At Guildhall on Tuesday, the Centre for Policy Studies held its Margaret Thatcher Conference on Security. Its title is an implied reproach to the way security is seen by current governments. You couldn’t have a Barack Obama Conference on Security, or a Donald Trump one, because neither cares about the subject. You could, I suppose, have a Theresa May Conference about Security, but that would have nothing to say about international institutions and alliances, the values of democracy, totalitarian ideology, and the needs of global defence. It would concern itself with second-order subjects like the surveillance of terrorist suspects and the state of deportation law. Many have complained that the Tory election campaign failed to preach any Conservative economics. Ideas about the security of the West were even more notably absent. Jeremy Corbyn was allowed to get away with the suggestion that his party could remain committed to Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, but that he, as a unilateralist prime minister, would never permit its use.
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