Theo Hobson’s piece about liberal guilt and Tory smugness is food for thought. In a nutshell, Hobson’s arguing that it’s a good thing to be a conscientious liberal, as opposed to a comfortable but ignorant and Tory. He uses an analogy with EM Forster’s Howards End, contrasting the Schlegels and Wilcoxes as the two sides of this divide.

Aside from the obvious point – made in various places, (such as the Bleeding heart show, appropriately enough) that it’s simply not true to see conservatives as lacking all worries or social conscience - surely Hobson overstates his case. There must be a healthy balance between the ineffective angsty, guilty liberal, and the see-no-evil tory that Hobson depicts.

But more importantly, I also think Hobson doesn’t quite get what it means to be a conservative.

Lying at the heart of many brands of conservatism is a basic tendency to see what is good with the world, and a recognition your own limitations to impose order on an organic, spontaneous universe. That’s easily mistaken for smugness, hostility to change, and cover for injustice, but it’s quite different. And it’s wrong to confuse the two: callous and unthinking Wilcox is an unsuitable proxy for every conservative, past and present.

What’s more, elements of some conservatisms have a Forsterian tang. I wouldn’t want to push this too far – but I can’t help but think that the maxims in Howard’s End to ‘only connect’ and ‘stop living in fragments’ aren’t a bad way to describe that one-nation tory longing for a meaningful life in a shared, holistic, virtuous, and mutually respectful society.