Small 'c' conservatism and the Labour Party

‘To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.' Against the backdrop of current political developments, Oakeshott’s description of conservatism may seem a little off the mark. But self descriptions always need to be treated with a little bit of suspicion: no doubt many Communists would have said and believed that what they were doing was in the name of human freedom and about ending subjugation. But as an aspiration, this idea of conservatism doesn’t seem like an altogether bad one, though I think we should be suspicious of liking the familiar or rejecting the possible for the actual for their own sakes. Caution, a desire to preserve and build on the good aspects of what exists, empiricism and a suspicion of utopianism are not all bad things. Conservatism, in this sense, may be better represented by the left of British politics now, and perhaps this is something the Labour Party should embrace. 

Much of the agenda of the contemporary British left is, after all, about preservation. Preservation and restoration of the welfare state, of a flourishing public sphere, of the post war diplomatic order and of a tolerant, pluralistic, multicultural society. What we are essentially describing here is conserving and building on the gains of the 20th century. Environmental protection and combatting climate change is a more striking example still. How, then, would this this with the increasing demands for ‘radical’ change, and for the increased interest in ‘systemically’ criticism, in particular with capitalism and the market economy?How does this fit with the rehabilitation of ‘socialist’ as a self description? I’m not convinced there is as much substance to these terms anymore as might appear at first glance.Very few people are advocating a planned economy, or for that matter any kind of coherent means of organising economic life that is dramatically different to the status quo. No doubt the contemporary left in the U.K. has a particular interest in nationalisation, but this tends to be limited to public goods which are often state run or owned in countries with a flourishing private sector. The principled opposition to private sector involvement in certain services may have better or worse justifications, but it doesn’t amount to a plan to fundamentally reorganise society, in the way that many socialists in the 20th century did advocate. 

Perhaps for this reason the 'radical' left has actually been quite open to liberal economics. Examples of this might be opposition to austerity framed in terms of standard macro economic arguments, or an openness to carbon taxes as a means of reducing emissions. Certainly, there are certain aspects of a left wing agenda that amount to a challenge of existing power (eg a greater role for collective bargaining in wages). But for the most part, and perhaps even here, this could easily be described as an attempt to make capitalism work better, whilst protecting the vulnerable from its excesses. This desire to conserve and build on existing gains might contrast nicely with the destructiveness of the Conservative Party, and might well be a better pitch to the wider electorate than calls for radicalism, or use of outdated vocabulary.