have been fun and some have been harder last week i spoke at my grandmother's funeral which put all of those into a bit of perspective when it comes to this place this is my fifth union debate in which i've spoken and speaking here has sincerely been the most rewarding thing i've done in my time at cambridge i've up until now only won one of my union debates which is perhaps unsurprising given that i've tried to convince this chamber of blasphemous things like we should not have had a second referendum on leaving the eu perhaps that we were right to leave that wearing a poppy is a good thing i was surprised at that one nonetheless really at least in this place winning is not the be or an end-all it really is the taking pile that counts here and i encourage you all to do so as i've urged frequently this term perhaps not too many times in my speech but i will take interventions so why have i chosen to defend this motion tonight some people suggest that conservatives are somehow persecuted on the campus today and i don't agree my department and my college have been immensely supportive of me since i arrived here they funded my stay and they've taken my writing and research seriously sometimes when i haven't taken it seriously myself you have all somehow elected me to be your present this term i'll always be grateful for that but what i genuinely do think is that the ideas of conservatism are not always heard in good faith in places like this and in the university campus more widely there is a caricature of what they are and this often comes at the expense of the content of a proper conversation so this debate is an attempt to facilitate that to put the ideas i believe in in front of you for debate i want to tell you why i'm a conservative why i'm a conservative what it means to me and why i think that this set of answers has the answers a set of ideas as the answers to the problems of today and i just want to preempt something early on this motion is about conservatism with a small rather than a large sea i'm not talking about party politics or conservative governments who are more or less good the jury is out but ideas and how useful they are as with many sets of political ideas conservatism is quite hard to tie down a political theorist who once was uh here described conservatism as a disposition i think it's more than that and i think the best way to make the case this evening is to give you something concrete and to do that i want to give you a snapchat a snapshot of the place i grew up in marnell manol is a small village in dorset with one remarkable feature and that is the crown inn which was the inspiration for thomas hardy's pure drop in in the test of the derbyvilles i don't know if any of you have read it a single primary road runs through marnell and on it sits the preschool that i attended and where i met friends that i'm still close with the pub the crown where i got my first job the church i went to uh where my parents were married i was baptized my grandmother's funeral took place a few miles up the road in one direction is the school i went to from the age of 11 and a little further up the other way is the school that i took my gcse's a levels at this was a place where people felt rooted it was a place where people felt responsible for others in the community the school and the preschool was staffed by teachers who invested so much of their time in the boys and girls not just during class the church was not evangelical it was a church of england so barely a church at all but it welcomes school children it welcomes school children of any creed every wednesday morning to talk about what it is to be a good person and to be a member of a community down the road from my grandmother's house who lived in the same village was the local branch of the royal british legion in which i often found myself as a young boy my parents both serve in the navy they're here this evening and my mother was the local branch chair much of my family served in the armed forces and military values were obviously in the house military values were obvious in the house that i grew up in from the union jacks spotted around the place to strict table manners enforced by my dad and being on time for meals i'm very proud of what my parents do i am a deep regret to them because i won't be joining the services um but a military family instilled another idea that i'm going to pick up just shortly and that is a strong attachment to a broader community to which i in the village of manor belong that of this country of the united kingdom why am i telling you all this what about this or any of it makes me conservative and what sort of conservative does it make me i want to try and boil it down to one thing in particular and that is a specific approach to the idea of community the relationship between individuals and communities and the relationships between smaller communities and the broader national one to which we belong conservatives want to conserve that much is obvious but what do we want to conserve i don't want to conserve things like uh church parishes pubs and all the other things that i've just spoken about please church is not a useful institution for many of us as students to get very pissed on a very cheap price that sort of makes my point for me even i want to conserve these things because of the social function they play and you might think that's an important social function i am a conservative because i wish to conserve the things that nurtured me and so many other people in marnell i wish to conserve community those institutions that embody an informal environment of support education shared values yes would you not agree that some of the traditional institutions we have in the uk has excluded minorities and aren't the social space for many who feel excluded absolutely given the length of my speech i'm i'm pretty confident i'm going to cover that in in just a paragraph time but a very good point and actually you'll find that us in these two benches it's a fairly standard conservative labour division we share a lot of values so i want to do my best to try and distinguish what's different between us vithly and this is the point that i want you to leave with when you vote it is our sense of shared community that allows us to be altruistic to one another human nature compels us to be kind and generous but it's specifically towards those people that we identify with that is part of human nature and so it's our duty to expand that group of people that we're able to identify with but you don't have to be a conservative as i said to embrace community community is natural to us as a species people across the spectrum political spectrum recognize this truth we'll hear that this evening so what makes my approach conservative there are a few brief points i'd like to make the first is the difference between voluntary and involuntary associations there is a view that only voluntary associations that we freely enter into are legitimate now it goes without saying that not all communities are like the one that i described in marnell i recognize that people can belong to coercive unpleasant communities which they wish to escape and those are lamentable but that is not a logical connection conservatives recognize that involuntary forms of community are facts of reality and not merely irrational things to be transcended i had no choice about who i what family i was born into and what community i grew up in that doesn't make those communities illegitimate and we need another test to work out whether good or bad yes you also don't choose what race or gender you're born as but it wouldn't be legitimate to say that because you haven't chosen it is sufficient for you to see those as groups that you should be part of and other groups as groups that aren't worthy of the same sort of community well i i actually i think i would say there's important forms of community i will get onto that i'm going to talk about that slightly later on but i think there's a completely valid form of community they should be looked after um but because conservatives recognize as i said that certain communities not voluntarily entered into does not mean that they don't think they should be left unchanged which comes to a second point that i want to make conservatives are not against change conservativism is a perspective on change as disraeli put it who we discussed last week conservatives prefer change it takes place with deference to the manners the customs the laws and the traditions of the people rather than change this carried out in difference to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines it doesn't seem to me to be bad in itself to take this view communities do need to be able to change to address injustices and to reflect present occupants of those communities this national community is changing demographically physically manual is changing physically demographically it is doing so in a way that preserves his fundamentally good core though finally conservatives believe in the good of a national community to which all our smaller communities belong be they like man or geographic or be they ethnic or religious my parents served and served some community that was larger than the local one that i was a part of the one that i felt more approximately and subconsciously i was aware that i belong to that community too nations are not ends in themselves they're not inherent forms of human identity they are intermediary goods goods that are productive of other ends in given contexts in our case those ends are the smaller communities laura mentioned the primary point is that the national community can play a fundamentally laudable integrative binding function in our population of great and welcome diversity and difference together it can provide a framework to which all those smaller communities perhaps geographical ones as i said but other ones too like ethnic and religious communities to collaborate and work together and support each other and not come at the expense of each other now of course for many of us the nation is not an involuntary is not a voluntary community too for some who have migrated here it was a choice but for others it was not that does not make it in and of itself a bad thing this country is ours and as citizens we belong to it and it belongs to us we can be both proud and ashamed of it at different times but it is ours nonetheless we cannot simply disown it yes david um i'm sure john will be generous that i'm taking so many interventions first of all if you're making a point about conservative government i completely agree about what we're doing with refugees as it pertains to ukraine um i would say that the conservative looks at the world how it is not how we would like it to be and those broader um supranational entities and communities don't really exist in any meaningful sense at the level they need to to be politically viable i want to move on i'll leave this look we can talk at length about the ideas sorry we can talk at length about those who call themselves conservative in government about delivering on these ideas and i think it would be an understatement to say the jury is out on that one but that is not the subject of this debate as i said this is about the ideas of conservativism and whether they provide answers to the problems of the 21st century small c not big c conservativism diagnosing the problem therefore is just as important part of this debate we are having as providing an answer to that problem so what is the problem that i see conservatives and being the answer to i believe that the fundamental problem of our society today concerns that thing that i've been speaking about our sense of community and belonging which i believe is important because it's the precondition of us being good to one another there is a concept in the sociologist emile durkheim i can't believe i'm quoting dirk i'm here nonetheless in the sociologist durkheim's writing called anime which i think kind of is a pithy description of the things i want to talk about anime means a thinning out of those things which we share in common enormousness a hollowing out of those social and communal values that allow us to associate ourselves with one another values both at a local and a national level and i believe we are a more divided society than any any other time in recent history i know many in this room will feel that too i share that sentiment and that is worrying because as i've said over and over again this is through our common identity common community that we can be altruistic there's been a chipping away of those things that bring us together it's not just the left or liberals like laura over there who are guilty of that chipping away i think conservatives are guilty of that too we've been willing participants in a political culture that has pit winners against losers and has looked to divide us i'm making that concession today but i don't think that's a conservative view how is conservatives and the answer here in a nutshell conservatives value in the present moment is of a set of ideas that integr that are integrative rather than disintegrative communal rather than individualistic and to finish this evening i just want to home in on some areas of british society that badly need a revived sense of common purpose the first concerns the schism in our society between age groups in his great novel uh sybiled israeli speaks of two nations completely separated and alienated from one another that's of the rich and the poor now i certainly think that economic inequality exists today but i think that the young and the old are beginning to resemble two different nations too ignorant in israelis words of each other's habits thoughts and feelings and without sympathy and intercourse of course naturally those who are older have more capital and that's absolutely natural the bad thing is the ability of young people to go and own capital has been severely hampered as younger even well-educated people will find it's harder to access stable well-paid employment it's therefore harder to save it's therefore harder to get on the property ladder our response to covid has exposed this age schism the triple lock remains in place the financial burden of covid has fallen on working age people the second area concerns the issue of education increasingly levels of education uh are a key predictor of political view whether or not one possesses a university degree for example could tell you with a pretty good degree of accuracy whether or not you're supported to stay in the european union and this divide feeds in to a political culture that cuts damaging both ways uneducated voters blame those educated people in the political elite for being too detached to aloof while elites think they're beholden to an ignorant and uninformed populous the mistrust between the educated and the uneducated is hampering representative politics and as david runsman here in cambridge put it the risk becomes that we cannot distinguish between power privilege and knowledge knowledge could come to be treated simply as another mark of privilege and that's dangerous finally i want to mention the development of identity politics in our public discourse in and of itself identity politics should not be a concern that we belong to communities that have a defining effect on our identity has been a key theme of my case this evening and i've argued for a politics that preserves those communities but in practice identity politics jars strongly with the outlook that i'm putting forward it is reductive it's disintegrative yes how would you respond to the argument that conservatism has always been identical to politics the identity of the straight white man i i i think that's a perfect caricature of the identity politics i would absolutely reject and it's not helpful it suggests that we cannot properly talk to one each other one another about the injustices of certain groups because we cannot think beyond and outside our stations and positions in society and it posits a mindset that searches for common enemies in society to blame a mindset that seeks to crystallize difference and forgets all those things that we share in common it is my heartfelt view that conservatism is the answer to these divisive political schisms conservatives know that for a community to work yes it has to bestow rights but those rights come with responsibilities to ensure that those people who are those poor regions in our country get the investment they need from the richer parts the old need to make overtures uh to the young because conservatives know that those sorts of schisms can render a society in two conservatives believe in the value of one nation something that binds us all together when other things drive us apart we need to address the grievances in our societies for those who are facing justices but equally we need not to impel sex of society to feel shame that is not how we're going to change the situation we need to protect and nurture forms of identity that we share in common not at the expense of those forms of identity that you've mentioned but as supplements to them these are the conservative answers to the problems of our time ladies and gentlemen i apologize for taking slightly longer than i intended but i did take lots of interventions we haven't gathered here tonight simply to vote on what we already think why we need to do that we already know what our initial views on this subject are we've come to deliberate to discuss and i hope that your views on conservatism and what things i stand for have changed and if they have and if you think i've correctly diagnosed the problem that you all feel today then you should walk through the eye doors this evening with your head held high thank you so much for letting me be your president this term and i hope you enjoy the rest of the evening thank you thank you very much james um i did let you run on way for too much time there um but in the interest of saving time i won't let all the speakers do that next up we have jonathan hayward uh speaking in first opposition jonathan is a second year student reading history at trinity college he is the chair of the cambridge university labour club johnny you have the ears the house [Applause] i'm very lucky tonight i have one of the easiest jobs in the history of this house i have to defend not being conservative thank god i wouldn't want to be yeah there was something striking in james's speech because james identified conservatism as looking at the world as it is rather than what it might be or what it should be and i want to make the case in favor of looking at the world not in terms of what it is but in terms of where we can bring it whereby democracy and by the action of the state and by politics we can transform the world and how we can make the lives better for the people in it i'm going to make the case for ambition in politics rather than just reacting to change trying to impose change upon the world and i'm going to try and be as fair as possible to conservatism small c conservatism in james's case though i would like to say that if james wants to defend pubs and if james wants to defend churches and if james wants to defend communities he should support the labour party which is the party that has a plan to save all of them [Applause] it's quite hard though to stand up on this side because i i i come from the labour party and the great thing about the labour party is that we have so many different traditions there's one tradition in the conservative party conservatism but in the labour party we have the old left we have the new left we have the socialists the social democrats the liberals the blairites you name it and i think there's one tradition though that defines our anti-conservatism and that's progressivism and i want to define what progressivism means to me i think it's the attempt to impose values on politics to impose the values of freedom justice equality onto politics rather than let those things emerge out of the traditions and institutions that james talks about rather i think that we should be forcing the pace of history make the pace of history move faster than the charity is to bend the world towards those ideals that we want to create and i want to be as generous as possible to the burkianism the bollingbrookism whatever of the side that they want to defend i accept that they defend a skeptical tradition of politics a tradition of politics that's skeptical about radical change because of all the ways in which radical change has gone wrong in the past both in communist countries in the french revolution in any period in which a conservative writer has written something critical about the radical youth they're a tradition that views politics skeptically and without with with good reason in some cases they're a tradition that sees the good things in politics emerging out of the grassroots out of traditions out of institutions rather than being imposed by democracy and by the action of people to use politics to weld society into a vision that they want to create and i think this is as generous a definition of conservatism as i can apply is there a point of information yeah that's a good question that's a good question and i don't believe my idea is the right idea which is why unlike communists and unlike the french revolution i'm not in favor of dictatorship instead i'm in favor of democracy and the attempt for democracy is to use the state to impose its vision of the good society on the world i think that is a noble tradition a noble ambition and i'm entirely in favor of it i believe that the fundamental task of politics is the envisioning and the creation of the good society for a democratic state and that's what i'm going to defend tonight and i don't think that at a very fundamental level conservatives have a way to beat that indeed i do not know what the conservative vision of the good society is when james talks about pubs when he talks about communities those are the things that have rotted as conservatives have cut council budgets as they've cut the ability to help those institutions that are the lifeblood of working people in this country yes james would you not say those things were deeply unconservative i would say they're deeply unconservative but i think your vision of conservatism is about conserving the things that you'd like to conserve without reference the things that conservativism as a tradition trades off because politics is about trade-offs when you talk about the benefits of conservatism you ignore the view that the skepticism of the state creates about the ways in which the state should use tax money and use the state to intervene in favor of the institutions you want to defend conservatism opposes the tax increases that would defend the institutions that are the lifeblood of people and i'm absolutely against that view of politics i'm proud to be a supporter of the state and its ability to help people and i think conservatism skepticism about it is opposed to it and i do think that the politics of the last 12 years emerges out of that the 130 000 preventable deaths that have come from the cuts in public services the hundred billion lower gdp that has come from the end in public spending and the cuts in public investment that have been instituted in both the cameron may and johnson eras even today in what would be a more james version of the conservative party in boris johnson their leveling up paper amounts to a set of targets to deal with problems they themselves have created without any policies any vision for an accident and i don't think that that's a failure of conservatism or conservatives as people i think it's a failure of conservatism as an ideology to commit to change and commit to the sacrifices in terms of tax money in terms of sacrifices from individuals sacrificing them lives to the state that are required for people to form a good society i don't think that the cruelty of apathy embodied in austerity is anything except a direct product of the conservative view of the state but i also think it's a view of conservative freedom i think conservatives have a totally false view of freedom and i think this is crucial to the way in which they treat the state and the way in which they treat individuals they view freedom as a lack of imposition they view freedom as a lack of taxation they view freedom as an ability to do whatever you'd like unimpeded by the government but that's not what freedom is to me or what it is to progressives rather i think people have desires i think they have ambitions and they need a material basis on which to impose those desires and ambitions on the world i don't think freedom can emerge out of poverty and i am willing to step on the freedom of taxpayers the freedom of individuals to impose the prosperity the financial security for people to be able to be free within a commercial society that's what i think progressivism means and that's where i think it's distinguished from conservatism in a very very good way in a way that deals with the apathy that has led to all the crises of austerity and the hundreds of thousands of lies that is left abandoned i fully believe that i fully believe that tony blair and gordon brown had nothing to do with austerity because in 2010 we went on a on a manifesto opposed to austerity it was the conservative government it is the conservative government i won't take any poise from a lib dem who imposed austerity [Applause] labor transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people including my girlfriend who wouldn't be here today who who wouldn't be here today had it not been for sure start providing for the first time pre-primary education for hundreds of thousands of kids that was cut by the lib dems and the conservatives i think that the tony blair government was one that despite all its faults transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of young individuals and i'm proud of it i'm proud of the ambition to change people's lives through education and i don't think that austerity was necessary nor do the economists of the imf nor do hundreds of economists who supported labour's manifestos in 2015 and 2017 for reversing the horrors of austerity to be anti-conservative in contrast i've taken quite a few i've taken quite a few to be anti-conservative in contrast is to use the power of the state to force the pace of change towards the good society and i think the labour party is divided because we have a positive vision of the good society and so we can disagree about the good society we want to create but it's bound by fundamentals it's bound by economic security an end to discrimination equality of opportunity and freedom from arbitrary state power and these are principles which we're willing to force on society forced through democracy forced through the state despite the traditions that conservatives would like to defend and i think we've done so throughout history and i don't think that conservatives are bad people who defend these things i think reasonable people can be cynics about politics can be afraid of political change be unwilling to commit to a politics of ideals on the risk that those ideals might fail you i don't think they're on the wrong side of history but i don't think they have a place in history because i think they lack the ambition and the confidence to impose any sort of principles on history instead i think they consign themselves as james himself a bits in his conception of conservative change to reacting to changes forced by other bolder people and throughout most of history those have been labor governments forcing the pace of change which conservatives way too late have later defended and i think history bears this out even before the labour party disraeli james's hero and the hero of the conservative party were committed against the education acts of gladstone against primary education being made compulsory and being made taxpayer funded they were against national insurance they are against the income tax i think you should judge their heroes on their record and i think that israeli and all the people of that conservative party can only be socially progressive in the way that james claims they are in a context of a very small state and i don't think they would be willing to take the trade-offs progressives are willing to in order to when weld society towards the good life i think that was true in 1940s when the athlete government passed the nhs against tory votes the same with the 1960s when we ended the death penalty and massively expanded higher education against tory votes and in the 2000s when we introduced short start and the minimum wage against tory votes and it's ironic that tourism and conservatism in particular defends those changes after they've happened and bitterly opposes them while they're taking place and that is going to happen with the changes of the 21st century and that's what this debate is really about because the responses to the climate crisis the response to the cost of living crisis the response to all the crises that will befall us in epidemiology in climate and anything else that may befall us in the next 20 30 years will have to be tackled by labour governments and i think we will tackle them we will make a green industrial revolution based on good jobs sectoral bargaining high productivity and universal employment i think all of those things will be passed in ways we can't even envision now by a labour government that emily will be part of and i think there will be past despite conservative votes and i think if the cambridge union in 20 years time has this debate again there will be someone in james or michael howard's position standing up and saying these were great changes passed by britain but here we stand we can go no further and i think there will be someone in my position saying these were labor changes passed against conservatism and despite conservatism but it is not enough to be satisfied in what we've already done we've we must go further we must go better we must produce more we must learn more we must make the world ever more just equal and free because that is the labor way and that is the progressive way and i hope you join us i hope you join us at the ballot box at the local elections in may which for reference for reference for everyone in this room everyone here can vote in both your home constituencies and in cambridge so please register to vote whether you're a conservative or a labor person or god forbid a lib dem please register to vote both in your university constituency and at home and i hope you join us in political parties where you have the ability to effect change and decide the policies of the future rather than just tweeting about them as james would imagine or speaking about them here and i hope you join us tonight in voting with your feet against conservatism and in favor of progressivism and labour thank you very much thank you johnny that was wonderful um we'll now do a quick round of floor speeches um would anyone like to speak in proposition of the motion here uh neyman college for the minutes please thank you thank you zachary marsh robinson college um james said something very interesting at the start of his speech he said that conservative some people argue that conservatism is merely a disposition i think it's more than that it was very interesting hearing johnny argue against that because i think he made an argument against a particular kind of conservatives and one that one that james put across tonight i think very eloquently but one which is not necessarily defined what concerns him is because i think conservatism is a disposition and it's a disposition which has covered a great many sins as johnny would argue in the course of its illustrious history james put the argument of community to you tonight and i'd like to well i have massive sympathy that viewed i'd like to propose another which is that you argue that conservatives lacks ambition that conservatism canoe stood against the tide arguing for it to turn back and never quite achieving it and i think you've done a disservice to what conservatism is because if you look at another tradition of conservatives you look at the changes that some on this side of the house will argue wrong conservative i think one of the joys of conservatism it does have a pluralism that the left has never been willing to acknowledge or to preserve or entertain if you look at the conservative ideas that managed to put israeli and margaret thatcher in the same party that managed to put michael howard and david cameron in the same party then you'll understand that conservatism has a far richer tradition but in fact individualism the desire to push the boundaries of what society will entertain the ability to pass gay marriage for instance the ability to propose the ability to propose yeah go ahead johnny yeah 28 and it was only underplayed yeah and you're absolutely right johnny and no i'm not here defending margaret thatcher on that particular vote tonight but the fact of the matter brother no yeah yeah but johnny says this is the point and this is this is what's interesting about this debate is that you are attempting to take two long story traditions not just to british politics but international politics and summarize them down to a few pithy comments no one on either side of this house knight i'd like to think defends their ideology lock stock and barrel the fact of the matter is however the conservatism has given to the world many different strands of political thought many of which have lifted society to heights racing never you spoke about the opportunities afforded by the governments of blair and brown as the speaker in the audience rightly pointed out if we're going to talk about austerity we should acknowledge the role that gordon brown played on that and the ed miliband contrary to your claims were on a ran on a manifesto of more cuts in 2010 than this concerted government ever implemented so let's not pretend the slate is clean you talked about the nhs and i dare i remind you that of course it was the conservative government during the war that wrote the wrote the beverage report and that both parties in 1945 no yes under a concern no no thank you no thank you under a conservative government commissioned by a national government can i please ask you to wrap up yes i merely wish to say yeah sorry thank you i merely wish to say that conservatism can represent many different strands and that occasionally people in this country have lifted themselves up by their bootstraps because they've been afforded opportunities free from the state as well as buy it and the idea that everything about conservatives evil is simply wrong so i apologize that was quite a rambling and nuanced speech but i commend the motion to the house [Applause] thank you zach can we have a floor speech in opposition i think this was the first hand by my own hello uh i'm the poor person that johnny talked about uh and that's that's a very apt description i actually want to pick up on something that um oh i'm sorry zach just talked about which is that you know we're all so lucky to be here but the thing is i'm here in spite of everything that happened to me not because of it when i think about the things that james talked about i love them i love the pub i love all things to do with community and what i see as i spoke to michael howard earlier about is the conservatives decimating it when i walk down my high street i'm from swansea i don't know if anyone else is here from south wales or ie from a they'll see that they walk down the street and they see brand after brand after brand there's no local community there's no smes everything has been decimated and it's so much worse than it used to be and it didn't used to be good what are we looking at things we're looking at we're talking about community we're talking about all these things who has done more less for that than the current conservative government who has who has not abolished business rates who has opposed austerity that doesn't give a about the local community no i will not take it and they're like that is the current conservative government who has done things like get rid of the stuff that you conservatives love like latin teaching you you did it you want to talk about all these things you want to talk about the divergence of all these things it's you that did it you want to separate burke no from the current conservative government how can you because this is i don't care sit down [Applause] uh it's not bbc and it's past 9 p.m so my point is that the thing is is that all of these institutions that you value so strongly i value really strongly too and they've been stripped from me in the past 12 years and i really want to see from the next proposition the answer as to why that is and it's why is that conservative because i've seen labour have the answers for that and i haven't seen the conservatives have the answers for it i've seen them have the issues and that's what i want to see today [Applause] thank you holly and lastly we have a floor speech in abstention uh gabriel thank you very much we've already heard tonight you know lib dems they like abstention they like sitting on the fence etc i know what's going to be said but i really wanted to speak in opposition to this motion but then johnny reminded me why i was wrong because johnny inadvertently i'm sure did mislead the house because in the 2010 election labor promised 82 billions worth of cuts and the coalition government delivered 81 billion so they were more pro-austerity than the government they opposed and that is a reality of that manifesto but both these speakers had no place at all for the individual james said we should be in communities against our consent that will shape us that will make us better johnny said that we must have change imposed upon us i heard him literally say people should give their lives for the state what space is there what space is there for you for you to shine to be individuals to do something remarkable you are but pawns for the two main political parties to shove around to gratify themselves you can be pawns in community or you can be all right johnny i love you why not so at the cambridge union for the no confidence debate last term there was a speaker from the lib dems and she once tweeted something that i think sums up the lib dems she tweeted we fought night and day for a five feet bag tax it took us three hours of negotiations and eventually we got it at the cost of increased welfare sanctions i think that sums up the attitude of the lib dems in coalitions the reason you only had 81 billion pounds of cuts is because you cut taxes as well whereas labour would have increased them to increase savings on austerity the gordon brown manifesto is not what you're characterizing it as and the lib dem manifesto was as damaging to the country when implemented as any government has ever been since the second world war thank you johnny i actually going to try and engage with the arguments here in good faith because we can all play party politics right because you mentioned hundreds of thousands of lives changed by labor there were hundreds and thousands of lives changing iraq by labor there's no doubt about that [Applause] to put it simply both these sides tonight say the same thing that you should have no role in your political future it should be shoved around for you by socialists or by conservatives that's not true you are special you should decide your future you are unique and you should abstain tonight thank you [Applause] thank you gabriel we're now moving back to our paper speakers uh next is lord howard the second proposition speaker lord howard was the leader of the conservative party from 2003 to 2005 before that he served as the home secretary in the major government more importantly lord howard served as president of the cambridge union in eastern 1962 60 years ago lord howard you have the floors i mean you have the ears of the house [Applause] thank you madam president and may i begin by congratulating either you or your recent uh predecessor i don't know who was responsible for it for your choice of the date of this debate because it's a remarkable anniversary 110 years ago today on his 35th birthday captain lawrence oates a member of scott's ill-fated antarctic expedition walked out of the expedition's tent with the famous words i'm just going outside i may be some time that was an extraordinary demonstration of courage why you may ask do i mention it in the context of this debate and it's for this reason because as we in this chamber a chamber of which i have so many fond memories as we in this chamber rejoice and exult in our liberty to debate the various isms which structure the parameters of our politics there are people on our continent displaying equal courage today with their blood and with their lives for the freedom to debate the things which we are debating in this chamber this evening so we must never forget the preciousness of the freedoms we have inherited which alas we all too often take for granted in this country very different ukrainian ones which you um imply are similarly um similarly linked as ukrainian definitions are tied up in soviet-era communism and uh 1920s revolutionary further whereas ours united forced israeli to edmond park many others thank you for very much on liberal few i wasn't making a party point the the devotion to freedom which we all share in this country and which those in ukraine are having to fight so hard to defend and to achieve for themselves it's not something which is a mighty a matter happily for party politics or the party divide so i come to the motion and in order to test the motion that conservatism is the answer we have to consider the question to which it may be or may not be the answer and i suggest the question is this which ism which political philosophy which political approach is best designed and more likely to promote the interests of the people of our country that's the test that's what we all of us who go into politics go into politics for on whichever side we are we all believe we can make a difference and we all believe that in our different ways the values which we adhere to can do the best for the people of our country can promote their best interests now progressivism which is the way in which it was defined in the excellent speech by the opposite of the motion is perhaps what he puts forward as an opposition to conservatism but he characterized it to be fair to him by reference to the labour party and to labor governments and of course labor governments are very well intentioned labor governments want to do the best for the people of our country they want to achieve a different world as the honorable gentleman said alas the evidence shows that all too often they fail they fail not because they lack good intentions but they fail because time after time they fail in the execution i will i will know well the honorable lady the honourable lady wants to intervene alas she didn't allow me to intervene on her but but her her attempted intervention um enables me to perhaps correct the impression she gave of the very spirited conversation we had about swansea near to where i grew up before we entered into the chamber this evening because my recollection of that discussion is that we've reached a happy agreement that the responsibility for the unhappy pride of swansea today rested with the devolved government of wales which i have to remind her is a labor government uh that's uh that's where the responsibility uh for the difficulties of swansea but i want to return i want to return to my theme which is the the failure despite their good intentions of labor governments and i offer you i offer you one test if you like one way by which you can judge them labor governments are very keen to reduce unemployment so are conservative governments by the way as i've just said i grew up i was born and grew up in a labor-dominated south wales where the memory of inter-war employment unemployment was raw and of course labor governments wanted to do everything they could to tackle unemployment yet it is a demonstrable unarguable fact that with one minor exception every labor government we have ever had has left office with unemployment higher than it was when it came into office the minor exception i'll deal with first it was the very first labor government the ramsey mcdonald government of 24 1924 it was only in office for 10 months and unemployment was very slightly down at the end of its period but after that every labour government the ramsey mcdonough government of 1929-31 the atlea government of 1945 to 1951 the wilson government of 1964-1970 the wilson callahan government of 1974-79 the blair brown government of 1997-2010 each and every one of them left office with unemployment higher than it was when they came into office not through lack of good intentions but good intentions aren't enough now conservatives conservatives and conservatism we do not pretend to create utopia we do not pretend that it is possible for government to solve all problems or to remedy all illness but we believe that it is possible to make steady progress towards improving the condition of our fellow citizens and the hallmark of conservatism is its realism and its pragmatism the honourable gentleman criticized the conservative party for not being able not being willing not being ready to use the state to help improve the condition of the people but no one could possibly argue that the current conservative government is a small government government or that it is a low tax government on the contrary the current government is a relatively high tax government and it's a relatively big state government and that is because it recognizes that the challenges which face our country today are different from the challenges we face margaret thatcher in the 1980s when it was more appropriate to aim for a smaller government and a lower tax government conservatism is pragmatic it is realistic it won't solve all our problems it won't remedy all our ills but it will steadily improve the condition of the people and that is why it is the answer [Applause] yeah yeah sorry yep [Applause] sorry yeah i said it was fine it's within the law to swear um [Applause] we can talk later about it further um moving on we have our second opposition speaker emily thornbury emily is a member of the island as is a member for islington south and finsbury she is currently serving as shadow attorney general and was previously the shadow foreign secretary emily the floor is yours [Music] thank you very much for sorting out the question about profanity it's probably important to sort it out before someone like me cuts up to speak um and i'd also like to uh thank you all for the honour of uh of inviting me here to speak i've been here a number of times and it's always a huge pleasure um to come here and it's a great pleasure to speak alongside up-and-coming stars such as james and johnny and eleanor and uh and and for and and continuing stars [Applause] such as uh such as michael and uh and david um who've been to the uh great finishing school of the houses of parliament um and you know there's i mean people quite often lament you know where are the great thinkers uh on public policy these days where are the intellectual heavyweights in politics and in michael and david's case of course it is that they're in the house of lords um and they are and they and the house of commons is much poorer for it and uh it's a great pleasure to be here debating things with you again so i wanted to i was thinking about what approach to take to this and um you know should i take like the traditional conservative approach or should i take a more radical approach um should i be talking about you know conservative politics versus progressive politics i mean i could do 10 minutes on every great advance in britain you know universal free health care and education minimum wage workers rights in law state pension tax credits modern welfare system extension of freedom and rights votes for women discrimination against homosexuals i could do all that but i'm not going to because because because because it's already been done really well it's already been done really well by johnny and so i think that i'm what i wanted to do really was to to sort of let's take a radical approach shall we let's you know because i mean you know otherwise what will we get you know we'll be saying you know we've done all this and they'll be and they'll be saying oh william wilberforce was a conservative emily and pankhurst she stood as a conservative margaret thatcher did some nice things don't know what it is god yes have you got a nice thing [Applause] david cameron introduced same-sex marriage of course only because labour voted for it he wouldn't have got it through if it hadn't been for us but you know hey um and also you know may well be arguing that conservative economics has done more to to cure uh poverty around the world than to cause it and that is obviously a moot point but i mean all of that's a little bit panto and whilst i'd be up for it i actually as i say i don't want to necessarily do a you know no we're not yes we are um i because i don't think anybody not a single person here would really change their minds if i was to kind of get into all of that um and i didn't think anybody would really deeply think about the issues so now i'm going to be a radical so what i want to do is i want to start by saying something that i have never ever said in all my years in politics before my friends i will admit that conservatism is not all bad it can sometimes be a good thing and depending on what the question is there are occasions when conservatism may be the ideal answer so i mean indeed in fact i think there may even be times when i have agreed with a conservative viewpoint so for example you know let's take the limits on the power of the state there are some times when there should be a limit on the power of the state it is right that that that there are some things within our heritage our traditions our institutions where they should be protected sometimes possibly only sometimes market forces should take their course and the rule of law and the protection of the rule of law is absolutely essential now those things would be seen as being conservative values i mean there are many other things i don't agree with um and uh but you know what's important is to have conservative opponents um who you hear from and who challenge you and you make you think you know and i think that kind of balancing act that we have in british politics you know the balancing act between political philosophers is really important and is absolutely at the heart of our democracy and making our democracy work yeah do they have a point they usually don't but sometimes they do so that's the second of my objections so it's all a bit panto and secondly not one political party has necessary not even labor has got all the monopoly of wisdom um or all the answers i am not saying can i say i am not saying please don't misunderstand me i am not saying that balance means some bland wishy-washy centrist consensus trying to be all things to all people gabriel what i'm talking about is the power of ideas the strength of debate the and and and to then put it before the public who give us a verdict and they're the ones who make the decision and decide what is the right way to go forward and what looks after the public good you talked about the extension of rights what about one of the most fundamental rights of all the right to have your vote respected a right which your party the labor party called against year after year in relation to the brexit vote because it was a decision that the labour party didn't agree with and didn't lie oh don't get me started there was a vote in this country on brexit and there were so many things that were promised i mean everything was promised i think it was even promised that your wife's breasts will be bigger they promised they promised everything they said you could do everything you know that pints of beer would be twice as big they promised everything and anything in order to get the vote a particular way and all that all the democrats were saying was it's a really big decision before we make an absolute before we've like now we've seen what the deal is going to look like let's just check because it's so far away from what people were promised let's before we make this stupendous decision let's just have a little check let's just make sure that's what people want and we weren't afraid of democracy although a lot of people were obviously that seems to include you sir so what so but but i i want to talk about you know times when conservative and labor and where the where the meeting of ideas can be really important and can be creative i mean i i remember in fact what the three of us did 17 years ago um michael michael howard david willits and myself um we voted against all of us tony blair's legislation to introduce 90 days detention without charge and you know it was it was a progressive emphasis and my part on civil liberties where and we met the conservative emphasis on the rule of law and we came together and we made the right decision and together you know we we stopped an increase in the unchecked power of the state it was a very important moment i think you know and when parliament is working well and at its best that's how it should be and so this brings me to my third point and my third objection to this motion and that is probably the most urgent the most serious the most this is so okay so it's only got a small c this motion but let's just have a think right because we should not believe that modern conservatism as is supported in parliament by that large majority and by the backbenchers desire for red meat is any longer concerned with governing for the public good don't that they don't listen any longer to legitimate concerns of opponents and also this current government is not interested in in reasoned decisions and having those decisions corrected or any debate around it if you look at the behavior of some ministers nadine doris oliver dowden boris johnson himself you know you look at it and you can see that there is power for power's sake being exercised here it is not ideological purity and at least because i mean you know i wouldn't agree with that ideological purity but at least it would have some philosophy behind it but no this is about partisan purity this is about dividing people who is with us who is against us and what are the most worrying signs of this very dangerous direction that this government is taking us in is that they are so ready to to abandon traditional conservative principles when it suits them for example on personal freedom on civil liberties you know on the unchecked power of the state look at pretty patel look at her criminalizing the very act of protest look at michael gove making it harder for uk citizens to vote what about protecting heritage and institutions i give you nadine doris and what she's saying about the bbc or liz trust selling out our farmers or dominic rabb attacking the judges david willett spent every every one of his waking moments championing universities as being the best in the world and what does oliver dowden do he publicly he publicly condemns them the rule of law boris johnson and and matt hancock flagrantly violating covert rules celebrant she's the attorney general for those of you who don't know um trying to remove judicial review brandon lewis and the house of commons saying yes yes yes the government's broken international law and in the internal markets bill but he says and i quote it was a specific and limited in specific and limited ways no wonder michael howard responded by bemoaning ni the damage done by those five words to our reputation for respecting the rule of law words that i never thought i would hear from a british minister far less a conservative minister partisan purity where does this lead us power for power's sake look at the conservative movement in the u.s this is serious a movement in the in the united states which is so enthrall so enthralled and also beholden to the most aggressive divide divisive partisan supporters that tells good decent conservatives like matt romney or liz cheney um that they have no place a movement that claims to have such a monopoly of wisdom but also has a monopoly when it comes to patriotism morality truth and worst of all they are so possessed of their of their righteousness that they're trying to rig the system in order to keep themselves in power forever we should be very wary of this because we have ministers and we have senior apparatchiks in the conservative party this conservative party at the moment who believe that this is a not a warning but a blueprint it is appalling it will never happen here people say well i can tell you that although we have we had good dece look at what's happened to good decent conservatives like david gawk or dominic grieve you know they were told there was no place in this conservative party for them because they failed the purity test the purity test that we've heard about i hope that there will not be a purity test for michael and david where they will also be told that there's no place in this current conservative party for good and decent conservatives like them my final point and it is my final point and i want to put this as my closing appeal for anybody tempted to back this motion tonight ask yourself before saying conservatism is the answer ask yourself are you really sure that the current brand is what you want power for power's sake not politics for the public good and the fear is that now and for a very long time to come i believe this brand of conservatism is all that the current conservative party will have to offer [Applause] thank you very much emily we'll have a very quick round of floor speeches please keep them to a minute i will cut you off um would anyone like to speak in proposition uh jacob hoogie corpus christi um when i uh walked in here earlier today i don't think i ever expected i'd be speaking for the proposition but i think i'd like to remind everyone that this motion is written with a lowercase c and i'd like to argue that perhaps what we need is a bit of conservativem about conservatism that uh the current conservative government that we've heard a lot about is not following conservatives with a little c with a big c ideological conservatism what we really need is a little bit of conservatism about conservatism we need to be considering whether or not we should be considering liberal perspectives or on conservative perspectives more more realistically more pragmatically rather than ideologically following the pragmatic perspective or the liberal perspective trying to enforce our views uh whether they be conservative or liberal just said we yeah focus on reality and not the ideals so you're idealizing a different form of uncertainty what is our reality right now and i think the lowercase c big casey is really pedantically uh i would agree that is the reality of big c conservatism but conservative them with a little seed about skepticism and i i'd argue that perhaps we should be a bit more skeptical about that perspective thank you thank you thank you would anyone like to speak in opposition of the motion okay hello um frederic sannetmans um i thought that the comment that the first speaker made or basically for him it was all about communities and community spirit and i think that was a very interesting argument because um i often had that in the context of communism that it would only work on like a small scale everyone be happy and it would work out fine and so then that got me thinking about germany and socialist germany and it's quite interesting if you look at the voters from east germany um they they have like a bit schizophrenic so you have some who are very very socialist and you have those who vote very very conservative and it almost seemed like they are nostalgic about the things that they've lost and they wish that things wouldn't change so quickly um oh levy yeah um since yes in a sense yes um there are some elements of the afd that are i would consider as like far-right nationalists and then there are some who would like to you know uh have a alliance with the merkel party the ecu well anyways so i thought it was quite interesting because oh um i don't think i can so i'm just saying um conservatism is uh the answer of the past um basically we can see that in the voters in east germany they vote very conservative when they want to keep things from the past and i think it aligns very well with what the first speaker on the opposition said and it's basically that whatever change was made later on people will will agree with it well later on conservatives will agree with it so basically what i could say now tomorrow it might be conservatism what i propose now as a progressive might be conservative tomorrow so basically i think it's just the thing that holds us back please wrap up any closing comments that was it thank you thank you sorry this debate started late so we need to keep them short can we have one last floor speech in abstention so i'd like to start off by saying i am a conservative and i do agree with everything that james and lord howard said and i fully intend to walk out through the eye door however the reason i'm making an abstention speech is because i think that ultimately our problem is not something that can be answered by political ideology in fact our problem is that though we are all born quite young and that we're all very healthy now and very happy in about 40 years we'll start to decline and give a little more time each of us is going to approach death's door and we will die and anyone who has come near death knows what a frightening experience it is and in that moment no amount of community support no amount of conservative ideas is going to do anything to help us so i say walk through the eye door but also go to church thank you [Applause] thank you thank you okay quiet please quiet thank you quiet quiet quiet thank you okay we'll now move to our last proposition speaker lord willits lord willett is president of the resolution foundation he is also currently a visiting professor at king's college london lord will let you have the ears of the house thank you very much i should first of all explain i am about 40 years older than you are um but i'll do my best in the circumstances as i look at the prospect of imminent decay [Applause] i'd like to congratulate the former president james for his very ingenious choice of the subject for our debate and also i'd like to say how much i've enjoyed the debate already and if i may say so it's actually well the better than we manage in either the commons or the lords it's getting to the heart of what it is that conservatism stands for and james offered one account and his account was about a conservatism that is a conservatism of belonging of roots of community some of the things that give life its meaning and not all of which we choose and it is indeed one of the conservative insights that some of the things that are most valuable and shape our lives are not things that we choose and i thought he was very eloquent about that strand of conservatism but it faces two lines of criticism and we've heard them in the interventions from the opposition one line of criticism and it was in the brief intervention that we heard from eleanor was that this belonging is a rather cozy sort of belonging that is fine if you're a straight white man but it's actually rather a narrow and exclusive sense of community and this conservative appeal to community has not embraced the diversity and range of experiences of modern britain and to that i would say that if you look at the story of the political development of britain in the past 150 years you will indeed see a story in which the constitution the rights of citizenship the rights of to choose people's personal behavior has gradually extended but the conservative party has played its own role in that extension of the understanding of participation it was originally even worse than straight white men it was originally affluent upper class straight white men the biggest single step to extend the franchise in the 19th century was the israeli israeli israeli identifying the angels in marble in his 1867 election reform extending the franchise to the working classes and in the and as engels wrote to marx after these working class voters voted tori the working classes behavior had been quotes very disappointing in the 20th century the conservative party appealed to the female vote when the party of organized labor was the party of organized male workers conservatives would only have won two elections since 1945 if it had been a male electorate conservatives won because the conservative message of reaching out beyond organized labor was also an appeal to female voters that notorious douglas j remark the gentleman in whitehall knows best was preceded with another sentence equally significant the housewives of england cannot be trusted to know what is best for them the gentleman in whitehall knows best and most recently and it's already been referred to it was the coalition government and incidentally with the majority of conservative votes though also with fantastic labor support that did indeed pass gay marriage into law so that process of extending our understanding of what makes us a national community has been a project in which both parties have participated yes yes i accept the correction it was the coalition parties that secured it and you've earned your job at facebook um the uh so yes there was indeed so so that on that line of criticism the pro what it means to be a conservative what belonging is it's absolutely right that it can be an exclusive sense of belonging but i don't think that the pattern of reform is one that exclusively belongs to labor but then there's a different line of argument against james and this came from jonathan in his very eloquent speech which basically said this is all too cozy and comfortable it isn't strenuous enough all this celebration of who we are all our lacks traditions certain dissatisfaction and one of the features of modern life is indeed the endless dissatisfaction which in turn drives reform and uh when john major gave that speech referring to uh what was it none cycling through mists to holy communion it was a slightly if i may say to james and of course it was actually john major incidentally quoting george orwell we should remember it was an originally an image from george orwell it is all a bit tame and that's where i'd like to pick up on the grammatical point that was made earlier small c conservatism is indeed just about keeping things roughly as they are it's the flywheel principle it's the mechanism we need to stabilize things and keep it on an even keel and not be too disruptive but i actually think capital c conservatism has a bit more to it than that and jonathan's strenuousness would be with if i may say so and he won't like this compliment though it's meant as a compliment is exactly why margaret thatcher was so dissatisfied i can see him shivering you're shivering it's exactly why margaret thatcher was dissatisfied with a certain sort of rather comfortable rather complacent easy-going conservatism and to understand why there is more to capital c conservatism than that strand of small c conservatism you have to look at the history of our party and how it compares with political experience in some other democracy and what you find is that in the 19th century conservatism was small c conservatism and often that in continental european political systems is a defined political party in its own right and it's a often a rural peasant church-based party that stands for tradition and often across europe there is then a separate party a liberal anti-clerical urban pro-business party in the late 19th century because of the deep divide in the liberal party on the issue of ireland a large swathe of urban liberal business opinion joined the conservative party joe chamberlain led the move we had a libera a former liberal became a conservative chancellor of the exchequer and what is distinctive about british conservatism with a small c therefore is it combines that eloquent appeal to what the community to which we belong with a much more strenuous challenge and this is a different language it's about freedom and choice and individuality and dynamism and mobility that is the other strand yes of course felt equality increased which so tracked people to continue and blunted their inability to aspire where was the choice then where was the choice over the past 10 years there is a choice uh and the choice was most vivid in the 1980s and you can take different views about that choice in the 1980s we had high rates of economic change we had more people losing their jobs we also had no more people gaining new jobs we had an increase in inequality i don't delight deny the evidence but we also had for almost every income group including low-paid workers absolute increases in their incomes greater than in any other post-war decade so what you saw in the 1980s was an example of the kind of reality of the trade-offs we make if you care about absolute incomes and increases not just in average earnings but in the earnings of the low paid the 1980s delivered that in spades if you care about inequality it is also the case in the 1980s inequality increased if i had a choice in an ideal world of course we'd have both but in reality it's not always possible to deliver both increased equality and also the dynamism of a rapidly growing economy if i had the choice i would count the increase in absolute incomes above the increase in inequality so look i well i and if you look at what conservatives do the reason why conservatism is the is the most successful long-lived western political force is precisely because for a long period of our history we combine two distinct principles and this is we are endlessly reaching trade-offs between them and they're not just matters of political ideology the reason why this conservative tradition is so rich and strikes a chord with so many voters is it's what each one of us individually does in our lives did you stay or do you move do you split or do you commit do you move on or do you stay where you are those are decisions which each one of us individually is taking all the time and they're exactly the same decisions that politicians working within the conservative tradition are taking when we face the day-to-day policy dilemmas of government and if you look at the decisions that conservatives have taken in the last few years look at the furlough scheme introduced so rapidly and so boldly because of the covid crisis that was a commitment to a belief in the state a conservative understanding of the state not quite the same as we heard from jonathan but a real conservative understanding of the state which is the state as a mutual insurance scheme the bearer of risk for which is too great for any one individual or any one business and we stepped in because we as conservatives understand that is a role for the state if you look at what conservatives stand for therefore i think if you look at everything from the extension of participation in full citizenship through gay marriage through to most recently the recognition of the role of the state in mutual insurance you will find that the richest most all-encompassing most persuasive most personally comprehensible political tradition within which we function in britain is that combination of freedom and community which is conservatism with a capital c thank you very much [Applause] thank you lord willits moving on to our closing opposition speaker eleanor stiles eleanor is a first-year student reading history and politics at pembroke college and i know you have the ears of the house [Applause] good evening members of the floor i plan to start this speech in a very different way than the way i'm about to but on hearing james's anecdotes about growing up in the southwest i thought i'd provide my own similar experiences but drawing a very different conclusion about conservatism i too i'm from a small village in the southwest near a very small town called cheeksbury and there is a sense of community in rural life that i love but when we look at the practical realities of what have happened to our communities we can see that conservatism seeks to destroy rather than preserve them there is a bus stop in my village but no buses stop at it because the conservatives have prioritized taxation cuts over funding into public services like transport isolating our community we have a post box but they're talking about removing it because again they're cutting funding isolating our community there's a school in my town that desperately needs funding and i'm very lucky that i could go to a grammar school in the town over but again we see how the conservatives cut funding now this demonstrates ironically that the conservatives whilst lauding their focus on practicalities rather than abstractions commit to principles over people and in this way we can see that conservatism with a small c or a big c i don't mind is not the answer to the problems that we're facing i'm excited about this motion i'm so excited and i've scribbled down lots of notes that basically made my paper incoherent i'm so excited i accidentally kicked over emily thornby's drink i'm sorry i'm so excited but i'm going to try to restrain myself from making this a debate of conservatism big c versus labour because whilst i am a labor member that is not what this debate is about that is not what the motion sets out i'm appealing to you if you're a labor member a green member snp if you're a lib dem even if you're a big c conservative because what this motion is dealing with and what i feel hasn't properly been discussed is small c conservatism if by the end of it i change your mind and you defect from the big seas i see that as a bonus but i will be focusing on the nitty gritties of political philosophy as opposed to bickering and arguing about who passed what legislation because legislation is underlined by ideology now to start in that sort of theoretical space i'd like us all to imagine our perfect version of the united kingdom we might have some disagreements over the practicalities of what that would look like but i think we can draw some general agreements the perfect uk wouldn't have poverty it wouldn't have homelessness it wouldn't have nurses at food banks it wouldn't have closing libraries when we consider what we want the uk to look like the change that would really affect our society it becomes clear that conservatism can never take us there our president himself said that conservatism looks at the world as it is rather than what it could be but why why can't we be focusing on moving towards a better future small c conservatism looks to maintain to change only in order to conserve what already exists but there is something better expanding on that point i i do recognize conservatism isn't completely opposed to change but i'd like to emphasize that the change it makes aren't driven by any greater purpose any any ideological point they're striving towards for equality but instead our concessions duplicate the masses it'd be wrong to say that this you know modicum of adaptability makes conservatism a progressive ideology because conservatism will never aim to change conventions its goal is to not overthrow the painful institutions that are damaging members of our society its purpose is not for a more equal future if these things do happen they're a by-product and i know i said i wouldn't bring in the nitty-gritty but lord willits mentioned you know legalizing gay marriage under the coalition and other progressive changes that the big c conservative government have made but we can see that these social movements do not evolve from within conservatism they evolve elsewhere and then conservatism capitalizes on them for an electoral benefit it as an ideology does not promote change this yes is again thank you for your point just to articulate that response further i think you're again conflating big c and small c conservatives abolition of slavery is not a conservative policy because it is not aiming to conserve traditional institutions but moving on from that i'd like to say that what i'm saying might sound familiar to those of you who are at the debate on labour last term where i spoke and i'd like to reiterate what i said then again because the fundamentals of conservatism haven't changed since last term to use the example that i gave last term from oak shot he described a preference for present laughter over utopian bliss as you know a summing up of conservatism no thank you but i'd like to say again what i said before millions of members of our society are not laughing conservatism would keep this country ticking along on its current path deliberately blind to those who fall through the cracks now conservatism has many strands i will admit it it has the new right traditional conservatives and dysreally it's conservatives and all sorts like any philosophy it's nuanced and has strands however i'd like to remind the floor that we do mean something when we say conservatism there are some general underlying principles that remain and one nation conservatism i believe tries to rebrand these principles it's you know conservatism with a friendly face less morally dubious more inclusive beginning with israeli it recognized that the revolutionary potential of the masses in the current state of society and attempted to calm them down with a few concessions but instead of focusing on these concessions as we have in this debate we should look to the meaning underneath them we can romanticize the institutions that conservatism aims to maintain but we can't ignore how many of our society are disadvantaged by them the safety nets provided by conservatives don't exist to move society towards something better they exist to prevent us from asking for it they tell us we ought to be satisfied with what we've been given and not to look for anything more it attempts to unite us as a nation without looking at what divides us it perpetuates our differences it tells us to find solidarity in abstractions ironically rather in our realities conservatism's unsuitability to our time i think has been best highlighted in the last few years an ideology that is fundamentally reactive can't be prepared for crisis now in this situation i will be using big c conservatism just to illustrate my points but that's because i believe they represent the ideology not because i'm getting confused about the motion the conservative government promised us furlough pay but doesn't address why low taxation on businesses leaves many of us struggling every day the conservative government you know extended free school meals without asking why so many children are regularly going hungry and have to rely on them the conservative government tries to squash revolutionary grassroots movements and is incapable of real and genuine social change i've spoken today about how conservatism preserves the systems of inequality within our society and despite the concessions that it may make dismantling the systems of inequality is antithetical to its very nature we've spoken about you know conservatives appealing to the votes of women but they refuse to dismantle the societal structures that encourage women into submission we've talked about gay rights but we won't acknowledge the fact that the conservatives put forward the coalition with the dup they refuse to genuinely dismantle homophobic institutions we look to the conservatives and we see concessions rather than genuine change and i say it before because i want everyone to focus on the wording of this motion i don't think i should have to explain why these systems of inequality don't have a place in our future but for the sake of debate i will to borrow from john rules i'd like to remind the floor that no one would choose to be discriminated against no one would choose to face classism sexism homophobia racism but we do have some choice we do have some level of control we can move towards something better we as humans we may not be perfect but that's not a reason not to try lord howard admitted that conservatism won't so we won't solve all of our problems but we ought to try and solve them at the very least no thank you if we want to ask how we got to a place of widening inequality and deep political resentment conservatism is your answer but please don't vote yes i'm in the last minute so no please don't vote yes for that reason vote no because you believe in genuine social change vote no for any of the other issues of conservatism i haven't brought up like the prioritization of abstract concepts of freedom over individuals the incoherence of many of its ideas but i am really running out so i can't get into it or even if you've just tuned in because you know you're zoned out and it's the last speech just vote no thank you thank you very much eleanor in this house we work we vote with our feet so please use the idol the no door or the abstain door the result will be announced in the bar thank you very much [Music] you

Channel: Cambridge Union

Views: 9,852

Keywords: Cambridge Union, Cambridge University, Speech, This house believes Conservatism is the answer, Debate, Conservatism, Tori, President, Politics, Conservative Party, Howard, Lord Howard, Government, Lord Willetts, Resolution Foundation, Shadow Foreign Secretary, Shadow Attorney General, Emily Thornberry

Id: fmzkkXoTY3Q

Length: 103min 27sec (6207 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 03 2022