Oh, hapless Liberals, learn from Disraeli

Among the main centre-right parties of the key countries in the Anglosphere, the Liberal Party of Australia stands out as an anomaly – it is the only one that uses "liberal" in its party name. In Canada, the dominant party of the political right is called the Conservative Party and its main competitor, the Liberal Party. The US Republican Party routinely describes itself as "conservative" and derides its opponents as "liberals". In the United Kingdom, the longest-lived and, until recently, most successfully political party is the Conservative Party. In the great parliamentary debates of the 19^th Century the leader of this party, Benjamin Disraeli, battled his opponent, William Gladstone, leader of the Liberal Party.

The name Liberal Party of Australia occasionally leads to confusion abroad. But it also has caused some muddled thinking at home too. Many, including many party members and their leaders, seem to believe that the party formed in 1943 was meant to be a reincarnation of the British Liberal Party. But that party had been destroyed and discredited by the time Menzies came along. He was not trying to emulate it.

The reality is, as academic Dr Judith Brett has correctly argued, Menzies and others instead looked to the Federation Era "liberalism" of Alfred Deakin as the model for their new party. "Deakinite liberalism" could be described more as a form of enlightened nationalism – focused on strong protective tariffs, a very discerning immigration policy, and a muscular government role in nation-building. In many cases it advocated policies which were the exact opposite of what Gladstonian Liberals believed.

Australian "liberalism" was, in practice, a nationalistic political philosophy that had much in common with other New World conservative nationalist parties such as the American Republicans of Abraham Lincoln, the Canadian Conservatives of John A MacDonald, and those led by New Zealand's longest-serving Prime Minister, Richard Seddon.

It is true the term "conservative" was not originally politically popular here (nor in the United States) as it was associated with the established church, aristocracy, and the House of Lords which had grown up organically and were particular to an Old World nation like England. However, Deakin liberalism nevertheless also owed a debt to the broader "one nation" conservative thinking of Benjamin Disraeli. This is rarely recognized on the modern Australian right.

Instead, in recent times, there has been an attempt to monopolize the Liberal Party as solely the property of one political tradition – classical liberalism. "80 years of Liberalism" proudly declared banners unfurled at recent commemorations for Australia's most successful political party a few months before it was electorally smashed at the recent federal election. The explanation for this is probably a product of ignorance rather than any deliberate thinking. Political conservatism is simply not very well understood in Australia. There is no equivalent here to a British Roger Scruton or an American Russell Kirk. All the prominent legacy think tanks of the right in Australia – the Centre for Independent Studies, the Institute for Public Affairs, the Robert Menzies Institute – claim to be "classical liberals". It is hard to think of a centre-right columnist in any Australian broadsheet who has not described him or herself in similar terms.

Gladstone undoubtedly would have recognized these types as his ideological brothers and sisters. Like the modern liberal right in Australia, he stood for free trade, a muscular foreign policy abroad in defence of universal human rights, often strong moralistic rhetoric regarding social ills, and an unceasing zeal for reforming laws in the name of individual liberty.

Many in Australia now even erroneously describe these positions as "conservative". Whenever they do I think of Inigo Montoya's famous line from The Princess Bride: "You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

The greatest 19^th Century British conservative prime minister was certainly profoundly critical of these types of policies and, indeed, their entire philosophical worldview.

Trade

Benjamin Disraeli made his name opposing free trade and was sceptical of it throughout this life. He thought the grandiose claims that it would bring in universal peace and prosperity did not properly take in to account history or the real world of competing nation states. He recognized the harm this policy could cause to working people, the industrial capacity of a nation, and to its social cohesion. While he operated at the high point of British liberalism when "free trade" had become accepted unshakable doctrine in England (although not in the United States and Germany), he never resiled from his long-held beliefs. "I am not one of those who consider that the principle of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest is the great panacea for human affairs". He cautioned that there are those who "would have you believe that free trade is the cure for all ills, but it is a medicine that may poison as much as it heals."

He did not seek to turn England in to an open-borders free trade zone of which the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal would approve. Neither did he think his country would be better as a "Singapore on the Thames" as modern-day British liberals such as Daniel Hannan sometimes describe as the ideal.

Disraeli's view was shared many years later by Australia's longest serving Prime Minister who emphatically stated, "I am a protectionist. I don't think that the history of Australia could have been what it has been without the great industrial enterprises, the great basic industries, the great factories of Australia." Anticipating the liberal think tank critics of today, Menzies would have responded, now as he did then: "Some say our tariffs make life dearer. I say they make life possible – for the factory hand, for the farmer turning out butter, for the nation that must stand on its own two feet."

The orange-tinted New York real estate developer who sits in the Oval Office would have agreed. John Howard recently said Donald Trump's love of tariffs means he is "not a real conservative". But this is, with the respect, simply not historically correct.

Ronald Reagan's speechwriter Peggy Noonan was correct when she rightly queried as Donald Trump began his assent: "when – and why – did free trade become a sacred ritual of the Republican right?". The truth is the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and William McKinley was founded on a high-tariff platform and maintained this position until relatively recent times. This was not just an American phenomenon. Anglosphere conservative political philosophy, properly understood, never supported utopian ideologies like free trade.

Menzies, like Deakin before him, was in favour of tariffs even on British goods:

"We are tied to the British Commonwealth by blood and history, and our tariff policy must reflect that. But we will not sacrifice our own industries to sentiment – we protect what we build here first."

Menzies would have considered patently absurd the idea his Liberal Party signed a trade agreement that allows 100% of Chinese manufactured goods to enter Australia duty free.

Foreign Policy

Disraeli was also very wary of the evangelical nature of Gladstone's foreign policy.

Like the "liberal interventionists" or "neoconservatives" of today, he characterized this approach as being "conducted on the principles of a sermon". His statecraft was much more prudent and realist in nature, recognising that ultimately "nations are not governed by homilies; they are governed by interests."

Unlike many in Washington until recent times, Disraeli was wary of involving the then global superpower in every conflict in the world, even when gross atrocities were committed, such as the Ottoman Empire did against Bulgarian Christians during his time. He thought this would overextend the British Empire and potentially cause more trouble than it solved. America's adventures in the Middle East over the last 30 years lacked this key insight.

While Disraeli was often criticized in highly moralistic tones by Gladstone and others, his polices often achieved better results. His skillful role in the Congress of Berlin 1878, where he was able to negotiate with an expanding Imperial Russia and help bring peace to Eastern Europe, is something those concerned about the conflict in Ukraine would do well to study closely.

Social Issues

Dispensing with traditional conservative positions on trade and foreign policy, the term "conservative" in Australia today has instead tended to be reduced those just interested in talking about traditional social issues. But even here they need to learn from Disraeli. Gladstone often engaged in highly moralistic rhetoric when it came to criticising the underbelly of Victorian society. In a sense he engaged in the culture wars, just as Sky News Australia evening hosts are always urging their viewers to be. The "Grand Old Man" of the British Liberal Party would famously head to the West End to lecture "fallen women" about the error of their ways. The equivalent today, I guess, would be Tony Abbott logging on to OnlyFans to give Bonnie Blue a stern lecture. Disraeli would not have condoned or waived away her behaviour either. But the question is whether moralistic rhetoric is alone an effective way to address such social ills.

The mistake that many on the liberal right in Australia make today is to believe that important social institutions and traditional morality can endure within a liberal framework which constantly stresses the importance of individual freedom above all. Disraeli recognised this thinking was flawed:

"The tone and tendency of liberalism … is to attack the institutions of the country in the name of reform and to make war on the manner and customs of the people under the pretext of progress."

Disraeli knew that the state could not be neutral in the type of society it wished to encourage and that laws were needed to mould and protect social institutions. Otherwise, liberalism would inevitably destroy all institutions and even the definitions of words themselves. This is what people like historian David Starkey are getting at when they say that liberalism caused "woke".

More fundamentally, Disraeli knew that you could not expect a more moral society in a nation without improving the material conditions of its people. To this end strong worker protection was required along with a national role in building infrastructure. While not an economic determinist, he understood that it was nevertheless unrealistic to expect middle class morality without a stable and broad middle class.

Then as now people need houses and stable employment if they are to form families and keep them together. Trying to 'remoralise' them with Gladstonian evangelicalism to say they "just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps", or "man up and form families" is not enough, and often comes across as clueless and cruel when the rest of your policy framework means they must compete with Third World labour and often hostile actors in the global market.

Individual Rights

Most fundamentally, Disraeli understood that nations are more than a bundle of liberal axioms. That a nation is "not a mere aggregation of individuals, but a living body, with a history, a faith, and a destiny".

The great American-born and British-naturalised tory TS Eliot got to the heart of this attitude in his lines:

"When the Stranger says: "What is the meaning of this city ?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?"
What will you answer? "We all dwell together
To make money from each other"? or "This is a community"?

His entire life Disraeli battled against liberal ideology which he believed was destructive to the nation, remarking not long after he entered Parliament that "I look upon the Whigs (Liberals) as an anti-national party … I consider it might duty to oppose the Whigs to ensure their discomfiture, and, if possible, their destruction." Political conservatives, by contrast, he was adamant needed to focus on policies which would bind and hold the nation together. His conservative party, he warned, "unless it is a national party, is nothing".

This is what the Australian Liberal Party was meant to be about too. "I have always believed, as Disraeli did," said Menzies, "that the true purpose of government is to bind a nation together, not to tear it apart with class warfare or fleeting ideologies."

Disraeli recognized this nationalist sentiment would have broad appeal across working people – which is why he ended up supporting strongly the 1867 Reform Act. These days he would have probably been labelled populist. But he would undoubtedly have agreed with Donald Trump's former hell-raising advisor Steve Bannon:

"…the centre core of what we believe, is that we're a nation with an economy. Not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and reason for being."

Then as now, Disraeli would have emphasised,

"the spirit of the age is not to weaken national character, but to strengthen it; not to merge it in a vague cosmopolitanism, but to consolidate it in a vigorous patriotism."

Like the Greeks, the French, the Irish, the Israelis, and the English, Australia is a nation for a particular people. Political liberals sometimes give the impression they are indifferent about what Australia looks like, what language is spoken and what culture will exist in this country 50 years from now so long as it adheres to abstract liberal principles. Conservatives, by contrast, think that is highly questionable whether such liberal principles can be maintained with a different people. But they further believe there is something good in and of itself about seeking to preserve and pass on our language, culture, and rites to our children.

This is the position with which Disraeli, a highly assimilated Jew who converted to Anglicanism and loved England dearly, would have fundamentally agreed.

The Future

'What's in a name?", sighed poor Juliet Capulet. For too long many in Australia have invested too much in the name "Liberal" in the name of Australia's most successful political party without understanding the organisation's full history or purpose.

Liberalism and Conservativism are indeed very distinct philosophical and political traditions whose differences should not be underestimated as the above has illustrated. But there can be a creative tension between them, and they can cooperate in pursuit of joint aims. The genius of Robert Menzies was to be able to unite those on the anti-socialist right into one party rather than having them splinter into a variety of different factional groupings. The emergence of the Labor Party as a common enemy, and particularly the Communist threat throughout the Cold War, helped keep this coalition together, but it also required some political skill.

Menzies quoted both Disraeli and Gladstone approvingly throughout his career and admired both. His "Forgotten People" speeches deftly avoided providing too much detail on his views on contentious subjects which might have divided conservatives and liberals (like trade and immigration) and instead focused on signalling in a broad way that he was on the side of patriotic, civic-minded Australians from all walks of life. He avoided tying himself explicitly too much to any one side. He referred to himself as "instinctively conservative" in his autobiography, Afternoon Light but had no objection to using the name "liberal" in the party he headed. In a way he turned Disraeli's line about "Tory men and Whig measures" on its head: he ruled as a Liberal Party man in a philosophically conservative manner, while being open to liberal arguments and perspectives.

To not be misunderstood, there is undoubtedly place for those who stick up for freedom in Australia. If that is what advocates for liberalism think it means, there is a place for it. But one cannot help but notice many of those march under that banner (with honourable exceptions) completely vacated the field during the Covid era and in many other areas.

"How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" the conservative Tory Samuel Johnson famously said of the American revolutionaries. One could equally say 'How was it that the advocates for implementing the appalling draconian measures during Covid came from many who like describe themselves as liberals?'

In any event, the key point remains is that in recent times the delicate balance between liberalism and conservativism has been lopsided on the centre-right in Australia. It is time to restore the balance.