There’s no such thing as ‘proper Conservatism’ 

The contest to be the next leader of the Conservative party, which has six entrants and will last until November, by necessity involves a great deal of reflection. It could hardly be any other way, in the wake of the party’s worst defeat in its 200-year history: every aspirant is right to understand that there can be no realistic hope of recovery without understanding how Conservatives came to such a calamitous and precipitous failure.

One of the most common themes, which was being thrown around well before the general election, is that the party has lost its ideological moorings, abandoned fundamental principles and embraced instead a fatal combination of managerialism and incompetence. There is, as the 4 July election proved decisively, little support for technocrats who cannot even achieve the tasks in front of them. But an idea which is commonplace now, and will be insidious and toxic if it is left unchecked, is the proposition that the successful candidate must be a ‘proper Conservative’ and so re-embrace the party’s ‘real Conservative’ beliefs.