For anyone who has grown up with the idea that the right dominates Britain, it can be a shock to discover that its members are often anxious or even downright miserable. Much of this week’s already notorious National Conservatism conference in London – seen by some on the left as a gathering of immensely powerful and sinister forces – was actually very gloomy.
Over three long days in a slightly chilly church conference centre in Westminster with opaque ecclesiastical windows blotting out most of the outside world, I encountered a rightwing movement that often seemed frustrated, divided and angry – and pessimistic, even apocalyptic, about the right’s prospects. Despite 13 years of Tory government, it was widely agreed that the climate for conservatism had not got better but worse.
“Transgenderism”, “climate catastrophism”, “the liberal establishment”, “neo-Marxism”, “wokeism”, “the professoriat”, “globalists”, “big corporates”, “big tech”, “the reign of terror by cancel culture”, “collectivist” politicians and civil servants, “elites”, “quangos” and “progressivism – the dominant ideology of our times”: all these forces were said to be creating what was variously described as “an age of unreason”, a “new dark age” and even “the end of our way of life”. The bleaker the speaker, the louder the applause generally was.
Conservatism always has a pessimistic side: warning against change, and making bleak assumptions about human nature and the practicality of a fairer world. Conservatism is also good at conjuring up bogeymen while shamelessly playing down its own power. The conference featured the home secretary, the levelling up secretary, several influential Tory MPs, the Conservative deputy chairman and lots of well known commentators from the rightwing press (the huge impact of which was never mentioned).
But several speakers still claimed that it was a “counterculture” gathering. Those who remember the hippy squats and police harassment of the original counterculture may find that term hard to apply to several hundred well connected suits listening to cabinet ministers and exchanging business cards afterwards.
And yet the dark mood felt real. The Conservatives’ terrible performance in the local elections and opinion polls hung over proceedings. The political scientist Matthew Goodwin said the party was in a “prolonged death spiral”. Onstage, and in conversations I had with participants, almost everyone assumed the Tories would lose the next election. As during the last years of Conservative rule in the mid-1990s, there was the sense of a privileged tribe preparing for harder times.
Unlike the listless Toryism of the John Major years, however, there was also an expectation that defeat would bring opportunities. National conservatism is not the same as Conservatism, in the British party sense, but a loose concept and movement imported from the US, where the right is more confident, more confrontational and more authoritarian.
A few things unite the movement: fury against liberals, extreme reverence for tradition, horror at “uncontrolled immigration”, and an apparent readiness to impose conservative, often Christian, values on others. “The normative family, the mother and father sticking together for the sake of the children, is the only basis for a safe and functioning society,” the conference was told by MP Danny Kruger.
Yet the ambiguity of the phrase “national conservatism” also allows it to be interpreted in different ways. And thus the movement has become a vehicle for many of the factions competing to transform the right in Britain and beyond.
National can mean nationalist. Despite even Nigel Farage admitting this week that leaving the EU had “failed” to benefit Britain, Brexit was presented at the conference as a triumph. National can mean for the whole nation: some speakers argued that the Tories should better represent all of Britain. National can mean more state-driven: other speakers said the government should get more involved in the economy, and in financially supporting child-rearing and marriage.
National could also mean national in the infamous 1930s sense. Conference participants reacted with outrage and derision at being called “fascists” on social media. But there was also praise from the stage and in publications available in a busy side room for the authoritarian governments of Hungary, India, Israel and Singapore.
In her brazenly self-serving speech, the home secretary Suella Braverman said, with ominous emphasis: “Conservatism is order or it is nothing.” And in an address at the opening dinner, the rightwing author Douglas Murray said, “I see no reason why every other country in the world should be prevented from feeling pride in itself because the Germans mucked up twice in a century.” Laughter and applause followed.
The National Conservatism logo, with the first word in heavy orange capitals and the second in flimsier white ones, against a traditional Tory blue background, could easily be a logo for a new political party – perhaps a reshaping of Toryism akin to New Labour, or something more revolutionary.
Some of the conference speakers most critical of the Conservatives’ supposed timidity in office – victims of austerity, the Home Office and Brexit may beg to differ – talked with a rhetorical crispness and dressed with a camera-ready smartness that suggested Commons careers on the horizon. Goodwin declared that one way to revive the Tories would be to “replace the dominant faction”. Another slick academic analyst and advocate of rightwing populism, Eric Kaufmann, said that Tory MPs “must be converted” to national conservatism, “or they must be selected out”.
At other times, though, the conference presented a less united and professional front. While some contributors still insisted that the free market was an essentially perfect economic system, others argued that the right should abandon it, because it did so much social damage. Unusually for a rightwing gathering, Thatcherism was sometimes described as a philosophy whose time had passed. Although, given that her premiership ended in a recession and acrimony 33 years ago, we might ask her new rightwing critics: what took you so long?
In Britain at least, national conservatism could fizzle out. Most politicians and voters may decide it is too extreme and strident, its worldview too sour and old-fashioned. A lack of fresh policy proposals, apparent at the conference, may also hurt the movement.
Or it may be overtaken by events. The UK’s next prime minister may well be a Labour one whose keywords are patriotism, the family and security – in other words, a milder, more egalitarian, more palatable kind of traditionalist than national conservatism offers. Yet at the conference I never heard Keir Starmer mentioned. Even the self-styled truth-tellers of the British right may be in denial about what the future holds.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
