This week in Brexitland, January 25, 2024

The underlying philosophical reason why Brexit made the Conservative party go completely mad - Karl Popper, Karl Marx, and the “arrow of history”

That Brexit deeply hurt the Conservative party is now almost beyond argument. Even if you’re in favour of Brexit, you’ll have to admit that the infighting it has caused within the Tory fold has taken an immense toll. The reason often given for this is either, Brexit let the right of the party gain control of it, or, if you’re a Brexiter on the right of the party, the Remoaners created the turmoil by resisting the 2016 referendum result. Either way, Brexit was the thing that caused the chaos.

Neither of those explanations for the Brexit meltdown feel correct to me. I think there is another reason why Brexit has eaten the soul of the Conservative party. It is philosophical, ideological. And oddly, it involves Brexit causing the right of the Conservative party to take on one of the worst ideas from the far left and make it their own.

It’s the concept of the “arrow of history” - the notion that human history is a force unto itself. It posits that there is a direction of travel the human race is headed that is unchangeable and unyielding, oblivious to the actions of men and women who try and steer it one direction or another. In a sense, the future is pre-decided, according to those who subscribe to this theory. It flows from human nature.

Karl Popper called this theory “historicism”, and in his brilliant book, The Open Society and its Enemies, he denounced it by tracing the lineage of this way of thinking back to Plato, through Aristotle, then Hegel and ultimately to Marx, where it has had perhaps its greatest effect on our current society. You can spot this historicism if you look for it in a great deal of left-wing thinking, from Labour MPs, to trade unionists, to Owen Jones. “You’re on the wrong side of history” they’ll tell you when they disagree with you on something.

The “arrow of history” worldview has largely been a property of the left over the last century or so. Brexit changed that. It happened after the referendum result, not before, and I think I know why.

Referendums are not looked upon favourably by Burkean conservatism, nor were they seen as a good thing by Edmund Burke himself. In fact, here’s a great quote from him on the topic, specifically as one-off plebiscites relate to elected representatives:

“Authoritative instructions, mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience – these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.”

Burkean conservatism, or traditional conservatism, has always come down to what works over any ideological concern. It’s about living in the real world and figuring out what the least bad option is that’s available. The idea that “we had a referendum, and that trumps every other consideration” is wildly alien to Burkean conservatism. This means that the modern day Conservative party hit a fork in the road on this one, sometime in 2016: stick with the worldview that made them one of the most popular political parties in the world, or cling to Brexit. They oddly chose the latter.

It’s why there is so much similarity between the communists’ “real communism has never been tried” mantra and the Brexiters’ “real Brexit hasn’t been tried yet” spiel. It isn’t accidental - it’s because both ideas flow from the same underlying ideology, that there is an “arrow of history” that cannot be wrong.

I think this is one of the reasons pro-Brexit arguments eventually always end up as left-wing ones, if allowed to go on for long enough - they’ve had to subscribe to the left’s “arrow of history” theory, that somehow Brexit was manifest destiny and was always going to happen, one way or another, and to even think about trying to reverse that is like turning the clock back on any number of civil rights that now exist (the irony here being lots of Brexiters on the right actually do consciously want to roll back civil rights in numerous ways. This shows you can interpret the “arrow of history” in any number of ways, again demonstrating why the whole idea is so deeply flawed).

This is one of the great ironies of right-wing populism. It presents itself as deeply anti-Marxist, seeing reds constantly under the bed everywhere they turn, and yet they lean very heavily, consciously or otherwise, on Marxist ideas, principles, and indeed, larger worldview. It’s certainly true that at the very least, right-wing populism is much closer in style, spirit and substance to Marxism than it is to Burkean conservatism.

You doubt me? Edmund Burke once described conservatism as an "approach to human affairs which mistrusts both a priori reasoning and revolution, preferring to put its trust in experience and in the gradual improvement of tried and tested arrangements." Does that sound anything like Donald Trump? Or Nigel Farage? Or for that matter, Rishi Sunak? No, it sounds eerily like the exact opposite worldview.

In a nutshell, the Conservative party is lost and unpopular because those within it decided to ditch the ideological framework which made them so successful. The two things are directly related. And the reason they did it was Brexit. Which, let’s be honest here, was certainly not worth it.

Thanks for reading. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do, and I’ll be back next week with the worst of Brexit.