Financial Times | 14 June 2006

Even before his election as leader of the Conservative party, David Cameron had made clear his commitment to a "modern, compassionate conservatism". In his words, "there is such a thing as society; it's just not the same thing as the state".

From the outset, however, many media commentators have expressed scepticism or outright hostility to the very idea of a compassionate conservatism. For some, it is just an empty slogan rather than a deep change of political perspective. For others, it is a contradiction in terms. For a third group, it is a substantive idea, but the wrong one: insufficiently meritocratic or too paternalistic or a disastrous reheat of the "compassionate conservative" electoral slogan of George W. Bush in 1999. On one point, however, all are agreed: that the Conservatives have failed to identify a philosophical approach that could help them respond to the challenges likely to face the next government.

In a book published today by Policy Exchange, however, I and my colleague Janan Ganesh propose such an approach. We start from a widespread recognition that something is wrong in our society and that our recent enormous state spending is an increasingly ineffectual and unsustainable response.

International comparisons make the point: the UK has had the highest illicit drug use in Europe for at least 10 years, in almost every major category. Among the larger European countries, the UK has by far the highest levels of binge drinking. Our teenage birth rates are the worst in Europe: twice as high as Germany, three times as high as France and five times as high as the Netherlands. The proportion of children in the UK who are in households without work is the highest in Europe.

Conservatives have had two broad traditions on which to draw in tackling social problems. The first has been a liberal or libertarian conservatism concerned with free markets, localism and private property; the second a paternalist conservatism that has prioritised community and social stability.

Of these, the latter has been more prominent over the past two centuries. Indeed, Conservatives were legislating trade union rights a generation before the Labour party was founded and establishing public health projects before Aneurin Bevan was born. By contrast, Thatcherism was something of a return to Gladstonian liberalism, with its rolling back of the state, its moral fervour and its emphasis on individual freedom.

Today we need something more. We need a conservatism that is neither paternalist nor economically individualist: that does not say either "big brother is looking after you" or "you're on your own". There is an all-but-forgotten conservative tradition that fits the bill. It has its roots in Adam Smith and Edmund Burke and its modern development in the work of Michael Oakeshott and Friedrich Hayek.

This line of thought is what lies behind the Conservatives' recent talk of "compassionate conservatism". It is not paternalist because it is realistic about the capacity of the state to improve our lives; and because it does not assume subservience between "we" and "they", between governed and governor. On the contrary, it has a distinct and egalitarian vision of society, as a "connected society" that stresses the links between people and the institutions that give their lives meaning.

Yet this compassionate conservatism does not regard individuals as merely economic agents, or as composing segments of society, which must be wooed and bought off with favours from government. It is compassionate not because it invokes pity as a principle of statecraft or seeks to improve the morals of society - no worthwhile politics can do that - but because it acknowledges our fellow-feeling with each other and our mutual interdependence.

For compassionate conservatives, the emphasis is on individual freedom and autonomy, on diversity and pluralism, on the institutions that link people together and on an awareness of common culture and traditions. In policy terms, this suggests such things as a large-scale programme of state decentralisation, the liberalisation of markets such as housing, greater autonomy and empowerment of institutions such as our universities and a celebration of individual freedom under law.

Mr Cameron and the modern Conservative party have intuitively seen the social need and the political space for the rediscovery of this tradition.

With it, they may have the intellectual basis they need for government.