Slow Burn: Re-examining the Legacy of Conservative Party Modernization

This article reconsiders the longer-term legacy of David Cameron’s attempts to ‘modernize’ the Conservative Party. In doing so, we aim to make three main contributions to existing scholarship. Firstly, whilst Cameron’s modernization project is judged to have been a failure by most scholars, we show that Conservative leaders post-Cameron have continued a process of party adaptation that exhibits striking continuities with many of its key elements. Secondly, whilst these developments have co-existed alongside a ratcheting up of seemingly ‘anti-modernizing’ populist and nationalist rhetoric, we contend that such moves show important continuities with Cameron’s own attempts to balance modernization with gestures towards Thatcherite politics. Thirdly, we offer a re-conceptualization of Conservative party modernization as a fluid and contingent aspect of Conservative party statecraft marked by an oscillation between, and sometimes a fusing of, modernizing rhetoric with more traditional Tory appeals.