Long live the Tory revolution!

THE CLOSEST thing the Tory party has had to an in-house philosopher is Edmund Burke, and the closest thing it has to an intellectual bête noire is Burke’s French contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Burke, a liberal conservative, believed fervently that changing societies needed to be anchored by tradition and custom. Rousseau, the patron saint of revolutionaries from Robespierre to Pol Pot and prime enabler of “democratic dictatorship”, was the sworn enemy of the established order.

Yet over the past few years the party of Burke has become the party of Rousseau. Boris Johnson’s bloody cabinet reshuffle completed the purge. Burkeans such as Philip Hammond and Rory Stewart were out; revolutionaries such as Dominic Raab and Priti Patel now hold all the great offices of state. Dominic Cummings, appointed as Mr Johnson’s senior adviser, told staff that the government was committed to delivering Brexit “by any means necessary”—a reference to a speech by Malcolm X on violence in the pursuit of justice. This is the British equivalent of the Chinese Communist Party embracing capitalism.