The Conservative Case for Conservation
TLDR; if conservatism emphasised conserving the environment, farmland, vernacular, architecture and lie of the land as it is rather than subscribing to rootless economic liberalism, they would do far better in elections and government.
I believe that post-Thatcher, conservatism has reduced itself to free market fanaticism ad absurdum. I agree with free market economics over state-managed economics. But taken too far, the result is an enormous problem - part of conservatism’s lack of appeal to younger voters is the view that conservatism is just about making money at any cost. About business before the citizen. It isn’t. With this in mind, I think there’s a huge open goal available to conservatives. The environment.
The natural and built environment constitute part of Britain's civilisation. A conservative government should treat preservation and protection as matters of principle, not as constraints upon economics. Conservatives should conserve. Conservatism is conservation movement. It’s in the name itself. Conserving does not necessitate stasis. It can without wisdom. Yet Disraeli put it well in the 1867 when he said:
“the great question is, not whether you still resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change shall be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people, or…in deference to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines.”
Speech in Edinburgh, October 29, 1867.
The question is not if we change. The question is how we change. Do we change in accordance with our own laws, manners, customs, traditions and country, or do we change in accordance with abstract, generalist, intellectualised ideals? Conservatives have a far better answer than leftists, socialists, fascists or even liberals. Not because conservatives are inherently smarter than anyone else. It’s because conservatives instinctively know where and when to draw the line. Idealists and ideologues usually don’t. It’s not the difference between ability or knowledge, but the difference between lived experience and wisdom. Think of the endless examples of what idealism unbound by experience, humaneness and wisdom can lead to:
The warring French revolutionaries
Imposed Napoleonic borders and constitutions across Europe that disappeared within 10 years
The failed liberal revolutionary constitutions of 1848 in France, Germany, Italy and Austro-Hungarian splinter states
The catastrophe of the communist Russian Revolution
The catastrophe of Fascist ItalyThe catastrophe of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
The Chinese Revolution and Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’
Cold War era ‘liberal' military interventions in Vietnam, Laos and Afghanistan by America
Blairist military interventions in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere
The common thread between each calamitous event is they’re fulled by abstract, unbound idealism. The warning of Benjamin Disraeli those centuries ago. I would argue that ‘idealism unbound’ ruins the environment on the ground also, and has done so in Britain for a while. Our everyday lived experience of the environment is more important than political brownie points or change for its own sake. With the Disraeli distinction in mind, conservatism should be about conserving within change. Yet under Conservative and Labour governments, planning and development has often been structured by policy to produce:
Speedy construction
Cost reduction
Resource efficiency
Endless ‘delivery targets’
New builds
Case by case decision making
Intrusive reassignments of land
Big businesses bigger numbers over small businesses smaller numbers
In other words, policy that conserves nothing. If anything, incentivising change. And incentivising the wrong sort of change. An incoming right-wing, conservative, single-party or coalition government should not seek to resurrect Thatcher or copy her. Her legacy is complex and flawed. An incoming government should focus on gradual, incremental, carefully weighed changes to the lived environment in order to solve certain problems. This includes economic development in that equation. But for far far too long, we have experienced ‘spreadsheet government.’ Not the development of a civilisation or even the promulgation of values, but simply governing in order to fulfil a checkbox or target. For a budget to go up. For a percentage tweak to a tax bracket. For a reduction in staffing in a quango.
It backfires dramatically because spreadsheet government appeals to nobody outside of government (or lobbying firms.) Spreadsheet government clearly optimises for:
Resource extraction
Environmental modification
Agricultural productivity
Grants and schemes
Cheap land acquisition (usually Greenfield land)Post hoc decision making after changes have occurred
Checkbox number landscaping
Imposed architecture
Cheap materials
Demolition and new building
Disposable buildings
Unintentional noise, light and visual pollution
All in order for a minister or quangocrat to be able to say ‘the number went up!’
Conservatism could become much more sympathetic to the concerns of normal people by actually emphasising things normal people are increasingly concerned about, including me. By emphasising conserving things that should be conserved. Conservatism could become far more broad church by letting go of Thatcher and spreadsheet technocracy, which is what I think has sadly happened, particularly between 2010 - 2024, which was a disastrous period. People don’t care whether the GDP goes up or whether we’ve secured more trade agreements. They care about whether a nice field they live near will look the same in 10 years time. They care whether they live in a nice place. They care whether their local council puts their interests over the interests of developers. They care whether the new houses nearby actually fit into their hamlet, town or enclave.
Also, conservative conservation is much more than hijacking left-wing environment apocalypse narratives (leading to the disasters of plastering solar farms on green farmland, another example of spreadsheet government.) Conservative conservation is about a general philosophy of life for the normal citizen. An approach that balances competing aims humanely, with an aim to conserve whatever deserves to be conserved. It could lead to things such as:
Resource utilisation without pollution
Environmental conservation of existing woodlands, old trees, hedges, rivers, brooks, soil, wildlife corridors - not building poorly-located wind and solar farms to ‘save the planet’ (saving the planet usually harms the environment)
Agricultural protections of the greenbelt and farming
Incentivising brownfield, genuine greyfield and reuse developments over new developments
Ad hoc, meaningful consultation before planning decisions are made
Mandating genuine on-site mitigations, not the ‘off site credit’ system (which is constantly exploited)
SuDS, natural drainage, green corridors, tree preservation, land zoning and generally conserving how things are, rather than trying to rearrange everything on building sites
Vernacular, sympathetic and locally-fitting architecture
Conservation, preservation and adaptation over building revolution
Opposition to disposable and efficient new-builds, warehousing, megastores or data centres without serious consultations, mitigations, credit schemes, local reinvestment, tree screening, etc
Sensitivity to noise, light and visual pollution
Incentivising sensible decarbonisation over radical and unachievable technocratic net-zero targets by building endless solar and wind farms
Knowing the cheapest development on paper is the most expensive for the country
This does not necessitate doing nothing or preserving every scrub of land at all costs. It means knowing what we’ve inherited, what this country represents and appreciating that it’s often best not to change things too much when they need to change. Conservative conservation still allows for:
Businesses to operate
Houses to be built
Innovation to happen
Diplomacy to expand
Costs to be saved
Targets to be met
It just requires some audacity, daring and imagination. To understand that a saved cost now is a higher cost later. Destroying a wetland may make a development cheaper while transferring flood costs elsewhere. Removing old trees may save money initially while creating heat and drainage problems. Building disposable housing may produce units quickly while imposing enormous maintenance and replacement costs. Destroying a historic building and replacing it may be economically rational on a spreadsheet while throwing away embodied energy, craftsmanship and cultural value. Government is not about meeting targets; it’s about being the stewards of a civilisation.
