One of the oddities of the Conservative Party is that it is often not very conservative, while many of its politicians – some by conviction, some just desperate to appear modern – insist that they are liberals, of one sort or another.

After a confusing 13 years in power – in which we have seen austerity, a spending splurge, a tax-cutting experiment, and a return to something like austerity, not to mention five different prime ministers and the back and forth of the Brexit wars – the Tories are starting to debate who they are and what they need to be.

Many of the “Children of Dave” – the socially liberal, technocratic Cameroons who dominate ministerial office – lament the culture war and regret that voters care so much about immigration. The Boris Johnson disciples – forgetful of the circumstances of his departure – met this weekend to celebrate their deity and make the case for “party democracy”. The libertarian right – somewhat quieter after the disaster of the Truss premiership – still insist we need to slash the state and cut taxes.

This week, a conference gathers to probe another scheme. “National Conservatism” is the idea of the Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony, and it has caught on among factions of the Republican party in America. Inspired in part by old conservative thinkers in Britain like Richard Hooker and Edmund Burke – but only in part – the “NatCon” mission is one of restoration: “of traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties in the countries we love”, the NatCon statement of principles says, which “have been progressively undermined and overthrown”.

While it is an error to think of conservatism as opposition or reluctance to change, as thinkers from Burke on have shown, a sense of loss can be powerful among those of a conservative disposition. If, in Michael Oakeshott’s words, to be a conservative “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”, it is obvious that conservatives are more likely to mourn the past than progressives.