David Murray is correct in claiming that the conservatism of Edmund Burke and Michael Oakeshott died during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, and thus long before Brexit (Letters, 10 June).
As the contemporary political philosopher John Gray noted in the 1990s, the ruthless individualism, competition and labour market flexibility promoted by Thatcherism was destructive to community, family life and social stability – all of which Conservatives once believed to be sacrosanct.
Similarly, whereas Conservatives previously respected authority and long-established institutions and revered those who possessed accumulated knowledge and wisdom, Tory governments since the 1980s have relentlessly attacked the church (when it speaks out against poverty, for example), civil servants, the judiciary, the medical profession, the police, teachers and universities, and now claim that we don’t need to listen to experts.
Many of today’s Tories remind me of former Soviet Union rulers. They are wedded to an inhumane ideology, but instead of acknowledging it is not working, insist it either needs to be imposed with more vigour – a permanent revolution – or that it is being undermined by “enemies within” who must be crushed. Thatcherite Conservatism has morphed into rightwing communism.
Professor Pete Dorey
(Author of British Conservatism: The Philosophy and Politics of Inequality), Cardiff University
• Jonathan Freedland writes, perceptively as ever, that “this is what happens when you allow Nigel Farage to dictate the terms of political trade” (How Brexit caused the strange death of British conservatism, 8 June). Others have highlighted the echoes of the 1930s developing in several countries. I think of Farage as the Oswald Mosley de nos jours: both their outsize egos aimed to destroy a major political movement to recreate it in their own image. Mosley’s problem was that the prewar Labour party wasn’t stupid enough to allow that to happen. Our problem is that the present-day Tory party is.
Chris Mitton
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
• Are people aware that Dominic Raab’s constituents in the leafy suburb of Elmbridge, Surrey, voted 60-40 to remain in the 2016 referendum (And they’re off … , 11 June)? Strangely, this is never mentioned in interviews, even though, together with his extreme Brexit views, it could mean that he is in danger of losing his seat as an MP. Surely worth a mention.
Enid Gibson
Walton-on-Thames, Surrey
• On Saturday I heard Dominic Raab say (BBC Radio 4, 8 June), apropos his drug-taking cronies, he believes in a “second-chance society”. Presumably, he would argue for a second referendum as an opportunity for the second-chance society to show it has now moved on from previous childish antics?
Helen Pendrous
Stourbridge, West Midlands
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