I am not a Democrat - a believer that the People rule themselves, and that the People's Will provides the moral underpinning of legitimate policy - or a believer in the international variant of the Democrat view, the Self Determination doctrine. I am a constitutional Conservative. I believe in constitutional monarchy, an unelected upper chamber, a self-sustaining oligarchic judiciary, a non-politically-partisan civil service, a broad church state religion, a constitution supported primarily (as all constitutions are) and explicitly (as few constitutions are) by the organic practice, traditions, self-belief and duty of an Establishment.
As such, I have always regarded Liberal Democrats and their Liberal Party forebears as dangerous. They have always sat for me with radical and reactionary groups such as Marxists and Greens and Absolute Monarchists whose goal was to overthrow the institutions and practices I held most dear and considered most important - the only difference being that the Lib Dems, because of the older, saner, history of their party had a respectability that these other radicals and reactionaries lacked.
In contrast, I always felt that Conservatives and the traditional Labour Left were engaged in an honourable and important debate on an accepted common constitutional playing field. The Labour Left were our honourable opponents whose arguments deserved a hearing and refutation (or, occasionally, acceptance). The Liberal Democrats were dangerous radicals to be excluded from the serious discussion.
With the growth of pro-Europeanism on the Right of the Labour Party and with the reflections upon Labour's disasters of the early 1980s, Liberal Democrat ideas came to infect the Labour Right. Many of the worst errors of New Labour were when it favoured Liberal Democrat thinking - e.g. its mangling of the House of Lords; its introduction of the Human Rights Act. Conversely, New Labour was at its best when it was most distant from the Liberal Democrats - for example, in its liberal interventionist military foreign policy.
Now there is talk of merger between the Conservatives and our Lib Dem coalition partners. If Liberal Democrats wish to see the light and join the Conservative Party, I have no objection to that. But we must not pollute the constitutional concept of our Party by compromising with Liberal Democrat constitutional radicalism.
If we are to reinvent the British constitution on Democrat/Self-Determinationist lines, that must be done with full vigour and purpose. If connected symbiotically with its appropriate societal cultural pair - as in the US - a Democrat/Self-Determinationist constitution can even work, after a fashion. But in the US that is because the various institutions have clear goals, because the US Establishment accepts, reveres, and vigorously defends the key institutions of the constitution, and because society either covers over the key weaknesses of the constitution (e.g. in the case of its challenges in dealing with significant cultural variation, simply by being much more homogenous than Britain) or compensates for them (e.g. making up for the lack of a state religion by being an overwhelmingly Christian society).
So, what are the goals of these new institutions we propose for the UK? Apparently our masters now want a fully-elected Second Chamber. But what is the function of this chamber in the new constitution? What are its powers? What is its initiative? Until we know what it does, how are we to have any idea what its membership should be?
Again, I haven't ever met a Liberal Democrat that was a believer in constitutional monarchy (though I am sure such exist). And the Cameroons seem to me to have little attachment to the concept, either. Very well. So what do you propose instead? What is the function of your alternative Head of State? What do you see as the font of Law in your system? What is the mechanism you envisage for addressing unforeseen constitutional contingencies?
What is the correct balance between central, regional and local power in your system? I don't mean: "Should there be regional assemblies?" Before we consider democratic oversight of governmental levels, we must first have some idea of what those governmental levels do.
Properly rigorous Liberal Democrat answers exist to these questions. And properly rigorous Conservative answers exist, also. But the Liberal Democrat answers are different from the Conservative answers and simply incompatible with them, and intermingling these two incompatible concepts will only make the constitution brittle and unstable. I believe that our Party and society comes to a crossroads. The British Establishment's belief in our classical constitution collapsed long ago. We either (a) muddle on with an increasingly incoherent and unstable constitution offering virtually no protection against malign or hopelessly incompetent rule, until unimaginable disaster strikes; (b) replace that Establishment with new people that do believe in the traditional constitution; (c) help the Establishment to regains its faith; (d) surrender our constitution altogether in the ecstasy of the Single European State; (e) reinvent our constitution domestically along Liberal Democrat lines.
Those last two routes, if they are to be pursued, must be pursued with eyes open and full comprehension, logic and vigour. Perhaps constitutional Conservatism of the sort I believe in is now intellectually bankrupt. Whether I am right or wrong, perhaps there is now simply no appetite amongst the Establishment (or alternative establishments) to give my views a hearing. If so, understand what you are doing. If you surrender to Lib-Dem-ery, you are ending, terminating, annihilating traditional Conservatism and the British state as it had evolved to be by the late eighteenth century. All things pass on in the end, and the intellectual tradition within which I stand will be no exception. But be sure that you are not simply ending something in which you see weaknesses - for every idea has such - but, instead, replacing the concept I favour with an alternative, well-constructed, thought through concept which the Establishment can accept and will revere and protect, and which you believe is better than mine.
Lib-Dem-ery can work - at least, after a fashion. But you have to do it properly. Do you want to?
