Major's Woes: Poison of a new British Disease: Michael Portillo: The speech

AN edited extract from a speech by Michael Portillo, Chief Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Enfield Southgate, at the Conservative Way Forward President's annual dinner on Friday:

TONIGHT I am going to talk about one of the greatest threats that has ever confronted the British nation. It comes not from the Soviet Union, not from the proliferation of nuclear weapons, not even from domestic terrorism. It is more insidious and therefore harder to counter and to defeat. It is not an external threat but an internal one. It comes from amongst us.

What is that threat? It is the New British Disease: the self-destructive sickness of national cynicism. It is spread by so-called opinion formers within the British elite: the people who think they know what's best for all of us. The disease shows itself in a readiness to denigrate our country and praise others; to devalue our achievements, and envy others; to hold our national institutions in contempt and look with approval on other people's; to deride every one of our national figures. A poison has been spread by pessimists.

Too many politicians, academics, churchmen, authors, commentators and journalists exhibit the full-blown symptoms of this New British Disease. A country which places no value on its national characteristics cannot be stable or prosperous for long. Self-doubt gnaws away at the sinews of our institutions and weakens the nation. An elite that raises up heroes merely for the enjoyment of pulling them down again is indeed sick.

Paradoxically, this New British Disease has its origins in some of our most attractive national characteristics. We Britons are famous for our self-effacing, self-mocking humour, we are known for our tendency to understatement and above all for our tolerance. We have always been willing to make a joke of every British habit and custom. All of us were brought up to value modesty and to underplay the extent of our national accomplishments. And we considered it quintessentially British to allow everyone and anyone, high or low, politician or pundit, to state his opinion on any topic candidly, without fear of persecution, even if that opinion flew like an arrow to the very heart of our national life.

But something's changed. Until the 1970s such humour, modesty and liberty were underpinned by national self-confidence. Despite our shrunken role in the world, we took for granted the value of a constitutional monarchy, we were proud of our ancient parliamentary democracy and happy with an established Church which was nonetheless independent, moral but moderate. People 'knew' that we did things best in Britain. We looked out towards our friends in Europe with a somewhat smug certainty that our democratic institutions made us less susceptible to extremism. We stood with our American friends as defenders of the world's freedoms.

There was more to it than confidence about our institutions. There was respect for achievement. Exceptional people rose to prominence through the classes. It was possible for Disraeli and Lloyd George to become prime ministers. People with entrepreneurial flair rose from rags to riches. People respected education. They strove for it. Self-help was the recognised route to public esteem and position.

Britain is a very different place today. It is not that the average Briton feels less British or less proud of our country. But the chattering classes have succumbed to masochism and defeatism. Read the newspapers or watch television and you see it: leading citizens telling us how much worse we do things in Britain than in other countries. The subject doesn't matter. Whether it is health or welfare, industry, transport or education, or housing, the story with the best chance of being reported seems to be the one that demonstrates that Britain does it worst. And the quality of the story doesn't matter either. No matter how partial or how partisan, just so long as it sufficiently demonstrates our national inferiority.

Some might argue that it is all the natural and inevitable result of a free press. I don't think so. It isn't like that in other countries. The United States is as free as we are. A free press has not led them to such national denigration. Americans believe in the American dream still. They are as self-confident as ever, as content as usual about the superiority of their national institutions. They are willing to question them of course - but in order to improve them.

What's gone wrong in Britain? Our country, which was so resilient when faced by the disasters of war, has lacked moral fibre when confronted by the disappointments of peace. Perhaps we have not enjoyed seeing those nations that we defeated or that we helped to save from defeat, one by one rising from their ashes and overtaking us economically.

Perhaps it's that disappointment that has led to the whingeing about Britain among the so-called sophisticated: that tendency to wallow in self-pity and self-abasement. Anyone who has a miserable tale to tell finds a ready platform and often receives an uncritical hearing. In the world of the soundbite, arguments which are banal and tendentious enjoy equal status with those which are more judicious and comprehensive. Britain has become a nation of pressure groups.

For decades we have allowed ourselves to fall prey to cynics, egalitarians and socialists. The spread of the New British Disease is not just an accident. Since the time that Marx and Engels lived and wrote freely in Britain, we have tolerated, even encouraged, those with anti-establishment views to settle here and develop their ideas. By the 1960s to be cynical was fashionable, to be anti-establishment de rigueur. Some universities wallowed in self-satisfaction They were good places from which to pour scorn upon the world outside. Through those universities, those gateways to achievement, passed nearly every one of those who enjoys influence today. A fine tradition of national tolerance has been corrupted into a new tendency to nihilism.

The success of that nihilism has been impressive. In education it led us to despise excellence, to abjure measurement of achievement and to destroy most of our grammar schools. Failure to achieve is explained away by social conditions. No wonder there are too many of our young who, because little is expected of them, achieve little.

It's not just education. Just as serious, that nihilism has transformed every British institution into an object of ridicule. The Royal Family provides the clearest example. Since the Glorious Revolution, the value of the monarchy has rarely depended on the actions or behaviour of individual members. Much of the time, little was known of their personal attributes. We have had popular kings and queens and unpopular ones. But the point of the monarchy is that it is a national focal point. It's the source of the authority and legitimacy of government yet above politics. Above all it is the personification of the nation. It's an institution vital to our national well-being.

A similar hatchet job has been done on Parliament. Britain's House of Commons remains the world's premier debating chamber. In it, real issues are argued out, sometimes with great passion and ferocity. Of course it's rowdy. It is adversarial and confrontational. Issues can and must be resolved as 'aye' or 'no'. Government governs with the consent of Parliament and its programme must be approved or rejected. Parliament provides the testing ground for ministers' policies: defending the quality and propriety of their decisions in that hostile environment really concentrates the mind.

That's why it's much more than a zoo and far too important to be treated as a joke. In half the world, people would be willing to die for such an institution and for such democratic safeguards. Literally. Even within the developed world very few countries have systems which produce national government of such incorruptibility. That's something to be proud of: something to hang on to.

As for Parliament, so too for the Church. Each and every one of our institutions and each of our leaders is up for ridicule. In today's world I doubt whether Sir Winston Churchill would be accorded much respect, nor Archbishop Temple. For that matter, has any monarch in our history more assiduously fulfilled her duties than Queen Elizabeth II or more graciously upheld the dignity of a constitutional monarch?

What's really changed are not the kind of people who hold high office so much as the attitude of the elite towards them. If we approach any office holder with sufficient malice and sufficient will to destroy, of course we can cover them with contempt and ridicule. And when we attack not just the individual but their office as well, we inflict lasting damage on the fabric of the nation.

Of course, some of our institutions have contributed to their own misfortunes. Those who advised the Royal Family to become more populist and more ordinary probably played into the hands of those who wanted to make of them soap opera or farce. Parliament was, I think, ill-advised to let in the TV cameras. The Church has been rushing to reform in a way that seemed to some to owe more to late 20th century political correctness than to the apostolic tradition or to universal truths.

Why does it matter if respect for institutions has broken down? For two reasons. First because the relations which hold society together stretch from top to bottom. If Crown, Parliament and Church are not respected, neither will be law, judges or policemen, nor professors nor teachers nor social workers, nor bosses, managers or foremen. Social disorder follows when respect breaks down. A society in which people hold those in authority in contempt, and don't even think much of themselves, is set upon the road to disintegration.

In Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses explains how order in society depends upon a series of relationships of respect and duty from top to bottom.

When degree is shaked,

Which is the ladder to all high designs,

The enterprise is sick. How could communities,

Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

The primogenity and due of birth,

Prerogative of age, crown, sceptres, laurels,

But by degree stand in authentic place?

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And hark what discord follows . . .

Strength should be lord of imbecility.

And the rude son should strike his father dead;

Force should be right, or rather right and wrong . . .

Should lose their names, and so should justice too . . .

(Act 1 scene iii)

There's another reason why the disintegration of respect matters. Britain has been unusually fortunate in that as an island nation we have for centuries rarely had to think about how we define ourselves. Today we have to think harder because of Republicanism in Northern Ireland and Federalism in Europe. On the latter it seems to me that those who wish to give up national sovereignty and see Britain absorbed into a trans-European political body show the ultimate symptoms of national self-doubt, even defeatism.

What can we do? The British need to wake-up to the dangers that now confront them. We can change things. There is nothing inevitable about our present condition. Are our competitor nations wallowing in self-pity? Are they whingeing from self-doubt, and sneering at their own achievements, and tearing down the very pillars of their societies? Of course not. There is nothing natural about our condition either. The disease may be gripping our opinion formers, but it is not shared by the people. Most Britons in this as in other things, want to return to basics. They are proud of their nation and love its distinguishing features. They are dismayed by the daily diet of pessimism and cynicism with which they are fed.

There is a real gap between that cynicism of a self proclaimed elite, and the offended pride and nationalism of the British people. What's really happened is that a new establishment has grown up. Here's the paradox. These people think of themselves as anti-establishment, but they show as much aloofness and disdain of ordinary people as any monarchy ever did, they are as dogmatic as any Church, and they display as much arrogance as any government.

So, we must change things. If cynicism has become the chief characteristic of that new establishment, we must challenge it and replace it. If defeatism has become the fashion of an elite, it must be thrown out. We must temper our traditional tolerance when confronted by those whose stock-in-trade is to belittle and to undermine the fabric of our society.

Our mission must be to rebuild national self-confidence and self-belief. We need to assert the value and the quality of the British way of life and of British institutions.

We are a proud nation. We will not allow a small group of pessimists to bring us down. With self-confidence and self-respect we can add to our national achievements and revive our national pride.'

Leading article, page 20

(Photographs omitted)