A rhyme from history

Gerald Warner's commenters are about as generous as Warner himself in the demonstration of many idiocies, as hctroubador demonstrates:

What precisely is “Toryism”? I see very little resemblance to the classical liberalism of Smith upon which it was founded. Where are the small government, individual liberty, and free markets? (src)

Let's see. Sir Robert Peel, to whom Warner alludes in his opening paragraph, supported free trade and for his pains was nudged out of the Conservative party and into the Whigs, who by that time were evolving into the Liberals. Originally, Toryism was quite certainly not founded on the classical liberalism of Smith, but rather on the conservatism of the land-owning classes. That's why the Liberals were called the Liberals, you see, and why if this blog had a patron saint it would be William Ewart Gladstone who supported Peel, and not that knave Disraeli, who opposed him.

We are, of course, the better for the Tories' subsequent conversion, but Toryism was not originally founded on the classical liberal principles of limited government and individual liberty. If anything, the Tories were founded on the principle of keeping the labouring masses toiling away on their farms. When industry came along they really had something to oppose, and it was all to the good of the sectional-interest war that the industrialists supported free trade, because it meant that they could import and export more easily. Thus the Liberals tended to be the party of industry and the cities while the Tories represented the rural, agricultural interest.

Disraeli learnt from Gladstone's electoral successes, and he dragged the Tories away from their highly rural politics towards a politics which also appealed to working men. Low taxes and political reform were high on the agenda: remind you of anyone? But Disraeli's approach was to mark a more significant shift in Conservative politics. They were no longer to be a party which stood for principles, even if they were the wrong sort of principles: he had realised that the way to win elections is to appeal to the electorate. So Disraeli pulled Toryism not towards liberalism, but towards pragmatism.

Thus we can see that the history of industrialisation is, in part, a history of opening up new opportunities for people who had not previously had them, and of the associated political shift towards greater freedom. The popularity of Gladstone's classical liberal emphasis on individual freedom, and of Disraeli's shameless aping of him, can be seen to come straight out of that kind of world, where even working men felt that anything could be possible for them, too.

And likewise today, the Internet is opening up new opportunities and new ways of doing things. It is changing society to an extent arguably not felt since the Industrial Revolution. And once again, it seems that the political wheel could be turning towards greater involvement, greater engagement and greater freedom.

There is one key difference: last time, it was the Liberals making the running and the Conservatives playing politics and catch-up. This time, it appears to be the Conservatives making the running. So all that remains to be seen is whether the Conservatives' current manifesto stems from the dangerous, Disraelian tradition of pragmatism for votes' sake, or whether the leadership truly is as liberal as it claims to be.

(I'll give you a clue: I'm not that hopeful.)