This Tory lot are said to be the most pro-European in a generation. But there are still a lot of eurosceptics in the party. There is still a fight to be fought over the party’s soul. There are philosophical questions: what does it mean to be a Tory? Is Toryism compatible with Europeanism? Are they fundamentally opposed? Let’s leave out the economics; you must be able to define conservatism without reference to capitalism. (And concomitant issues such as the single market, or excessive regulation) At least that is what a lot of Tory philosophers have done – and no one has ever complained.
Edmund Burke is one of the great Tory philosophers of course, and a Tory wet can actually mine the 18th century statesman for support for this thesis that Europe, as it has turned out, is a good thing. Burke was an aristocrat, believing in an aristocracy of merit. But what isn’t the current EU but an aristocracy – oligarchy, same thing. The commission has entry competitions; second, the European parliament isn’t beholden to its electorate; but neither was the pre-United Kingdom Irish parliament which serves as Burke’s model for the ideal legislature; in both the EP and the 18th century Dublin ideal, legislators voted with their consciences, and the party whip was weak Burke believed in the balance of power, the checks and balances of a council of 27 member states, (with veto rights), commission of 20,000 civil servants and European parliament of 732 independent MEPs, produces moderate, considered compromises – exactly the kind of “action and counteraction whose reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe” that Burke was saying the revolutionary French (his arch enemies) rejected when the National Assembly was set up comprising a swelling, singular popular will.
Burke belivges i9n an evolutionary polity; well, today the European Union turms fifty, and the whole point about Europe is that the EU builds on its own illustrious heritage, while at the same time embracing the Lisbon process to become the world’s top knowledge based economy by 2010; so the political project proceeds on the “principles of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement”
He argued that revolutionary governments were simple governments, concerned about fulfilling a single agenda regardless of the neglect of the goals of the whole polity. The House of commons, drawn from people with experience of all areas of life, and the Lords, of people with vast estates and experiences of rule, was a guarantee against such a single, revolutionary agenda. He wrote in his most famous book, Reflections on the Revolution in France:
“Simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would answer its single end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should be imperfectly and anomalously answered than that, while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected or perhaps materially injured by the over-care of a favourite member.”
Translated for the modern era: national governments and their acquiescent parliaments have simple agendas, taken up by national media drawn from people of the same class, upbringing and general attitudes. But these are moderated and modified in those growing areas covered by European legislation, at least, by the wills of other nation states, leading to an imperfect and anomalous pan European solution that is able to answer the whole imperfectly – but is better for it, as Burke would surely say.
And anyone who doesn’t worry about the fifty years of two steps forward and one step back would be pleased to know that Burke writes that “The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience”. He endorses muddle, multilateralism, building on success, evolutionary development, leadership of elites – and not necessarily populist democracy - all leading to general progress. Sounds like Burke, as well as describing 18th century England, was also describing the modern EU. And – Tory principle par excellence – it pasts the empirisicm test. For And who can say that Europe, which enjoys peace and prosperity, and an enviable quality of life, and is higher rated in a global poll as an enviable political entity than any single nation state - is not successful? It is a triumph both of Europe and or Burke’s ideas – and Burke was of course a European
Toriy wets have a powerful argument that modern Europe, in all its muddle and confusion, its oligarchic pretensions, is actually one of the Tory movement's idol's perfect heroes. Who would have thought that?
