Michael Oakeshott Was Not a 'Red Tory' — And Why That Matters

When I was an undergraduate student, I took a very memorable course in the history of science. For my final paper, I wrote about the intersection of science and technology. Somewhere in the process, I quoted Michael Oakeshott from his 1930s book, Experience and Its Modes, a book I had heard about in another class, thanks to a professor who had studied with Oakeshott at the London School of Economics (LSE), after earning his BA at the University of Toronto under the famed C.B. Macpherson. My prof. said in 1989 that if he were ever marooned on a desert island and could only bring one book, it would be Experience and Its Modes. Which one would you pick? (Let me know in the comments if you ever get to the end of this piece).

British Political Philosopher Michael Oakeshott

I still remember well my history of science professor’s comment on the margin of a page next to the Oakeshott reference:

“Oakeshott? Isn’t he is a Straussian?”

That made me laugh. Calling Oakeshott a Straussian is much worse than calling Mark Carney an Albertan. A Straussian is a disciple of Leo Strauss, who was a contemporary political philosopher of Oakeshott’s. Mark Carney is someone who once lived in Alberta. But Oaskeshott was never a follower of Strauss.

Recently, I had another Oakeshott-related chuckle when I stumbled across a Substack post claiming that Mark Carney and Michael Oakeshott were Red Tories. That's a way of announcing, with bold conviction, that you’ve misunderstood Carney, Oakeshott and Red Toryism.

But this time, I didn’t just laugh. I decided to write this post. I like Oakeshott. I’ve read him long enough to spot some common misreadings, and though I am no Oaskeshoot expert, I know he was no “Red Tory.”

Who Was Michael Oakeshott?

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) was one of Britain’s most subtle and elegant political philosophers.

He was educated at Cambridge and later taught at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he succeeded Harold Laski. This was a handover rich in irony, given their opposing political sensibilities. (Irrelevant side note: The first and only time I met Kim Campbell, she touted her education at LSE. One of my pals asked if she had taken courses from Oakeshott. Campbell answered that she had not found the time in her schedule. My pals and I recoiled. We could not imagine being a conservative and going all the way to LSE and not taking a course, not even one, with one of the finest conservative minds on the planet).

Oakeshott’s interests ranged from Hobbes and Hegel to education, aesthetics, and the philosophy of history. He was a scholar’s scholar and a graceful essayist — a rarity in a field not always known for style. His writing is more meditative than polemical, rich with insight but highly allergic to dogma. He has been called “the most formidable conservative intellect of his era.”

Oakeshott’s Political Philosophy: What It Means to Be Conservative

Oakeshott’s political thought is best understood not as a system but as a sensibility, a disposition. He distrusted all ideology, blueprints, and grand narratives.

One of my favourite reads is his essay "On Being Conservative" (1956), which helped me understand my distrust and dislike of revolutionaries and people with grandiose transformative schemes. The essay offers an illuminating portrait of the conservative temperament:

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.

This is not Burkean veneration of the past for its own sake, nor reactionary fear. It is a posture of humility recognizing that human arrangements are fragile, traditions are repositories of learned wisdom, and political action should proceed with prudence and reticence.

Importantly, for Oakeshott, being conservative is not an ideological thing. He distinguishes this conservatism from a conservatism that pushes any political program:

The general characteristics of the conservative disposition are not themselves beliefs about the proper organization of a society.

In other words, it is not about policy. It’s about how one approaches the uncertainties of governing human beings.

On a Misreading: Oakeshott Is Not a Red Tory

Before turning to how Oakeshott helps us understand ourselves today in the face of the programmatic and bureaucratic mindset, it’s worth pausing to correct the revealing misreading.

The Substack post titled The Return of the Red Tory? by A Letter from a Maritimer proposes that PM Mark Carney, a central banker turned moralizing economist, embodies a Red Tory spirit. The post aims to portray Carney as moderate and therefore palatable to some forms of left-leaning conservatives.

To bolster this Red Tory claim, the author draws a loose line between Canadian philosopher George Grant and Red Toryism and Michael Oakeshott, noting that Oakeshott was non-ideological and “suspicious of liberalism,” and thus a kind of Red Tory avant la lettre.

However, this comparison doesn’t hold up. It misses the meaning of Red Toryism and the essence of Oakeshott’s conservatism.

While it is true Oakeshott was “non-ideological,” it doesn’t mean he endorsed a communitarian vision of the good. On the contrary, Oakeshott explicitly warned against using politics to realize shared moral ends, a key component of Red Tory politics.

While Canadian Red Toryism (as exemplified by George Grant) often invokes a stronger role for the state in cultivating national identity or social cohesion, Oakeshott’s view of the state is far more restrained.

In On Human Conduct, for example, Oakeshott describes government not as the instrument of common purpose but as a framework of “adverbial conditions,” by which he means rules under which individuals may pursue their goals.

The Substack author’s argument conflates Oakeshott’s skepticism of liberal modernity with the Red Tory's moral traditionalism. But Oakeshott was no cultural crusader. He was not mourning the loss of moral order or pleading for state-sponsored virtue. He was, in his own words, someone who preferred “present laughter to utopian bliss.” He would rather have and keep the tolerably imperfect pleasing (and even the unpleasant) things about the world than give them up for the promises of guaranteed future happiness washed through downplayed sacrifices.

Understanding this distinction is essential, especially when we examine technocratic thinkers, of which Mark Carney is one. Carney presents himself as post-ideological while advancing deeply moralized visions of political economy. Remember that the Substack post says Carney is a Red Tory, like Oakeshott.

Oakeshott and the Bureaucratic Mind: Enter Mark Carney

Mark Carney’s Value(s): Building a Better World for All seems like a well-meaning but severely misguided book. But its core argument is classic technocratic optimism: that the crises of our age (climate, inequality, trust) can be solved by reorienting our markets around a better set of shared values, stewarded, of course, by experts like Carney.

Here’s Carney, with typical confidence:

The Value(s) of a society can be found in what it chooses to price, and what it chooses to value. By aligning market values with human values, we can build a fairer and more resilient world.

What’s on display here is what Oakeshott was skeptical about: transformational projects aimed at perfecting the world at the hands of some well-meaning, bien pensant individuals. Oakeshott called it the politics of faith: the belief that politics should serve a moral destination.

In Rationalism in Politics, Oakeshott describes the rationalist expert looking to transform things as someone who

thinks that nothing of importance is lost when the current of tradition is cut; indeed, he may think that much is to be gained by treating the world as if it had been made yesterday and treating ourselves as if we were wholly responsible for making it anew.

Carney’s fervour to transform the economic order, appealing to metrics, systems change, and moral recalibration, exemplifies this mindset. The problem is not his intentions but the form of his reasoning: bureaucratic, overconfident, and oblivious to the complexity and contingency of political life. It is revolutionary thought in action because it believes it can change the nature of reality and will result in some form of social perfection. Usually, revolutionaries are ready to crush opponents to rush their perfected world in.

Why the Conservative Disposition Matters

So what?! Why does any of this matter?

Because grand ideological projects — left or right — tend to bulldoze over people and their lives. They upend our present, forcing us into sacrificing our happiness for a supposed future bliss. They treat citizens as units in a system to be optimized, corrected, or aligned. Citizens are therefore expendable, especially when they get in the way of a dreamed-up future that will never really arrive

Oakeshott saw this in mid-century socialism and liberal technocracy alike. His warning was simple: politics is not the realm of salvation. It is the domain of arrangements and practical solutions, not ends; of managing imperfection, not overcoming it.

As he writes in On Human Conduct:

Politics is not the pursuit of perfection, but the cultivation of tolerable arrangements.

This is an urgently needed insight in an age of righteous movements and managerial utopias. Rulers ought to cultivate the conservative disposition not to avoid action, but to act responsibly, modestly, and in tune with the grain of inherited practices. It's the difference between tending a garden and demolition engineering.

Not a Red Tory — Not Even Close

Calling Oakeshott a Red Tory is like calling Jane Austen a romantic nationalist. It's a confusion of tone with substance.

What is Red Toryism? At least in its Canadian form (think George Grant), Red Toryism blends social conservatism with a communitarian concern for moral order, often rooted in Christian theology. It advocates a state that can preserve national identity, protect the vulnerable, and resist global capitalist homogenization.

Oakeshott had no use for such moral projects. None. He distrusted using the state to realize any substantive vision of the good. Politics aims not to transform who we are but to provide decent government. The purpose of government is to govern.

As he writes in On Being Conservative:

Political activity is not the full-time employment of an elite band of apostles; it is the condition of a people living under a government.

Displeased with the world, Red Tories prefer a better society, shaped by shared metaphysical commitments. Oakeshott prefers continuity over improvement, peace over grand purpose.

Canadian Philosopher George Grant

Oakeshott vs. George Grant: Two Conservatisms

The Canadian Red Tory philosopher George Grant (1918–1988) stands in stark contrast. Where Oakeshott is skeptical and serene, Grant is tragic and theologically charged.

In Lament for a Nation (a book every Canadian should read, especially today), Grant mourns the loss of Canadian sovereignty to Modernity, embodied in American liberalism. His writing is imbued with an inevitable sense of decline:

The very dynamism of modernity destroys the possibility of living in tradition.

Grant believes in a metaphysical order, a transcendent Good, from which liberalism has estranged us. The state, for him, may serve as a steward of that higher order.

Oakeshott, in contrast, while not a nihilist, sees no political salvation, no cosmic loss, only the ongoing task of managing a pluralistic society within limits.

To compare Grant to Oakeshott as being Red Tories is to miss the boat. Not all conservative thinkers are created equal.

The worst part in calling Carney a Red Tory is that, according to Grant, Canada represents a conservative project in a revolutionary age. The Liberal Party of Canada, Grant is clear, represents the ushering of modern ideas that will bring about the demise of the Canadian identity. The LPC is responsible for stripping nearly all the symbols that tied Canada's identity to its unique British identity in North America. Grant knew that.

Akin to Justin Trudeau's post-nationalism, Carney is a self-declared globalist with little affection for what it means to be Canadian (How many times has Carney described himself as a European?). He would sacrifice Canadian values, industry and cultural values to uphold the notion of planet restoration in the face of an alleged environmental doom around the corner. There is no way that George Grant could ever see, were he still alive, a Red Tory in Mark Carney.

Why You Should Read Both

Despite their differences, both of these conservatives are indispensable thinkers for our time. They are critics of modernity who reject simplistic progressivism, yet offer distinct paths forward.

Mark Carney is no Red Tory. There is no tradition he would not crush and no institution he would not disrespect, Parliament included, to put the climate doom at the forefront. Reading Grant and Oakeshott provides an antidote to such nefarious ideological constructs.

One might choose to start with these from Oakeshott:

1. Rationalism in Politics

2. On Human Conduct

3. On Being Conservative

And these from Grant:

1. Lament for a Nation

2. Technology and Empire

3. Time as History

Both Oakeshott and Grant help us ask enduring questions: What is the place of tradition? What is the role of the state? What kind of society can sustain freedom?

But they give us very different answers — one with irony, the other with lament.