What is politics about? Max Weber famously defined politics as a "struggle for power". Let's take that as our startpoint. But a struggle between what? Here are some options:
- representatives of classes or other self-interest-promoting groups
- representatives of cultures
- representatives of political philosophies
- alternative groups of managers
- specific individuals seeking power for its own sake
- representatives of concepts of how, specifically, to address the issues of the day
- specific individuals seeking power so that they could employ it in their own interest
In practice, of course, all of the above (and more) are likely to be found to some degree. Even in a two party system, it's perfectly plausible that one party consists of representatives of a class interest whilst the other party consists of promoters of a political philosophy.
I don't think there is any one positive answer to this question. So let us instead ask a normative question: what should politics be about for a Conservative? I don't mean "what should a Conservative believe?" or any related question. I mean, what should a Conservative think is the point of politics.
In the Thatcher period, the concept of the Party came to be that it was the vehicle for a political philosophy. Teresa Gorman, famously, used to claim that politics was about the battle of ideas. Indeed, during the period after 1997 Teddy Taylor came fairly close to arguing that it was more important that the Conservative Party promote the ideas for which it stood than that it won elections.
Others argued that the Conservative Party existed to seek power, but tended to be vague about the why or the "why should I care?" In particular, if the power sought was not the domination of a political philosophy, whose power was it and why? Michael Heseltine appeared to take the view that the key philosophical battles had all been conceded by New Labour and that politics was now about who would make the best set of managers. Why one should suppose that the Conservative Party would be a superior source of management was always a bit hazy to me - unless perhaps the idea was (as Heseltine did sometimes argue) that because the Conservative Party tended to include a reasonable number of people that had, before coming into politics, managed things, it was better placed to be in power than Labour, which had more often recruited from the executers of tasks than the managers. This argument always seemed patronizing and flawed to me, but if it ever had any merit that is rapidly vanishing with the increasing dominance of the professional politician in misconceived reaction to the many (almost universally false) accusations of MP corruption over the past fifteen years. (Or perhaps it will be resurrected in some form once the only serious people that put themselves forward to be MPs are millionaires?)
A variant of the concept of politics as a high-profile management interview is the idea that certain individuals represent an elite class from which the rulers should be selected - a born-to-rule concept of the sort that would have appealed to Alan Clark. Well, perhaps there is, or should be, an elite class of individuals who should determine what happens. But that being so, why would they need to be politicians? Don't they determine what happens through their influence on the media, on academia, on bureaucrats, on judges, and so on? It's not obvious why someone born to rule would want to put themselves forward for anything so vulgar as an election - least of all in our age of politician-hatred. Perhaps there was a brief time in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when being an MP was an important, high-status job to which the elite would aspire. But few persons of any substance or really lasting influence aspire to be MPs any more. Take the Editor of this web-site as a prime example.
In many countries, political parties rise and fall fairly rapidly. They arise in response to specific issues of the day, and there is a difference of opinion about how to address these with one party favouring the one approach and another party another. Once the issue has been resolved the parties fade in importance. It is not impossible that we shall see a burst of this in the UK over the next decade, with perhaps a flourishing of UKIP or the Greens in the wake of Labour's demise as a serious contender for power. But the Conservative Party does not see itself as existing merely to reflect one side or another of a debate of the moment. We don't, for example, think that the Conservative Party exists to get down public spending or to introduce a Swedish-style education system.
A less happy alternative is found in many countries. Some individuals either set up or take over parties so as to promote their own self-interest. One might allege this of Forza Italia, for example. Of course, some of the wilder opponents of David Cameron allege that he has made the Conservative Party into little more than a vehicle for self-promotion. But even if this were his intention (and it's hardly a matter of criticism, in principle, if a politician actually wants power) it's tricky to see what the rest of the Party thinks it gets out of that. Many senior football managers say they like a greedy striker - the desire to be the one that kicks the ball into the net and takes the adulation of the crowd means that the nerve-wracking job gets done and is not flunked. But the managers know what they think they get out of the greedy striker - a win; three points; a happy crowd; and so on. One can understand why the Conservative Party would desire a leader that wanted power, but what is less clear is what the Conservative Party think it gets out of that power.
That leaves us with an unsatisfactory, though rather traditional solution. Perhaps the Conservative Party does not want anything positive in particlar. It isn't trying to promote any philosophy, any particular solution to the issues of the day, any class or sectional interest, any elite group born to rule, any skilled managers. All it seeks, its only enduring purpose, is to deny power to the Socialists, the Democrats, the Greens, the Pacifists, the Racists, and the rest of the well-meaning and less-well-meaning fools, so that for another four or five years they don't screw everything up. Maybe Portillo was wrong after all. We didn't need to know what we were for. It was always enough just to know what we were against.
