ABSTRACT
I take it as axiomatic that large and complex modern societies are never united over goals or ends; and that, if their rulers pretend otherwise, they are deceiving themselves or their listeners. Modern liberal democracies are, in Michael Oakeshott’s language, nomocratic, not teleocratic: they are held together by common rules, not by shared purposes. Even totalitarian regimes, which aspire to govern teleocratically, do not do so in fact. Indeed, totalitarian practice itself confounds totalitarian claims: there are always more dissidents, more internal émigrés, more enemies of the people to be rooted out. So to say that modern Britain is not, and never has been, held together by a common purpose or purposes is to say nothing very startling. It would be astonishing if it were.
