The style is the man himself

This adage by Georges Buffon comes close to being the exhaustive manifesto of conservatism. It also explains why European, especially British, conservatives will never accept Donald Trump as their own.

Buffon, who died a year before the French Revolution, lived his whole life in the 18^th century, the dying age of aristocratic civilisation. With some reservations, it may also be called the dying age of Western civilisation, most of whose salient milestones were built by, or at least for, aristocracy.

Buffon, himself a nobleman, was the flesh and blood of that civilisation, someone permeated with its aristocratic spirit and ethics. The word ‘style’, as he understood it, encompassed both, for at the top of any pecking order of aristocratic desiderata sat manners, tastes, form and morality (often expressed as honour).

Any entity is best described by highlighting the features peculiar to it. That’s why I didn’t mention things like intellect, religious faith or any set of political convictions. These weren’t the exclusive property of the upper classes, and neither, for that matter, could our civilisation claim ownership rights to them.

However, style, as understood by Buffon, was the distinguishing aspect of the civilisation created by or for aristocracy and imbued with its spirit – the civilisation he knew. Now conservatism, as I and most British conservatives understand it, is an intuitive, if post-rationalised, craving for preserving the last remaining whiffs of that spirit.

That intuition resides in emotional, aesthetic and intellectual predisposition, not any particular set of ideas. Intuitive conservatives may gravitate towards, say, belief in the virtue of limited government or free enterprise, but these are strictly secondary. Primary is what Buffon called style, and it’s that elusive quality that distinguishes a conservative from, say, a libertarian or a right-wing radical.

That’s why a politician like Trump is impossible to imagine within the ranks of English conservatives, for the time being at any rate. His style isn’t so much non-conservative as anti-conservative, typologically closer to the extremists of either right or left.

This isn’t a matter of good or bad policies. In fact, some of Trump’s policies are perfectly fine, and one wishes they could create shock waves reaching our shores.

By the same token, Winston Churchill was right when he warned against the dangers of appeasing Hitler. Churchill was alert to the catastrophic potential of Nazism at a time when many of his class had different ideas.

Like-minded Americans, those who deplored Charles Lindbergh and other quasi-fascist admirers of the strong German leader, couldn’t understand why Churchill didn’t climb on every available Westminster rooftop and scream defiance at the top of his lungs.

Those Americans understood politics, but they didn’t understand the English national character and hence the nature of English conservatism. As Margaret Thatcher said two generations later, “When you scream, no one will hear you”.

I’m not sure she was an intuitive conservative, but Churchill certainly was. He had the oratorial talent to rouse the masses, but he could deploy it only when the masses issued an explicit licence for him to do so. Speaking out of turn in, say, 1936 or 1937, would have offended the innate reserve of the English conservative character, its sense of style.

Churchill sensed that because he was a true conservative (even though some of his ideas wouldn’t be welcomed by many political conservatives of today). So he spoke sotto voce until the people made it clear they were ready to listen to more thunderous deliveries.

It’s against this background that one can read Lord Sumption’s article about Trump in today’s Mail. I must say straight away that I don’t think the article is especially good. Lord Sumption is one of our top jurists, but his grasp of political realities, especially American ones, isn’t exactly vice-like.

But his visceral antipathy to Trump is both typical of English conservatives and can even be described as their hallmark. This is what Lord Sumption writes:

“No nation can make itself great again by choosing a leader who would be a figure of fun if he were not so powerful: an incoherent mountebank and serial liar with a string of corporate bankruptcies, sexual assault allegations and a fraud conviction to his name. Yet that is what has happened in the United States.

“There have been other American demagogues: think Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace or Barry Goldwater. These people had some simple, fixed ideas, generally based on a limited understanding. Their response to perceived obstacles was to lash out against any one in their way. Trump is cast in the same mould: Charismatic, divisive, extreme, autocratic. His trademarks are scapegoating, lies and personal abuse. The Mussolinian scowl, chin forward, says it all.”

Barry Goldwater doesn’t belong in this company, and the other characters Lord Sumption mentions may indeed have been demagogues, but that’s the only thing they have in common with one another or indeed Donald Trump.

Notice, however, that Lord Sumption isn’t discussing any of Trump’s policies. He mostly talks about style, finding none of the conservative variety in his subject.

A parallel with Joseph McCarthy is interesting. In 1963, William F. Buckley published the book The Committee and its Critics about McCarthy’s crusade against communist infiltration. Its main point was that McCarthy was essentially right and more sinned against than sinning.

By the time the book came out, McCarthy had been dead for six years and a torrent of new information had come to light. The late senator was vindicated: there had indeed been a massive infiltration of American political and cultural institutions by witting and unwitting agents of the Soviet espionage services.

English conservatives knew this, and still rejected McCarthy for the same reasons their descendants today reject Trump. They sense something profoundly non-conservative in any shrill demagoguery, regardless of whether or not it has a point.

Buckley’s exchange with Evelyn Waugh, the quintessential English conservative, was telling. Buckley sent a copy of his book to Waugh and asked him to review it in National Review, the magazine Buckley had founded and turned into the best journal of this kind I’ve ever read (oh the good old days).

Buckley offered a fee far in excess of his magazine’s norm, but it was still paltry by Waugh’s standards who turned it down “until such time that you become much richer, which I hope will happen soon, or I become much poorer, which I fear will happen sooner.”

Above all, Waugh refused to write about McCarthy even though he felt Buckley had made his point well:

“McCarthy is certainly regarded by most Englishmen as a regrettable figure and your [book], being written before his later extravagances, will not go far to clear his reputation… Your book makes plain that there was a need for investigation ten years ago. It does not, I am afraid, supply me with the information that would convince me that McCarthy was a suitable man to undertake it.”

Now, Buckley himself was largely a cultural, intuitive conservative in the English mould, perhaps partly because he had been educated at an English public school. That’s why I’m sure he understood Waugh’s rejection, much as he might have regretted it.

Yet, to paraphrase Lord Sumption’s colleague of centuries ago, the air of British conservatism is too pure for vulgar loud-mouthed demagogues to breathe. Whether they are right or wrong doesn’t change things: their style disqualifies them as conservatives.

This brings into question their link with Western civilisation, which was after all born in Europe and, in its conservative incarnation, perfected in Britain. It also explains why Trump will come a cropper if he ever looks for allies among British conservatives – especially those who have pondered Buffon’s maxim in depth.