Changing the voting system. Fixed term Parliaments. A vigorous opponent of religious freedom as Education secretary.
Maybe I've been looking at this all wrong. I'd been assuming that I was a Conservative, and that the Conservative Party, though its platform had many elements I approved of, had chosen certain non-Conservative paths (I hoped temporarily) which I considered ill-advised both in Electoral terms but also in terms of integrity - because they were non-Conservative they were not True to Who We Are.
But maybe that's back to front. Maybe the truth is that I am not a Conservative, and that although the Conservative Party (sadly, to a true modern Conservative) continues notionally to support some delusional ideas that a non-Conservative such as myself finds attractive, it has moved considerably in the direction of true modern Conservatism and will shortly purge itself of its last residual delusional aspects.
I am a believer in the classical British constitution, moulded and worked over hundreds of years, a mixed creature in which Platonic guardian and representative democrat ideas were intermingled. I believe that Britain is, or at least should be, (to appropriate Henry VIII's phrase) an empire unto herself, making all of her own laws and applying those laws only within her borders. I believe in constitutional monarchy, in an unelected second chamber, in an elected house of representatives (not delegates) who are spokesmen for their areas. I believe that in voting we elect our rulers - we do not aspire to "rule ourselves". I believe that the prime goal of the constitution is the promotion and preservation of ordered liberty.
I favour a constitution that is organic, husbanded by an establishment class of self-sustaining oligarchs who understand their duty to interpret the constitution anew in each age, and apply it for the promotion of ordered liberty whilst always respecting justice and true religion.
I favour law that conceives of itself as in the first instance about natural or divinely-ordained justice and only secondarily about the arbitrary choices of Man.
I want a tolerant society, not a society that is politically correct and intolerant of deviance from secularist, atheist, amoral, libertine norms.
I believe that there is no true peace without justice and that war can be righteous in a righteous cause.
I believe that our rulers should be encouraged to deport themselves with dignity and honour, not vanity and mawkishness.
I have faith that what is right and true will eventually defeat that which is wrong and false, and that if it does not that matters only a little, for all crookedness will be made straight in a Judgement at the End. In particular, I believe that democratic politics is a battle of ideas, not a struggle of classes or interest groups, and that if we argue for what we believe to be right - of course being pragmatic in respect of what can be achieved in any one age and of course respecting the need to cooperate with others in teams to achieve anything at all - that if we argue for what we believe to be right, then if we are correct in our belief we will eventually be vindicated by events and be recognised as such by a fair and reasonable press and voting public.
I had assumed that such beliefs made me a Conservative. But perhaps not. Perhaps the Conservative Party is actually a liberal and Democrat party, in fact, and would be happier if, as Michael Portillo hopes, it has the opportunity of "ditching the Tory party Right wing" (I presume he means the likes of me) which the removal of first-past-the-post would give it. The Party has obviously considered the likes of me an embarrassment since the mid-1990s, what with our wanting the Party to argue for what it believed in rather than what it considered popular (reversing our repeated error of 2001, 2005 and 2010), that the public would see through a lack of integtrity and not trust us, that we should offer policies we considered in the country's best interests and in particular in the interests of the marginalised and the oppressed, both at home and abroad, even if our methods for so doing were not the Statist solutions favoured by the Left. I'd kind of assumed that what was embarrassing about me was that I was a Conservative. But perhaps, all along, I've misunderstood. Perhaps what was most embarrassing about me was that I wasn't a Conservative but the voters might assume that I was. I thought Cameron hadn't changed the Party enough, that it was still ruled by that vanity and fear of the voters that had plagued it since the mid-1990s. But perhaps it's me that's got this wrong all along. Vanity was not an error - it was a brand. Conservatism is not about organic evolution - it is about revolutionary change. Tolerance, self-discipline, honour, dignity - these are not virtuous, but repressive. Truth is not our ally - it is our enemy.
I understand it better now. Pardon my mistake. I withdraw.
[Update: I see that a number of the comments below, both supportive and unsupportive, have misunderstood my "I withdraw" comment. I did not mean that I was leaving the Conservative Party. I meant only that I withdraw from the floor on the debates I discussed, and in particular on the definition of whether beliefs like mine were definitively Conservative as opposed to non-modern-Conservative and whether it was desirable to be (and what it was to be) True to Ourselves, conceding victory (for now) to my foes. Even non-modern-Conservatives such as myself can be members of the broad coalition that is the Conservative Party, I hope.]
