It was Thomas Carlyle, in his work Chartism in 1839, who first raised the “Condition of England Question”, with reference to the moral and material fissure between those made prosperous by the Industrial Revolution and those reduced to mechanised serfdom. Benjamin Disraeli took up the theme in his classic trilogy of novels – Coningsby, Sybil and Tancred – denouncing the “two nations” into which England had been sundered and canvassing ideas designed to promote social coalescence into “One Nation”.
Conservative thought is alive and kicking – in America, not Britain
The philosophical sparring over vaccine passports proves it.
