In 1913, when the Conservatives were roughly halfway through their longest desert crossing since the 18th century, Keith Feiling, a historian and professor at Oxford University, published a book called Toryism. In the work, the author expressed the main dilemmas and incapacities of the British center-right using a permanent and scathing dialogue between four typical conservatives of the time, that is, with profiles similar to those of the main internal “currents”.
The first was a typical Tory, a kind of reincarnation of Salisbury. The second was a conservative for personal convenience (“a man of means and leisure”). The third, a political careerist, ex-liberal deputy (converted due to opportunism). And a last one, even more idealistic, which had Imperial Preference as its brand image.
They shared, however, the view that the country was small and the empire was huge, the world appeared progressively more uncertain, the military forces were small compared to those of emerging states, taxes remained extremely high and the taxpaying classes were exhausted. They feared that, faced with changes as drastic as those at the beginning of the last century, the party would lose its purpose. More than the removal from power – which lasted 17 years – Feiling’s conservatives feared the erosion of the matrix tory. The loss of direction. If not reformed and in line with new realities, they saw an existential risk for their common ideas.
Now, it is unequivocal that in most Western democracies it is the left that is facing a deeper crisis – while even the most disadvantaged people no longer need to talk about class struggle, urban, elitist and folkloric groups have given up talking about poverty and exclusion – the different right-wings are not going through auspicious times.
See the Portuguese case. Intoxicated by today having one of its own in the Presidency of the Republic, by having won two legislative elections in a single year, by leading the regional governments of the Azores and Madeira, by heading the five most populous local authorities and, given the results of last month’s local councils, having regained the presidency of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities, the PSD reveals itself to be incapable of reforming the country or of giving even the slightest sign that this is its intention.
He prefers, instead, to celebrate the timid growth that he lamented with António Costa, to conform to fiscal blunders that little or nothing discredit those of António Costa and Mário Centeno – the same person that Joaquim Miranda Sarmento already admits to supporting in a race for ‘vice’ of the European Central Bank –, to distribute crumbs to pensioners in the run-up to elections as António Costa did and to fuel inequality between the public and private sectors, an expedient in which he was prodigal… António Costa.
In the absence of another worldview – and of parties available to be as loyal as they are demanding or as demanding as they are loyal –, the Portuguese center-right has been dragged into a doctrinal morgue, entangling itself and entangling us discussing burkas, roadside posters, kitchen instruments and other frivolities that are only of interest to extremists without solutions and plot-dependent media. low cost.
Reform of the health and education systems can wait. The judiciary can continue to run wild and with inscrutable agendas. Transport can remain inefficient, as long as it is public, as left and right socialists want it to be. And our children and grandchildren who have to accept miserable salaries or emigration – and, by the way, with pensions corresponding to 30% or 35% of their last salaries. Just as a century ago, it is the assumption of an identity and courage that is required of the center-right. No matter how much circumstantial success postpones the inevitable, there is no entity that thrives in a desert of ideas.
Communication consultant