Is The Conservative Party Exists To Conserve?

Against all odds

“The Conservative Party exists to conserve”, but what exactly does it desire to conserve? According to Samuel Huntington, conservatism wishes to justify the established order (Huntington, 1957, p. 455). This established order was, when the Conservative Party was founded in the 1830s, an elitist order that justifies income inequality by saying it is natural and inevitable (Dorey, 2011, p. 5). When the franchise expanded and the working class became represented, the Conservative Party did not disappear from the political field, but flourished and is currently in government as one of the most prominent parties in the United Kingdom. Various factors explain this possibly unexpected success and this essay aims discuss the most
Conservatism is closely related to the elite and this elite has more money than for example the leaders of the Labour party, this means that the Conservative party has a strong advantage on the other party. Two main advantages have been vital to the Conservative party. Firstly, they have been able to put up bigger election campaign and have therefore been able to shape the general opinion more towards their advantage (Bale, 2012, p. 65). This is shown to be a structural phenomenon, like in the already discussed preference of woman to vote conservative or to profile the Conservative as the natural, responsible party; but as well on the short term during elections. Conservatives were also often the top of the society, their families have been in power, so they must know how to govern, they are rich, so they must know how to become rich. The availability of money is also made a large amount of polling possible since the Second World War. One of the big conservative issues is that they are often regarded as out of touch with the ‘normal people’, they did not know very well what the voters desired (Taylor, 2003, p.81). In the 1945 the Conservative Party was very unsuccessful and the polls helped to find out why this was the case. One of the outcomes was that voters were not satisfied with the Labour party, but
While the Labour party has always adapted their agenda to the working class the Conservatives try to come across as party that does not focus on a specific class, religion or ethnicity but on terms that relate to everybody like ‘the nation’ or ‘the people’. A conservative party can do this, because their name does not, like Labour or Liberalism, imply a certain ideology. The core of Conservatism is to focus on tradition and protects the existing structure of order (Huntington,1957, p. 455). Certain changes in the 60s contributed to this, the working class was shrinking and the manual workers felt less connected by just class with the Labour. You could therefore say there was a shift from class voting to valence voting, which meant that people were less likely to vote according to their class, but more likely to vote what they believed would give the most prosperity (Turner, 2003, p. 190). This does not mean that people will automatically vote Conservative, but it does help the Conservatives because workers are less likely to vote automatically vote