The object of this volume is to suggest respects in which Mrs Thatcher's stance may be open to improvement. Its message is that a Conservative stance… - Maurice Cowling

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The object of this volume is to suggest respects in which Mrs Thatcher's stance may be open to improvement. Its message is that a Conservative stance should not only be different from the liberal conservatism of the 1950s but should also avoid the class resentments of the converted socialists of the seventies. It should treat Liberalism and Marxism as similar sorts of doctrine and should approach the former more even that it approaches the latter with satire, ridicule and incredulity. It should feel impelled towards a diffidence, irony or detachment which, whether Christian or cynical, will enable it to avoid ethical earnestness; and it should do this not because ethical earnestness is dangerous but because it is earnest and, as Mr Heath discovered, provides no route to that unity of national sentiment for which Conservatives need to seek.