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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Aletha Adu and Peter Walker

Who are ‘national conservatives’ and what do they want?

Miriam Cates speaks among Tory MPs at the House of Commons.
Tory MP Miriam Cates says national conservatism governs for ‘the public’, not ‘the intelligentsia’. Photograph: Andy Bailey/UK Parliament/Reuters

In the words of rising Conservative star Miriam Cates, “national conservatism” was born out of the 2016 Brexit referendum and Tory 2019 election victory. Those moments were an “instruction from the public that they expect us to govern with their interests, their values in mind. Not the values of the intelligentsia – the globalised elite whose loyalties are to everyone and no one.”

The MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge will open the three-day “NatCon” conference in Westminster. Populist right-leaning speakers and senior rightwing Tory MPs are expected to flock to the event in order to freely discuss their ideas on what they see as British people’s values: post-Brexit, family-oriented conservatism.

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