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Allister Health, Editor of The Sunday Telegraph, wrote recently, “for representative democracy to have any chance of working, parties need to embody some distinctive, relevant ideology or

interest.” Not so long ago, this was seen as a somewhat old-fashioned view. For the best part of this century, the two main parties – convinced as they were that there was broad consensus in

Britain on “how we should live” – clustered ever more indistinguishably on an economic and moral “middle ground”. The role of government became, increasingly, merely technocratic. Elite

“centrists”, posing as Labour and Conservatives, ran the show, while the rest of us voted them in or out as they became corrupt or lazy. But with Corbyn and Brexit, all that changed. Labour

got bogged down with the former, and the Conservatives with the latter – and in the end some of the elite centrists cleared out of both parties to form the Tiggers – or what I will call

“Elite Central 1”. They have unashamedly ignored any pretence that there was ever a distinctive or relevant ideological difference between them. Now, what elite centrists would like would be

for the whole county to go back to “as we were”. Their dream is that we ditch Brexit; elect the Tiggers (Elite Central 1); and then wait for the next expenses scandal, at which point we

would simply elect Elite Central 2. In an ideal world, involving the minimum disruption, this would be a version of the Conservative Party with the weirdos thrown out. Simples. What’s not to

like? The trouble is, and what caused all the problems in the first place, that vast swathes of the population don’t buy into the economic and moral middle ground of the elite centrists. 

Economic centrism (or responsible capitalism) is not, I believe, the problem – and for the moment, we all need to stick with it. The problem is that on the whole, British people are not

pro-European, and don’t buy into the rather vacuous moral middle ground championed by elite centrists. Therefore, in order to become an effective representative democracy again, we need the

Conservatives to avoid, at all costs, becoming Elite Central 2. Members of the Conservatives attempting to turn the Conservatives into Elite Central 2 should be be told to join The Tiggers

(Elite Central 1). The Conservatives need to get on with Brexit. But just as importantly, they need to rapidly re-explore and re-articulate a social/moral position that moves away from the

supposedly middle ground moral consensus. Luckily, there are two books that Conservatives can read to help steer their party and our country back on course. The first is David Goodhart’s

“The Road to Somewhere”. This is virtually a textbook dedicated to helping Conservatives work out how to speak past elite centrists and to the wider country. Goodhart described a demographic

group which he called “Somewheres” and who he believes make up the bulk of Leave voters. In fact, he believes Somewheres make up about 50% of the population. Somewheres are people who are

most likely to live in or near the place they were born, and near to extended family. They believe in a thing called society and are “communitarian” by nature. For many Somewheres, meaning

in life comes from extended family and friends, home, town, and nation. Somewheres are likely to have a strong a sense of duty. Somewheres respect tradition and want to have a sense of place

and belonging. While accepting change, they also understand that change will  usually mean good things are lost along the way, therefore it needs to be managed carefully. Goodhart described

how a subset of Somewheres are also in a group that has been labelled the “left-behind”. These are people who have not benefited from ever greater focus on a certain type of exam-passing

intelligence – nor do they believe improvement means having more coffee chains and fewer public libraries. Somewheres don’t care so much about getting more women on company boards, or more

white working class boys into Oxford or Cambridge. They’d like well-paid, rewarding local jobs, which can be accessed without a costly university degree. They’d like married couples to be

able to afford one of them to stay at home and bring up the kids. That kind of thing. It shouldn’t be too hard for Conservatives to speak to Somewheres. They just need to stop trying to

prove that they are in the elite centrists club – where half of them don’t feel comfortable anyway. The second book Conservatives need to read is The Righteous Mind by the American

psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Haidt actually wrote it partly to try to understand the differences between Conservatives and “Liberals”. He describes his journey to identify the foundations of

morality – or the things humans care very deeply about. After much research, experimentation, and revision, Haidt came up with a set of six moral foundations: * Care / harm – evolved in

response to our adaptive challenge of caring for the young and vulnerable * Fairness / cheating – to manage cooperation and co-working without getting ripped off * Loyalty / betrayal – to

manage effective coalitions * Authority / subversion – to help us manage in large hierarchical groups * Sanctity / degradation After stress-testing these, Haidt added Liberty / oppression.

According to Haidt, those on the political left tend to place an enormous amount of weight on two of these: Care / harm and Liberty / Oppression (read “equality” and “social justice”). But

those on the political right balance all six. Haidt thought that this wider breadth gave us Conservatives a great advantage in talking to many more people about a much wider set of moral

concerns, hopes and dreams. The silly thing is, we Conservatives are throwing our advantage away. Instead of moving the conversation on to broader moral concerns, Conservatives have simply

joined in with elite centrists shouting about equality and social justice. Let us go back to Allister Heath. In order to re-establish a healthy parliamentary democracy he thought we needed

four parties: “We now need a pro and anti-Brexit party, for a start. Logically, we would end up with four groupings: a pro-capitalist, libertarian Eurosceptic party, an economically

Left-wing but socially conservative Eurosceptic party, a pro-EU social democratic party and a neo-communist party.” I think he’s right. But two of these parties are destined for the

permanent sidelines – the neo-communists and the overt libertarians. The third, the “pro-EU social democratic party” will be formed when more centrist Labour MPs and members join up with the

Tiggers. But if democracy is to be saved, the mainstream Conservative Party must find its way back to representing Somewheres. And find its way back to articulating and representing a broad

and deep moral philosophy. One that embraces all of Haidt’s moral foundations. An understanding of sanctity. A willingness to express deep love of country and pride in our extraordinary

history. A belief in loyalty and duty, and a respect for authority. Set alongside British irreverance and humour – as well as a deep sense of justice and fair play. Conservatives – you have

a job to do. Be brave – but be quick now. Democracy depends upon it.