The election finished in July — thank goodness — and the right has moved on to the bit that everyone has been waiting not so patiently for: the battle for the future of British conservatism. We need to rediscover who we are and what we stand for, with how to lower immigration being the obvious starting point. But where we stand on the environment is being unjustly neglected. The natural environment is so deeply ingrained in the conservative soul that to deny it would be to deny our very reason for being.
If opinion polls are anything to go by, as a young, environmentally-minded woman, my vote belongs to the Green Party. And yet, I am a conservative, and a vociferous one at that. In reality, it is totally incidental that I care about the preservation of the natural world. I care about the environment not in spite of being a conservative, but precisely because I am a conservative.
Conservatism and environmentalism go hand in hand. The clue, afterall, is in the name. To be a conservative is to conserve. This applies as much to our cultural heritage as it does our natural one. Wanting to protect the environment may be fashionable in left-wing circles right now, but conservatives have always had a deeper reason to care about it.
Regardless of what media coverage may suggest, there is no such thing as a “green” conservative; there are only conservatives. And as conservatives, we have a duty to conserve and restore the home we have been blessed with so that future generations can experience and benefit from it too.
Unlike many on the left, we believe that we should not be having fewer children for the environment, but rather that we should be protecting the environment for the children we will have. Our instinctive love of home, or “oikophilia” as the late Roger Scruton called it, is intertwined with a desire to protect it. This is true conservatism, embedded in a rich intellectual tradition spanning hundreds of years.
New Conservative MPs have spoken with pride about our green and pleasant land but the truth is, green and pleasant though it may be, we are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. We need concerted action to restore the habitats we have degraded and lost, and to revive the species that once called them home.
This will require some seemingly controversial steps that will reward us with bountiful biodiversity in the long run. We need to set aside some unproductive farmland for this restoration and release native species like the beaver to perform services that would otherwise cost taxpayers millions to deliver. We need brave Conservatives willing to look to the future and take these bold decisions in order to protect our natural inheritance.
Conservatives who try to shed the inclination to protect the environment, in order to compete with the reforming reactionaries of the day, are conservatives in name only. This election campaign saw the Conservative Party foolishly flirt with climate sceptic rabble rousers, despite environmental action being popular with the electorate and an area where it had actually delivered.
There is a list as long as my arm of conservative environmental achievements. Among these, my personal highlight is the post-Brexit transformation of our farm subsidies from paying farmers for what the market already rewards, namely food production, to a system of public money for public goods, rewarding farmers for strengthening their soil and adding biodiversity back to their land.
This is certainly not to say that what was done by the previous government was enough or that everything that was done was done perfectly in accordance with conservative principles. It could have gone further and faster, with the inability to deliver a seemingly simple deposit return scheme for drinks containers being the most obvious example of failure. Sometimes the easiest policy win was picked over the one that could have delivered more impactful change, and other times the state intervened instead of empowering the market to lead. Nonetheless, the party’s willingness to act shows it is its instinct to care.
Voters do not know about this record, let alone the plans the party had to build on it, because it was not championed. Despite putting forward a genuinely strong and competitive offer on restoring the natural environment in its manifesto, the Conservative Party failed to mention these ideas in any significant way on the campaign trail. Instead, net zero narrative row backs that didn’t move the dial were prioritised. By giving the environment the cold shoulder, the party simply fostered further mistrust amongst voters.
The Conservative Party must embrace its own record and champion environmental ambition from the opposition benches. Despite promising to spend more on climate action and accelerate electricity decarbonisation, Labour has virtually nothing of substance to say about protecting the natural environment. The Conservatives’ manifesto commitments to increasing the farming budget, removing red tape for tree planting, and adopting a more catchment-based approach to water quality, on the other hand, demonstrate our deep understanding of the issues and the solutions required.
While Labour’s ideology aligns with the dark satanic mills, ours is deeply embedded in England’s green and pleasant land. They do not understand the significance of the natural environment, nor have the inclination to protect and restore it. This presents a huge political opportunity for the Conservative Party but it is one it risks squandering if it does not take the environment seriously as an issue.
We cannot trust the left to conserve and restore our natural inheritance. It is something that the Conservative Party is philosophically predisposed to do and indeed has done. But we have a battle to fight first. As the chaos ensues, I hope that, in attempting to rediscover its soul, the Conservative Party does not lose its mind. The new parliament is ripe with opportunities for restoration, of nature and of the Conservative Party. It would be foolish not to seize them.
First published by The Critic. Kitty Thompson is CEN's Senior Nature Programme Manager.
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