The survival of conservatism
- Conservative Environment Network
- 19 hours ago
- 6 min read
If conservatism is to survive the coming years, it must attract young devotees. This is a line oft–repeated in Conservative circles, yet the question of how this might be accomplished remains as yet unanswered. I believe environmentalism must form a part of the solution.
Let us be clear from the start: environmentalism is conservatism. All that climate change threatens – our economy, our natural heritage, our very way of life – lies at the core of what conservatism proposes to conserve. There is no coherency in pontificating about protecting families without ensuring the planet stays usable for posterity, no sense in fussing about green spaces just to blanket them in smog. Environmentalism requires no great reinvention, no desertion of our philosophy. Rather, it offers an opportunity for our party to return to first principles, live out our convictions and move toward developing a more cohesive identity.
That identity necessarily includes the young. The charge is to adapt or die. With only two percent of our membership belonging to our youth arm, and less than 15 percent of 18–24 year olds etching a cross next to a Tory candidate on election day, it’s clear we will falter in the coming years and decades if we do not change how we connect with younger voters. Pensioners alone do not a winning coalition make. How to win the youth? It’s time for Conservatives to talk conservation.
20 percent of voters between 18–24 rate the environment as one of the key issues driving their voting choices. For reference, the same amount are influenced by housing. Only the economy, health and cost of living are considered more important – and even here, it only takes a quick glance at modern academic literature to see profound links between levels of pollution and an increased burden on the NHS, or climate change driven natural disasters and subdued economic growth. A proper environmentalist conservative argument thus provides at least some small part of an answer to all the chief concerns currently bothering the young.
The above said, there remains a question why an environmentalist – and, particularly, those too young to remember the leaps of faith made by the likes of Margaret Thatcher, that first Western leader to properly warn of climate change’s perils, or of David Cameron’s 'vote blue, go green' agenda – might feel inclined at all to support a fiscally restrained and cautious Conservative Party when the Green and Labour parties, by their nature, are inclined to spend more and make more radical arguments. Part of the answer to this question invariably comes down to the fundamentals of political philosophy. Conservatives should not, for example, abandon the argument that market–led solutions tend to perform better than state–led ones, particularly in the world of cutting edge, fast–innovating green technologies, or that community–generated contributions may well work best of all. Another part comes from emphasising the impressive record we hold on climate change, as referenced above.
The other part requires us to go on the attack. It is absurd to me that the Greens can oppose nuclear energy, reject local solar farm construction due to visual impacts and/or localised opposition and historically oppose any HS2 initiative at all (not merely the part scrapped by Sunak), whilst still clinging on to any serious climate credibility. Theirs is a party built on the back of making an awful lot of noise about a problem whilst opposing any meaningful solutions, and it is flabbergasting that the mainstream parties – Labour and us – are not, at very least, joined in condemning their hypocrisy.
But then Labour aren’t much better, are they? They failed to expand our nuclear initiatives, piggy–backing off the work already done by us whilst taking their own share of the credit. They immediately moved to sacrifice the green belt on the altar of housing, never taking a moment to consider sensible alternatives like densification or the construction of new urban centres. All the while, their climate strategy is underpinned by Great British Energy, a statist government–run company straight out of the socialist sixties. We know the free market works better than the government. We know corporations innovate where bureaucracy stifles progress. We should be pointing this out, in the process developing a conservative approach to ending emissions (an argument CEN is at the forefront of constructing).
Recognising these deficiencies in our competition and the past successes in our record, it is easy to see that the Conservative Party has as much opportunity to capture the climate vote as any of our alternatives. Effort should be made to liaise with influential NGOs and voluntary groups, all the while emphasising the conservative focus on charity and community. This unlocks, at quick arithmetic, a group of at least 22 million involved in the Climate Coalition. Meanwhile, existing theoretical conservative environmentalist frameworks (such as those found in the works of Roger Scruton) should be mobilised to begin moving the needle toward conservatism in the left–wing dominated universities and academia. This can be combined with a healthy dose of political attack on our competitors and renewed, strong climate policy commitments led by the shadow cabinet.
One potential problem with this, as with many contemporary Conservative questions, is Reform. The biggest strategic consideration presently faced by the Conservatives is which group of departing 2019 voters to attempt to recapture – those who voted Labour, those who voted Liberal Democrat, those who stayed home or those who went with Farage? The latter group, alas, is not quite as climate conscious as the first two, and indeed contains a not–insubstantial number of people who believe climate change isn’t caused by mankind at all. There is a genuine question to be asked if pursuing a strong climate policy isn’t tantamount to pursuing centre–right deserters at the expense of the true blue disenfranchised youth inclined to Reform.
The answer to this is no. Reform voters did not abandon the Conservatives because of our net zero strategy, even if it might not have been a policy they were particularly upset to lose; they abandoned us because of our poor record on immigration, perceived economic mismanagement, awful cost of living crisis and a general anti–incumbency feeling. There is room for a platform built on tackling immigration, returning to economic sensibility, promoting the free market, protecting free speech and taking steps to conserve the environment. We can – and, in my view, should – be aiming to learn from our failures over the past fourteen years and patch up the holes poked in our record by our friends to the right of us, whilst continuing to emphasise the philosophically conservative missions of conservation, community and charity. It is insufficient to only pursue one group of those who abandoned us. If we are to return as a relevant political force, we need to work to reclaim them all, and strive for this with vigour.
In any event, it is clear that the opportunity for a coherent, cohesive, Conservative platform containing a holistic and sensible approach to tackling climate change and winning over new voters, particularly younger voters, is both present and significant. Should we care to seize it, we may begin to start the arduous task of redefining our party in the eyes of the public, away from a fossilised and callous club back to an organisation tackling the most pressing issues of the day. This will not be easy, but it will be worth it. It will be worth it for the votes, yes, but worth it also for the good we can do – for our people, for our country, for our planet. I end on Mrs Thatcher’s words said to the UN, urging action on this same crisis thirty years prior, as a reminder that the battle for conservation is neither new nor unconservative.
“We are not the lords, we are the Lord’s creatures, the trustees of this planet, charged today with preserving life itself – preserving life with all its mystery and all its wonder.
May we all be equal to that task.”
Views expressed in this chapter are those of the author, not necessarily those of the Conservative Environment Network.
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