David Starkey: The strange death of Conservative England

Held at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on 30th October 2024.

In the final Oakeshott (formerly Scruton) Lecture of 2024, distinguished historian David Starkey considered the strange decline of the Conservative movement in the United Kingdom, placing its plight in the context of rapid social and cultural change and the constitutional vandalism of the Tony Blair administration. He concluded with some thoughts on its possible resurrection. 

Dr Starkey was joined by PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, who introduced the historian and rejoined at the end to discuss the key themes of the lecture. 

Introducing the guest speaker, our PopCon Director said:

" ..Since February of this year I have been the director of a new political movement called Popular Conservatism... My new organisation asks the question 'From a conservative perspective, why after 14 years of Conservative government, do we find that on any metric we care to name, the United Kingdom in a less conservative place than the Conservatives found it in. Was this merely a failure of political nerve? A lack of political competence? Or was something else going on? The man giving tonight's lecture has furnished my new organisation with many, perhaps all, the answers to that question. 

I had met Dr David Starkey a couple of times in my previous role as Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, but it's when I moved on to consider politics and policy through a constitutional or organisational lens - rather than merely an economic perspective - that I had a number of eureka moments when hearing Dr Starkey's analyses and prescriptions of what had gone wrong in Britain from a conservative perspective.

The title of tonight's lecture is 'The Strange Death of Conservative England' echoing of course the title of the seminal text - although widely criticised text it’s fair to say - from 1935, Dangerfield's 'The Strange Death of Liberal England'. Is conservatism today experiencing a similar and possibly equally permanent decline in terms of its political relevance and its power in public policy? 

Our lecturer this evening is an historian whose many works include 'Monarchy: From the Middle Ages to Modernity'; 'Magna Carta: The True Story Behind the Charter'; and 'Henry: Model of a Tyrant'. His numerous historical TV series have made him a household name in Britain. He is, I feel confident in saying, Britain's leading conservative public intellectual. 

To deliver this Oakeshott lecture please welcome the sometimes controversial, the frequently provocative, but always the thoroughly engaging, Dr David Starkey." 

WATCH DR STARKEY'S LECTURE AND DISCUSSION WITH MARK LITTLEWOOD HERE