Why The British Left Must Read Burke
- Rory Currie
- Sep 18
- 4 min read

Edmund Burke is synonymous with conservatism. The namesake of a foundation that serves the right on both sides of the Atlantic, Burke bears more than some responsibility for the electoral success of the ‘great tradition’. His stress on order, moderation, and organic change, has provided the ballast for policies that chime with ‘common sense’ – a notion that British voters, in particular, have found so intoxicating.
I would, however, like to argue that it is the left – broadly defined in this article as encompassing everyone from Labour to ‘Your Party’ – that must meaningfully engage with Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Burke’s most significant work, if they are to retain voters’ attention and faith.
Oft remembered for his criticism of the revolutionaries, Burke has been wrongly caricatured as a reactionary and wilfully neglected by the left. A supporter of the American Revolution – believing the colonists were acting in accordance with rights afforded to them by the British Constitution – Burke was a member of the parliamentary Whig faction. Viewing history as defined by inevitable progress, they were the Tories’ original adversaries. Parliament being the centre of their universe, they lobbied for the rights of the people against those of the monarchy and the aristocracy, and made absolutism into an anachronism.
Burke’s Whiggish past has not been forgotten by all. It was, in fact, famously acknowledged by W. B. Yeats in his poem ‘Seven Sages’. Yeats wrote that, in spite of his being a Whig, Burke actually ‘hated Whiggery’. Whiggery was, Yeats continued, a ‘levelling, rancorous, [and] rational’ philosophy. It was, Yeats concluded, to be dismissed due to its inability to look ‘out of the eye of a saint / Or out a drunkard’s eye’. Unable to grasp that which could not be rooted in reason, it offered no understanding of concepts such as faith and sin – concepts central to human history.
This poetic analysis was incredibly perceptive. In Reflections Burke was dismayed by the revolutionaries’ adoption of this very philosophy. Rationalism was, he stated, ‘barbarous’. As Yeats had set out in the aforementioned poem, Burke’s ideas were gleaned from his various conversations and collisions with reality. Rationalism, Burke expanded, made no allowance for these. Experience, its advocates argued, was the ’wisdom of unlettered men’. Anything irreducible to statistics was, in the age of ‘sophisters, economists, and calculators’, to have no place in the polity. Institutions that had served as bulwarks of society were to be torn down, and life was to be soulless (the concept of the soul itself having no root in science).
It was for these reasons that Burke suggested that the revolution would be inimical to civilisational progress. Without the anchor of a crown, institutionalised religion, and rules established by tradition, a societal void would emerge. This void, Burke prophetically predicted, would be filled by a demagogue, one who would subject the French people to more misery than the Ancien régime had. To avoid such a fate, Burke urged the revolutionaries to listen to the ideas of all equally and, in doing so, reconnect their politics with hard-headed reality.
Two hundred and thirty years on, those furthest to the left undoubtedly remain the worst at doing this. Tin-eared, they ignore working-class communities when they call for tighter controls on immigration, increased defence spending, and benefit cuts. Only an ignoramus or a racist, they argue, would wish for the former. Likewise, only a neo-con would desire the latter two. While racists are victims of bigotry, the ignoramuses and neo-cons are victims of ‘false consciousness’. Without a university education and the other prerequisites for praxis, they are unable to adequately understand their relationship with the economic superstructure and, as such, unable to realise that the capitalist system is actually to blame.
As patronising as this analysis is, it is continually offered by much of the left. Zack Polanski, for instance, opined in the last few weeks that people are not, in spite of it polling as a top two issue, actually angry about immigration. Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn said similarly upon the recent launch of their (or your) party. This attitude was undoubtedly at root of the left’s previous rejection under Corbyn, and if its current ‘Your Party’ iteration refuses to adopt another, I expect it to meet the same fate.
Starmer, praised by those sympathetic to a more ‘grown-up’ politics, while less maladjusted attitudinally, is nonetheless susceptible to the view of the rationalist. Putting too much faith in review, processes, and bureaucracy, and far too little in real people, he has moved far too cautiously with regard to implementing change. Relying on the counsel of the Treasury, rather than those affected by its decisions, he sanctioned a suicidal winter fuel cut. Beholden to the markets and the Office for Budget Responsibility, he cowers behind fiscal rules that limit his room for manoeuvre. As his popularity continues to plummet, his team could do worse than rip up the rulebook and pivot toward a Burkean position prior to November’s budget.
As Orwell was writing about the left’s relatability problem as early as the 1930s, I recognise that I am far from the first person to notice these flaws. Rationalism itself, however, has seldom been identified as the philosophy to blame. It is only through the reading of Burke that the left will learn this is so, and embrace the more romantic vision that both Burke and Mr. Blair (Eric not Tony) called for all those years ago.
Illustration: Will Allen/Europinion
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