Undoing the Post-War Paradigm

In the Tory canon of post-war British Prime Ministers, no name looms larger than that of Margaret Thatcher. However, despite her radical reputation, her failure to completely dismantle the assumptions and institutions of the post-war consensus leaves her party's subsequent leaders with a political mountain to climb.

There is much talk on the right, as the Tories appear to be facing their first period in opposition for 14 years, about the need for a radical rejuvenation of both philosophy and membership within the party. In particular, there is a need to implement strategies and promote talent intent upon tearing apart what has come to be termed ‘The Blairite Paradigm’: suffocating social progressivism and managerial capitalism.

However unthinkable it may have been a few years ago, these shibboleths are now widely being discussed in parts of the parliamentary party and the grassroots, and real social conservatism is back on the menu for the first time in a decade, thanks in large part to the efforts of Miriam Cates and The New Conservatives.

In relative terms, however, this constitutes low-hanging fruit. Truly revolutionary changes needed must include overturning the post-World War II order, particularly those institutions left largely untouched by Thatcher’s economic reforms of the 1980s.

The unholy technocratic trident of everyday British life, which includes the BBC, the NHS, and The Town and Country Planning Act 1947, must be tackled as a matter of urgency to awaken Britain from its economic and cultural slumber.

Among these, the fate of the BBC is the least controversial on the right. Emerging from the high-handed Tory values that disdained the Whiggish free-for-all of a free-market economy — despite it making Britain the richest country in the world — the BBC's sole channel reappeared after World War II. As a new Labour Government assumed control following a surprising election victory, there was little inclination for change, especially with American commercial television seen as excessively vulgar by the ruling class.

Almost 70 years later, however, the broadcasting landscape is almost unrecognisable. With ever-dwindling viewing figures, it serves only as a bastion of increasingly unhinged progressive thought, parroting the worldview of the cultural elites and smearing those who would threaten it. With an older conservative audience antipathetic to their values and a younger generation only interested in Netflix and YouTube, the victory of eliminating this emblem of metropolitan broadcast hegemony could be as popular as it would be symbolic.

The second pillar of post-war thinking that must be tackled is The Town and Country Planning Act 1947. Few policies in post-war Britain have caused more lasting damage to economic growth and living standards than this sweeping change to who can build on what land and where. It de facto made building on one's property illegal without permission from government bodies, and subsequent ‘greenbelt’ designations that artificially choked development around cities exacerbated the problems this created.

Yes, immigration in the past decade has been unprecedented, but the growth in the percentage of the population is not. International comparisons have consistently shown that the UK fails to match the construction rates of similar post-war economies, with the spiral of British house prices continuing ever upwards, discouraging young British people from starting families and further incentivising politicians to wave through immigration to plug the resultant gaps in pensions and the labour market.

It’s a vicious cycle that must end. For conservatives to make a case for capitalism, the young must reasonably believe they can acquire capital. As demands for social care only grow, the Tories must offer the boomers a stark choice: mass migration or mass construction.

Of course, the most iconic of all Clement Attlee’s reforms – the one which allows the left to frame itself as ‘the good guys’ in all post-war political histories – could prove the most difficult to undo. The ('Our') most saintly, beloved, and benevolent NHS. Nigel Lawson once said that The NHS was the closest thing the British had to a religion, and for many decades to blaspheme against this institution by suggesting it was a substandard healthcare model would be akin to desecrating the Koran in Iran (or Yorkshire).

The NHS is consistently and measurably one of the worst healthcare systems in the developed world, with the sole exception of the United States. Similar percentages (or more) of the nation’s GDP are invested in it, and outcomes are demonstrably worse in almost all circumstances. And yet, for decades, it was almost universally revered. The reason for this blatant dichotomy is simple: The NHS is pure socialism.

High on moral superiority in theory, devastatingly poor in practice, nothing embodies the failure of socialist systems like the NHS, and yet the British public cling to the notion that without rationing by the state, healthcare would not be accessible to the poor. And the Conservative Party has consistently failed to articulate the case for its abolition, ever fearful of being cast as ‘the nasty party’, hoping that the problem might go away should enough taxpayer’s money be thrown at it.

This was perhaps Mrs Thatcher’s greatest failing and one that a resurgent base must remedy urgently: refusing to bow to leftist framing of fundamental issues. Whether because she feared the task was simply too great or, as Enoch Powell suggested, she never truly understood the free-market philosophy she espoused, Thatcher always touted a productive private sector as a means for funding the public sector, rather than being a morally and practically superior end in itself.

To prove the party has changed, it is vital to tackle these three totemic 20th Century institutions and their primacy head-on, not only because it is the correct course of action, but also to demonstrate a clear and positive case for the politics of the right, and not merely a less radical Labour Party without preferred pronouns.