“We must all obey the great law of change,” said the pre-eminent Tory philosopher Edmund Burke in 1792. “It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means, perhaps, of its conservation”. Burke put forward this central tenet of Conservatism at the height of revolutionary fervor in France.
Theresa May, like Burke, is facing up to a fundamental fissure in our civilization. But while Burke was confronted by the birth of modernity, the Prime Minister is standing on what might be the precipice of its terminal decline. Her speech at the Conservative party conference suggests she can smell the revolt in the air.
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