Uplifting

John writes:

In the news, at least, in this interesting story by the BBC detailing Harold Macmillan’s attempt to convince Margaret Thatcher to drop her neoliberal policies and return to the post-war consensus championed by Old Labour and One Nation Tories like Macmillan himself. This story was both uplifting and depressing. The story was uplifting because it reveals that there was once a time when major politicians actually had a social conscience. On the other hand, it is rather depressing to realize that Thatcher and her ilk eventually won the day, bringing us the awful neoliberal consensus. I am sure if Harold Macmillan and other One Nation Tories were transported to our time, the neoliberal establishment, including many self-proclaimed “progressives,” would consider them to be “loony leftists” and thus not worth listening to.

Indeed, the really sad thing about all of this is not that Thatcherite conservatives would oppose a revival of One Nation Toryism. No, the really sad thing is that the “Left” has come to be defined by social liberals more concerned with attacking religion than with supporting populist economic policy. The anti-family policies favored by these trendy lefties have made life much worse for working people while the affluent liberals themselves can still retreat into their gated communities and ignore all the damage caused by their support for “freedom” in the economic and social spheres. We need a return to the kind of conservatism that denies the fundamentalism of free markets and free love and recognizes that there can be no real freedom without protecting the larger society known as “the community” and the smaller society known as “the family.”