20 December 2024. Nigel for The Telegraph.

Nigel Biggar has been ennobled by the Conservative Party leader

“It’s time you came off the fence, Nigel.” So counselled conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, turning half-around as he walked away from my Oxford front-door one sunny afternoon in 2016. He’d come to look at Christ Church’s wine-list (and was leaving impressed). But we’d also talked politics. I’d told him that I preferred not to be boxable, maintaining room for manoeuvre. “Whether I’m conservative or liberal, Roger,” I said, “depends on (a) what I’m talking about and (b) whom l’m standing next to”. At the time, I subscribed to both The Guardian and The Times.

Scroll forward six years to June 2022. Grown depressed by what Peter Hennessy once described to me as its relentless “litany of complaint”, I’ve cancelled the Guardian. I’m on the House of Lords’ riverside terrace, being lunched by my long-time mentor, Richard Harries, formerly bishop of Oxford, now Baron Harries of Pentregarth. Richard leans over the table and counsels me, “Don’t get labelled ‘conservative’, Nigel. Conservatives don’t believe in anything. They’re just pragmatists”. I mumbled a non-committal response. But I thought to myself, “I don’t doubt there are conservatives hungry for power without much idea what to do with it, and others who believe in little but low taxes and deregulation, but I’m not one of them”. Then my next vocation spoke: “It’s time to nail your colours to the mast and explain what a deeper conservatism looks like”.

So, in this season of enforced political Lent, when Tories are ruing their recent sins of commission and omission, and wondering what sort of repentance might hasten their party’s resurrection, I offer my own confession of what a conservative should be. But while others examine the entrails of polls and focus-groups to divine vote-winning policies, I step back to reflect on the deeper springs of a conservative point of view. Like Kemi Badenoch, I want to recover first principles …

Read the full article at The Telegraph or download the PDF