The National Conservatism conference, a loosely Tory party-allied gathering run by a rightwing US thinktank, has spent the past three days hearing from a range of politicians, academics and writers in Westminster. Here are 10 things we have learned so far.
1. NatCon has made a splash in Tory circles
The last time the roving conference was in London, in 2019, the extent of its Conservative speakers was perennial backbencher Daniel Kawczynski. This time there were two cabinet ministers – Suella Braverman and Michael Gove – and a series of other Tory MPs, with a resultant boost in media prominence. This is an event, and a set of ideas, that has arrived.
2. Orbán-style birthrate populism has arrived in the UK
Perhaps the speech most reported on was by the Tory backbencher Miriam Cates, who part-channelled Viktor Orbán and Giorgia Meloni in describing low birthrates as an existential crisis for the west. The populist leaders of Hungary and Italy are explicit in wanting more domestic-born children as against immigrants, a point Cates did not make, although it was arguably implicit. More striking still was her argument that the lack of babies was down to “cultural Marxism that is systematically destroying our children’s souls”.
3. The NatCon philosophy is quite full-bodied
The conference is run by the Edmund Burke Foundation, a Washington DC-based thinktank chaired by Yoram Hazony, an Israeli-US writer whose populist-nationalist ideas were seen as influential on Donald Trump’s administration. In a sometime freewheeling speech on Monday, Hazony said the UK is plagued by “neo-Marxist” agitators and called for a return to mandatory military service.
4. Not every Conservative speaker is a convert
While Cates leaned into such ideas, as did another backbencher, Danny Kruger – who warned against what he described, intriguingly, as “a mix of Marxism and narcissism and paganism, self-worship and nature-worship” – others were more wary. Jacob Rees-Mogg gave a fairly standard speech on economic liberalism, while Michael Gove actively warned against an over-reliance on populism as an electoral tool.
5. The same could be said for the audience
The NatCon conference was reasonably well-attended, at best three-quarters filling the 1,000-capacity main hall of the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster. While there were some very earnest US thinktank acolytes – presumably baffled as to why there was a top-hatted protester outside blasting the Benny Hill theme at earsplitting volume – the domestic contingent comprised a mixed bag of culture warriors, free traders, assorted economic liberals and the merely curious. Some confessed to being discomfited, even embarrassed, by the more off-piste speakers.
6. Conservative internal discipline is slipping
While Rishi Sunak will be used to noises-off from the likes of Cates and Kruger, six months into his prime ministership he will note how Suella Braverman, the home secretary, used her speech to both ramp up her culture war credentials and, more notably still, in effect argue against the immigration policy she oversees. It was also quite something to see Jacob Rees-Mogg describe mandatory voter ID, a policy he endorsed in cabinet, as an attempt to gerrymander elections in favour of the Tories.
7. An electoral cul-de-sac?
While the full NatCon philosophy remains a niche view among Conservatives, it is clear some would-be successors to Sunak, notably Braverman, see wider culture war clashes as fertile ground. However, it remains to be seen whether the UK is as receptive to this as the US, not least because the primary American audience for such views – evangelical Christians – are both much less numerous and very different in outlook here. Some experts also argue that an area where UK voters do pay attention, immigration, is one where the Conservatives have arguably tacked as far to the right as they can.
8. NatCon is an unsavoury pool for the Tories to dip a toe into
For all the insistence from the stage that the conference, and the Conservative party itself, is a “broad church”, some Tory MPs will be alarmed at the company their colleagues kept. One speech, by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, a US thinktank, blamed “globalists” for the world’s political problems and said leftwingers wanted to end democracy to impose their opinions. David Starkey, the controversial historian, used his address to claim that racial justice groups are “jealous” of the primacy of the Holocaust, and want this replaced by slavery. His comments were immediately condemned by the Board of Deputies.
9. What cost of living crisis?
One of the most obvious features of the gathering, as remarked on by some delegates, was the way culture war talking points and often rarefied debates about nationalism versus liberalism pushed out more or less all discussion of the subjects UK voters mainly care about. To an extent, that is the point of NatCon, as an almost philosophical talking shop, not a policy forum. But there is a danger it could seem slightly out of touch.
10. The strange case of the leftwing straw man
One of the repeated tropes from the stage, from US and UK speakers alike, was the spectre of the “woke left”, sometimes cast as Marxists, coming for western heritage and statues, infiltrating schools and universities, in a few cases seeking the overthrow of everything that defines Britain. The electoral challenge in arguing this is that the primary leftwing politician in the UK is Keir Starmer, someone who even his friends would probably not describe as a radical, and who makes a less than convincing bogeyman.
