The traditional Conservative values that some wish to foist on the UK are worse than the worst parts of the Third Way

Labour is still the clear favourite to win the next British general election. But the Conservatives are sufficiently back on the political map following the European elections for it to be worth looking again at their internal debates.

Some UK labour market measures An estimate of resulting rise in number unemployed
	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Year 6
Increase in business costs	57,000	67,000	60,000	47,000	39,000	37,000
Higher union membership	227,000	497,000	566,000	516,000	417,000	395,000
Minimum wage	171,000	288,000	317,000	285,000	229,000	217,000
Interaction of above	60,000	198,000	286,000	289,000	243,000	229,000
Total	565,000	1,050,000	1,229,000	1,137,000	928,000	878,000
Source: Centre for Policy Studies

The most interesting of these, entitled Conservative Debates, has just been published by the think-tank Politeia. It starts with a plea by Oliver Letwin, one of the brighter new Conservative MPs, for what he calls "civilised Conservatism". His argument is that free markets are universally accepted and that Conservatives should now leave aside boring old economics and concentrate on traditional upper-class Tory virtues.

His paper, like so many contributions in this vein, is short and vague. At first I thought it was a squib, but although Mr Letwin has written more incisive work, it appears that this essay is meant seriously. In it, he introduces a list of adjectives - which he calls "tonal contours" - central to his form of Conservatism. The adjectives include familiar, inherited, cherished, stable, sound, right (not "rights") and, of course, British.

Anyone who supposes that the case for markets is really unchallenged should examine the impact on jobs of three sets of labour market-unfriendly proposals from the government. An estimate is made by Patrick Minford and Andrew Haldenby in a paper by another think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, called The Price of Fairness.

The increase in employment costs arises especially from the European Union working time directive and from increased compensation for unfair dismissal. But although these are the issues about which there is most grumbling from business, they are dwarfed in importance by two others. These are measures to facilitate new union recognition - which the authors believe will increase union membership by 1m - and the minimum wage. The authors estimate that these measures will add nearly 3 percentage points to UK unemployment, bringing it near to the EU rate.

One might argue that they leave out aspects of Labour's Welfare to Work programmes that might act in a countervailing way to reduce unemployment. Nevertheless, the measures listed operate in the wrong direction. There is still much to debate about government economic policy before one can turn one's nose in the air and move on to supposedly higher matters.

But I want to concentrate today on the contribution to the Politeia pamphlet by John Marenbon, a Cambridge philosopher, who answers Mr Letwin on the latter's own ground. He argues that high Tories such as Mr Letwin are making the same mistake that the left has traditionally made - trying to impose their own set of values on the rest of us. In contrast, Mr Marenbon sees the state not as a source of inspiration, but as a mechanism. It can enable individuals to fulfil their own objectives, and carry out those tasks that are better accomplished through collective action than through the market, or voluntary undertakings.

Anyone who wants to dismiss him as an old-fashioned Whig should note that he includes among the state's tasks the redistribution of income and wealth. He also sympathises with the notion of a basic income guarantee.

Mr Marenbon believes that the government should provide basic social goods such as the rule of law, access to education and wealth redistribution. "Within this loose framework, politicians should leave individuals and groups of people to choose their particular way of life, so that a political entity contains many different societies with different schemes of value, and also accommodates those individuals who do not fit easily into any of them," he writes, adding that "in a country such as Britain today, politicians lack adequate grounds for preferring . . . one particular way of life above another."

In contrast "both Blair and Letwin believe that it is the job of politicians to describe in detail a desirable social way of life, and introduce the policies which will bring into existence a society which promotes this way of life". Mr Blair puts public money into modern design, pop culture and the cult of the new. Mr Letwin would use the tax system to promote the family, preserve buildings and encourage churches and charities.

As a historian of political philosophy, Mr Marenbon accomplishes a much-needed demolition job on Edmund Burke's oft-quoted "little platoons" which are supposed to be "the first link in the series by which we proceed to a love to our country and to mankind". He shows that these were not a plea for local autonomy, but an assertion that we all belong to a particular rank in the social hierarchy, which is part of a natural, God-given order. He much prefers John Stuart Mill's maxim of allowing people the greatest liberty to run their lives consistent with not harming others.

He argues that it is, for instance, beyond any government to have confidence that a society with more married parents would be better than one with fewer. Legislation to make marriage more attractive will have all sorts of side-effects, such as an increase in the number of abortions. Moreover, having and rearing a child is, for some single mothers, the best thing they ever do. These speculations may not be right, but politicians have not sufficient grounds for considering them wrong.

Most courageously of all, he is agnostic on whether the British way of life should be preserved from disintegration. "Perhaps or perhaps not . . . So long as the disappearance of this unified culture is the result of free choices and responses made by the inhabitants of the country, who no longer feel this culture is theirs, how should governments have any more warrant to act so as to preserve it than it has at present when (according to its political opponents) it acts in order to hasten its demise?"

Marenbon's liberalism differs from the traditional kind in that he neither expresses a belief in progress, nor advocates a specific set of liberal values. He asks simply that "where politicians have no good grounds to think their interventions would be for the best, they should leave individuals with freedom of choice". Ultimately, he would like education, health, pensions and social care to be removed from state power - provided that financial provision is made so that poorer people have access to these benefits.

He may underestimate the difficulty of getting from the present welfare state to a more liberal version. He may also underrate the danger of his agenda being hijacked by mean-minded persons. These may begrudge the transfer of resources to the less fortunate, and not merely the dirigiste way in which transfers are now made.

Even Mr Marenbon has his illiberal moments. For instance, he defends the right to "keep a child at school where he is unhappy, but is being very well-taught". This is tantamount to treating children as possessions. There comes a point when a child who is being treated as simply a vehicle for his or her parents' aspirations would be well-advised to dial the Childline operated by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

This very important detail is, however, an aberration. For Mr Marenbon wins the main argument with Mr Letwin game, set and match. His own mistake is to suppose that there is any chance that the Conservatives will fight the next election on his radical liberal platform.

In the actual political world, after making a brave start in a liberal direction, William Hague soon moved over to a more traditional Toryism. If we are forced to choose between between different versions of communitarianism, I would prefer that of New Labour to nostalgic Tory paternalism.

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