The Conservative Reads: The Disraeli Myth

A Tale of Two Leaders

It is impossible to read Emily Jones’ brilliant new book, The Disraeli Myth - The Making of a Conservative Tradition, without thinking about the other Great Leader, who spiritually dominates the Conservative Party today: Margaret Thatcher. Perhaps she will be the subject of Jones’ next book, completing a trilogy that started with her her dissection of Edmund Burke and his elevation to the role as the ‘inventor’ of Modern Conservatism.

The parallels between Dizzy and Maggie come think and fast. Both have been subject to widely successful popular media, particularly film, where both have Oscar winning portrayals on celluloid. Both have had numerous successor organisations set up to popularise their memories. Both have had their speeches endlessly selectively quoted to provide ammunition in contemporary debates. If you want to learn more about how Disraeli was canonised in the years after his death, this book has you covered.

Despite these parallels, however, Jones’ book shows two to very different approaches to how the Conservative Party has sought to use these titanic figures for its own intellectual and political evolution.

Disraeli was used a rubric, to help guide the party through the development of mass democracy, industrialization and total war. There is no Disraelian model that can be rebuilt, but there are a set of ideas and concepts that can guide politicians for the future. Whether there was any intellectual consistency in Disraeli is something Jones’ handles evenhandedly, however, there are two pillars that seem to remain constant: reimagining traditional institutions to preserve them and concern for the welfare of the people. In any case, these are the pillars upon which One Nation Conservatism have been built, whether Disraeli intended them or not.

Like Thatcher, Disraeli was seen as a “visionary prophet” by many of his supporters. This meant that whilst Disraeli was mined for insight and examples of effective statesmanship, no one was seeking to recreate Disraeli’s government. In part, this was because Disraeli was seen as someone impossible to emulate, given his perceived unique gifts of foresight and literary genius, expertly documented by Jones. It was also because the Conservative Party was aware that the world had significantly changed, in part because of decisions that Disraeli had made to widen the electoral franchise and the new phase of great power competition.

Looking around Conservative Party Conference this week, speaking with members and listening to panels, Thatcher is not being used as a rubric, like Disraeli, but a template. This is an important distinction. Conservatives invoking her memory today are not asking for an evolution of Thatcher, but instead to recreate her time in office and, as we can see in this conference, even her approach to how to run an opposition. The fact that she went from opposition to government and won three elections is inarguable. The temptation to simply copy and paste her approach is seemingly irresistible. However, looking across to The Left, we can see how Labour has struggled to move away from its own Thatcher-figure, Blair, and how in the last election it ended up spending more time trying to recreate New Labour’s rise to power, than it did on focusing on the issues facing the country it was trying to govern.

Jones’ book is interesting because of the sheer variety of responses to Disraeli’s legacy that emerged from across the Conservative Party and even the emergent Labour Party, where Disraeli inspired Tory Socialism had numerous acolytes. Disraeli is a figure that all sides of politics have tried to own, even recent Labour Leaders. This is not a weakness of Disraeli, but a strength. If you want to rebuild a party, drawing on a legacy that even your opponents want to be associated with is not a bad start. The Disraeli Myth is particularly useful for a Conservative Party that needs a reminder of the rich tapestry of ideas, movements and literature that has made it adaptable and successful.

Thatcher’s legacy, by contrast, seems to have ossified into a set of policy prescriptions that leave little room for the imagination or adaption. There is no situation where a dose of a) cutting back the state; b) cutting regulation; or c) cutting taxes is not the appropriate response. The work that has been written about Thatcher tends to seek to either defend her policy choices or to call for their more thorough implementation today, rather using them as a platform to build upon.

To put it bluntly, Jones shows how the decades after the departure of Disraeli saw an intellectual flourishing of various strands of Conservatism that has rarely been surpassed. The decades after Thatcher have created an intellectual desert, where it seems nothing else can, or is permitted to, survive.

Reading Jones’ book in the run up to Conservative Party Conference, Disraeli is notable by his absence. Yet, you could argue that Disraeli is a better inspiration for the Conservative Party in its current state than Thatcher. Before Disraeli’s majority in 1874, the Conservatives (bar a few brief minority governments under Derby) had not secured a working majority in Parliament for twenty eight years. During this period in opposition he kept the Conservative Party alive and rebuilt it for a new era of politics, dominated by the growing influence of the middle and working classes. Disraeli had to build a new electoral coalition, exactly where the party now is. Thatcher, by contrast, picked up a Conservative Party that had only been in government a couple of years before hand and had governed for seventeen years out of the previous thirty one years since the end of the Second World War. Disraeli’s efforts to keep the Conservative flame alive and provide it a renewed purpose seems more relevant for our current situation.

Disraeli also, arguably, left a better electoral legacy. In the thirty six years since his departure as Prime Minister, the Conservatives, governed with a majority for sixteen years, winning three elections. Disraeli’s work even helped to facilitate a split in his opponents, with the Conservative’s embrace of social reform opening the door for Liberal Unionists. The Conservatives since 1990, by contrast, have only governed with a majority for eleven and a half years since Thatcher’s departure. Thatcher’s legacy has split the Conservative Party, with now both the Reform and Conservative parties claiming her mantle. The right has become divided, rather than expanded, as under Disraeli.

Both periods have, unfortunately, been book ended with crushing electoral defeats. However, in the case of the Conservatives in 1906, this was due to a genuine policy split (tariffs) and an impressive opposition (Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith, Haldane, Lloyd-George and Churchill) rather than in 2024, where the party was thrown out through exhaustion and a generally agreed weak opposition. In the wake of its 1906 defeat, the party once again was able to turn to Disraeli to expand itself both politically and intellectually, to respond to the rise of the New Liberalism and the Labour Party offering a traditionalist and protectionist offering that was to dominate the inter-war years, marked as they were with great geopolitical and economic instability. Again, after the Second World War, the party successfully turned to Disraeli to appeal to a country that wanted social harmony and economic fairness after the sacrifices of two world wars and the rise of Communism.

Disraeli has inspired three ‘revivals’ of the party. Thatcher has yet to inspire one, although maybe this time she will succeed.

It is not lost on me that in writing this book review, I have simply become the latest to perpetuate the Disraeli Myth. Guilty as charged. I challenge anyone to read Disraeli’s speeches and not walk away electrified by the romantic power of conservatism.

However, there are some myths that are forces of good that inspire better action, like King Arthur and his Knights or Shakespeare’s Henry V. There are some myths that are forces of evil, such as those vile antisemitic tropes that have sadly become too much of a feature of our politics.

In reading Jones’ book on Disraeli, it is clear that Disraeli’s Myth has been a force for good, particularly for the Conservative Party. As important as the man himself, are the lessons that we can learn from the the dozens of politicians and writers Jones cites in the book, who used him as an intellectual quarry that helped evolve the Conservative Party. Kebbel, Milner, Gorst, F.E. Smith, Skelton and many more. We need a new generation of Disraeli interpreters if we want to survive and thrive.

Engaging with them, we can learn again on how great figures from our past can help us navigate the future, rather than become a millstone around our necks.

Andrew O’Brien, Co-Editor, The Conservative Reader

Andrew will be speaking at a fringe held by More in Common & UCL Policy Lab on Communitarianism and Conservatism at Monday 5 October (today), 18.15 to 19.15 at Executive Room 7, Birmingham ICC. No registration required.