Conservatives in opposition must resist populist disdain for the institutions which make this country internationally competitive – chief among them the rule of law, says Eliot Wilson
Nothing is written, of course, as Peter O’Toole tells us in Lawrence of Arabia, but given given Rishi Sunak made a mistake almost as epic as the 1962 film over D-Day, it is probable that Labour will win the forthcoming election comfortably. The Conservative Party will go into opposition as it did in 1997, diminished, chastened and uncertain, and Tories will have to spend some time considering their fundamental principles. From a business perspective, one imperative is that they rediscover and embrace their commitment to the rule of law.
The last decade has seen the rise, not just in Britain but around the world, of a kind of restless, dissatisfied, angry populism. It has been a sentiment directed against things rather than in favour of things, more often than not: an understandable expression of dismay at the way society and the economy have developed and a feeling that decisions are being made elsewhere, unaccountably and irreversibly.
This was a brooding sentiment into which some proponents of Brexit were able to tap, and which sustained Donald Trump on his improbable journey to the White House. In Europe, it has provided succour for parties on both ends of the spectrum, right-wing nationalists like France’s Rassemblement National, formerly the National Front, and the Fratelli d’Italia in Italy, as well as left-leaning groups such as Germany’s Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht – Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit.
In Britain, this impulse is seen in the rise of Reform UK, a haphazard collection of views which exists essentially to sustain the political career of Nigel Farage. But the right wing of the Conservative Party has discerned something attractive in it too. Since Farage dramatically reversed his decision not to stand at the general election, Reform has surged to within a single point of the Conservatives in some polls.
If the Tories are reimagining themselves over the next year or two from the opposition benches, there is one element of this populist impulse they must resist, and that is disdain for the rule of law. It has taken hold of the Republican Party in the United States completely under Trump’s dominance: assertions that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that Trump’s recent conviction on 34 felony counts was a politically motivated injustice are now required professions of faith.
We have already seen it prefigured in Britain. When the High Court ruled in 2016 that the government could not invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, to give notice of its intention to leave the EU without the consent of Parliament, the Daily Mail’s front page carried photographs of the three judges who had made the ruling, under the headline “Enemies of the People”.
This is a road down which the Conservatives must not go, for a number of reasons. Prominent among them is that the rule of law is a major factor in making London, and the United Kingdom in general, an attractive place for investors and employers. Guaranteeing qualities like legality, transparency and access to justice are vital to UK plc. They reduce the costs of business, they mitigate risks and they underpin a basic stability and predictability which allows companies to plan for the medium and long term.
The world is more competitive than it has ever been. London and New York have for decades vied to be the global financial centre, but challenges now also come from Singapore, Dubai, Shanghai, Hong Kong and other major cities. Particularly against authoritarian or autocratic states like China or the UAE, the rule of law is one of our potential superpowers. In 2014, then attorney general Jeremy Wright put it concisely: “when people come to the UK to do business they know what they will get: a framework of law that will be properly applied and upheld”.
That is a quality which one would have assumed ran bone-deep in the Conservative Party 20 years ago. Traditionally, the Tories have been the party of law and order, of rules and conformity. Even if they now perceive some of those institutions as working against their interests, they cannot tilt at the institutions themselves but must seek to reform them and make them more effective.
Any Conservative would agree that a central element of the party’s future offering must be economic growth. Championing the rule of law, being an exemplar of a fair, free, transparent and accessible justice system, is an indispensable part of that. Whoever emerges as the tribune of Conservatism must be committed to that.
Eliot Wilson is co-founder of Pivot Point Group