Between One-Nation Toryism and Neoliberalism: The Dilemmas of British Conservatism and Britain’s Evolving Place in Europe

Abstract:Prime Minister David Cameron's ambivalence about Britain's role in the European Union stems from dilemmas within his Conservative Party. Since the nineteenth century, British Conservatism had represented a comfortable synthesis of a soft Burkean traditionalism and class-based paternalism with an effort to expand the party's appeal to the working class. Thatcher's aggressive neoliberal challenge to this tradition never truly displaced the older paternalistic sense of noblesse oblige or the preference for societal consensus and incremental change. Instead, the two elements came into an uneasy coexistence that has informed Tory ambivalence about the EU.

This article argues that Cameron's gradual distancing of Britain from the EU has paralleled his championing of economic austerity at home. It argues further that Cameron's policy-making response to the post-2007 economic downturn and European debt crisis can best be understood as a reflection of unresolved tensions within British Conservative thought.

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