Fraternity without equality, and other Conservative ideals

Abstract

I n June 2005, when we had just begun the collective discussions leading up to the Compass publication The Good Society, an email circulated amongst our group containing a link to a speech by Oliver Letwin, who was then the Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The speech was called ‘Conducting Politics as if Beauty Matters’, and the theme was Environmentalism. Drawing on the language of the Romantics, Letwin argued that politicians needed a new vocabulary to talk about the environment. This was an issue that went beyond the merely mechanical. He called for a new political culture in which environmental policy is recognised as being the achievement of beauty. ‘The language of politics needs to refl ect the felt experience of the environment as sensations and impressions that are capable of moving us to delight and awe.’