On Tuesday I had the honour of addressing the Conservative Friends of Poland at the fine Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London.

My attempted and vast unmanageable theme was European Conservatism: What’s the Big Idea? Namely a romp through a few centuries of history and the ideas underpinning contemporary politics, especially the differences between the many different US intellectual niches of ‘conservatism’ and the more nostalgic/romantic and ultimately uncertain European approach we now see.

One idea I put forward was that whether we all like it or not, the EU has redefined political life in its member states. The whole point of the EU became to strike an historic post-democratic ‘balance’ between a pretty strong market-based economy (‘Right’) and a redistributionist ‘solidarity’ impulse (Left’).

That done, domestic politicians in member states were left to footling scraps of competence under the dull heading of ‘subsidiarity’. And the devil made work for idle hands.

It followed, I said, that there were now only two significant political themes in EU member states these days:

  • More Europe/Less National Government, or Less Europe/More National Government 
  • Collective v Individual

By drawing those as two axes of a graph and plotting the different spaces which political parties occupy accordingly, much of current politics became clear.

The European Parliament alliance between the UK Conservatives and the Polish Law and Justice party made sense. It focused firmly on the idea of rather Less Europe (a position very popular with voters across the continent). Plus it had a reasonable degree of overlap as between the two parties on Individual v Collective (albeit with Law and Justice being rather more ‘collective’ and even socialist than some of us might like).

One other consequence of all this was (I asserted, to tumultuous applause) the total irrelevance of the Labour Party as currently constituted. It appeared to hanker after some retro-collectivist socialism which no longer made sense or was even allowed by EU rules, plus the UK Lib Dems articulated the More Europe and more Individual positions better than Labour did.

Thus the best result at the next election would be the utter obliteration of the Labour Party as a serious force (applause), which in turn would bring about a clearing of the decks and the merging of a sensible two-way choice for British voters:

  • Less Europe, more Individual (Conservatives)
  • More Europe, Individual shading towards Collective (rebooted Lib Dems, incorporating intelligent refugees from Labour) 

Will it happen?

Who knows.

Maybe (alas) Labour will have just enough reserves left to survive as a credible force and try to reinvent themselves once again in years to come, after memories of their current catastrophic incompetence have faded. In other words, they will be defeated but not wiped out, so will be able to avoid being absorbed by the Lib Dem tendency. Which in turn will stop the major modernisation and realignment of politics this country needs.

Let battle commence:

Lay on, Macduff,
And damn’d be him that first cries, Hold, enough!