I think that Ed Miliband and all the others who are hailing the vote in the House of Commons earlier today as "a step forward" are only validated if the Whig theory of history holds true (that things are progressively getting better and better).
What if the Whig theory of history is a fantasy? What if societies are capable of going bad as well as holding good? What if a "step forward" leads to two steps back - or five or six steps back?
One of the reasons I am a Conservative is that I value the stability of a society that changes only very slowly. A mildly traditional society governed through institutions. A thousand-year cultural continuum that is classicist, monarchist, and High Anglican.
Therefore I am uneasy that society can change so easily in (to quote Alec Shelbooke MP) just twenty years.
Easy come easy go.
If the institutions that guard against unnecessary change are now longer powerful, or no longer there at all, who gains?
What has easily changed one way in twenty years can just as easily change another way in another twenty years, and change not in a good way (for anyone).
Stability has a lot to recommend it.
Conservatism is not always the worst option.
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