Britain’s Rudderless Conservatives

For conservatives in Britain, perhaps even more than in the United States, these are bad times—all the sadder because they should have been good times. Edward Heath’s government, like President Nixon’s, seemed, when it was elected, to be full of promise from a conservative point of view. This was not the worst, but the best, government we could reasonably expect in the foreseeable future. Now the taste of soured hope is bitter.

Neither government, of course, was elected because of a mass conversion to conservatism. Just as President Nixon’s landslide was mainly a landslide against George McGovern, so Mr. Heath won, against the pollsters’ odds, not through any merit of his own but because a lot of people were disgusted by the Labor government; disgusted by Harold Wilson’s tergiversations, by his craven surrender to the unions, and by inexorably rising prices. It was clear then that, if the new government—Mr. Heath’s Conservative government— turned out to be no improvement, the electorate would be reduced to a mood of cynicism bordering on despair.

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Anthony Lejeune

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British Conservative Party

For conservatives in Britain, perhaps even more than in the United States, these are bad times—all the sadder because they should have been good times. Edward Heath’s government, like President Nixon’s, seemed, when it was elected, to be full of promise from a conservative point of view. This was not the worst, but the best, government we could reasonably expect in the foreseeable future. Now the taste of soured hope is bitter.

Neither government, of course, was elected because of a mass conversion to conservatism. Just as President Nixon’s landslide was mainly a landslide against George McGovern, so Mr. Heath won, against the pollsters’ odds, not through any merit of his own but because a lot of people were disgusted by the Labor government; disgusted by Harold Wilson’s tergiversations, by his craven surrender to the unions, and by inexorably rising prices. It was clear then that, if the new government—Mr. Heath’s Conservative government— turned out to be no improvement, the electorate would be reduced to a mood of cynicism bordering on despair.