Well, good luck! I think 2015-19 offered pretty conclusive evidence as to which way Britain's One Nation Conservatives bend, given a choice between mild social democracy and batshit right wing demagoguery. They don't like the latter but they regard the former as completely illegitimate, beneath contempt, an alien threat to their whole way of life.
Not disagreeing at all. One Nation Conservatives like Ken Clarke showed how far they are willing to bend in the Thatcher government. Of course, it’s always a lot easier to bend if you are as spineless as Clarke.
My only point is that One Nation Conservatism contains within it a commitment to closing the wealth gap and under Macmillian also had a tolerance for the post war Keynesianism that brought less inequality, both of which could be appealed to.
Of course ONC is still top down and deeply conflicted because of it. It assumes that largesse is dispensed from the top in a natural order ordained by God and his chosen Agent King. Neoliberalism has largely replaced ONC but only in so far as it has put worship of the Free Market on the same footing as God and made Global Enterprise its King to dispense largesse.
But it doesn’t dispense its generosity all the way down. It pours it in at the top and actually puts return valves in the system to keep it there. As such it cultivates and grows a growing wealth gap. Money created at the bottom goes to the top and bar a few drips, stays there
If One Nation Conservatism has important social values of greater equality, they have been undone by Neoliberalism. The principles of ONC have been betrayed by Thatcher and her followers and it is perhaps those principles that could be reignited.
The problem of course is that Labour has gone full neoliberal itself and has adopted a belief in the natural order as much as Thatcherism, and recent celebrations show how engrained a belief in a feudalistic social order still is for many people, but if there is a way to attack the foundational principles of a natural order there might be some mileage in looking back to the social aspects of The Greater Good philosophy with which One Nation Conservatism needed to compromise during the later Industrial age and which found consensus for a short time after WW2
The growing wealth gap is biggest problem we face today. The GINI coefficient started to rocket upwards in 1979 and has continuously risen exponentially ever since. The growing wealth gap is not just morally wrong in social terms, it is environmental suicide and so economically unsustainable that it will only take us into greater and more frequent economic crises.
To that end, looking at and promoting the social, economic and existential need for closing the wealth gap, wherever it exists, has to be a good thing.
