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Oh, hapless Liberals, learn from Disraeli

By Dan Ryan - posted Monday, 9 June 2025


 

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."

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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."

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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.

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This article was first published in Quadrant.



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About the Author

Dan Ryan is managing director of Serica Legal, a law firm focused on Asia-related transactions and disputes. He is executive director of the National Conservative Institute of Australia, as well as director of the Australian Institute for Progress.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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