For me, conservatism can't be concentrated into a slogan in that way. It isn't a a matter of gathering behind the clenched fist salute. The right is about the maintenance of an old fashioned civil patriotism and the bourgeois way of life that goes with it. We should remember that we belong to a civil society defined by shared loyalty. And this makes it possible for us to live under a political process.
The political Left often purports that it has society’s best interests at heart and that it works for the good of all. Yet according to conservatives, it is precisely that self-regard, that attempt to monopolise virtue, which exposes the hypocrisy of left-wing ideology. In this archive debate from 2018, we gathered Labour MP Stella Creasy, environmental campaigner, journalist and author, George Monbiot, Conservative MP Kwasi Kwarteng, and the leading philosopher of conservative thought, the late Roger Scruton, who sadly passed away in 2020, to discuss the issue of right vs left. Our host for the discussion was the journalist, broadcaster, visiting lecturer and Professor in the Humanities Council at Princeton University, Razia Iqbal.
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