The British right is tearing itself apart. The departure of Robert Jenrick, for many Tories the obvious king over the water in whom so much hope was invested, means a potential future path has now been blocked. Meanwhile the Reform party, having robbed the Tories now of two titans – the other is the MP for Devizes, Danny Kruger – has trained its sights ever more aggressively on destroying Kemi Badenoch.
There is no war quite so painful as a civil war, and with the loss of Kruger and Jenrick in particular many old, deeply held relationships within British conservatism are now under deep strain, if not completely severed. After a strong original response from Kemi to the news of Jenrick’s likely defection, the Tories descended into wounded tribalism for the following two days. And Reforms once buoyant, laddish self-confidence also seems to have become frustrated with the party seemingly stuck at a poll ceiling in the low 30s. In all my time working as a right-leaning think tanker, writer and adviser, I have never known such a low mood.
But my world is one of ideas, policy prescriptions and plans for government, not high political drama. The current discontents are made even more tragic because I have also never seen so much fresh thinking, such intellectual coherence, such willingness to embrace radical change and such spirit for the fight across the wider right than now. At least not since the trenches of the Brexit constitutional crisis, when those of us determined to implement the referendum fully believed this was the last chance to save British democracy.
‘It is the centre-right that has the ideas, the policies and the talent to save Britain from irreversible decline.’
So what are these emergent, new conservative ideas? The first area of complete consensus, the groaning of the Rory Stewarts and the Matthew Parrises notwithstanding, is on the need for the most radical reversal of immigration policy this country has ever seen. Far from just slashing net migration – Labour’s superficial success here owes more to departures than to cutting arrivals – Britain needs to fully unwind the ‘Boriswave’. This (hopefully short) experiment in introducing millions of often low-skill people and their families, many from extremely culturally different societies, has been a disaster. The numbers are too great for a grand integration project. Like all mistakes that must be corrected, it will be painful, and many will indeed have to leave. And halting illegal immigration by leaving the increasingly defunct ECHR goes without saying.
This has become relatively uncontroversial on the right. Likewise there is a shared belief that our high-trust society has, in towns and cities at least, been corroded. Whether due to unsustainable immigration, poor police resources and enforcement, post-pandemic malaise or a general growing disregard for law and order, scuzz, anti-social behaviour and ‘enshittification’ have made much of Britain feel low grade. A centre-right revolution must prioritise a restoration of basic orderliness. From this, much else follows. Who with options would settle or start a business here in Britain if the streets aren’t safe, public spaces are not pleasant, and they must constantly be vigilant about a masked cyclist stealing their phone?
But where the most exciting departures are taking place in centre-right thinking is in political economy. For both Tories and Reform, aspects of the old Thatcherite commitment to lower taxes and deregulation remain attractive, and some of these insights are right. Our tax structure has indeed become too redistributive, and far too many are now paying the higher rate. We have failed to embrace the challenge of proper regulatory reform after Brexit. But this rather thin soup of personal responsibility and state retreat while the forces of ultra-globalisation tear out the heart of the real economy is no longer enough.
It was heartening to hear Jenrick talk of reindustrialisation in his interview with The Spectator this week. This is an agenda Nick Timothy, Neil O’Brien and I have been pushing for a long time. The argument has strong parallels with the drive to restore manufacturing and productive jobs in the US. With vital hard manufacturing like chemicals we must implement supply-side help, most obviously securing cheaper energy. But advanced manufacturing, AI infrastructure and our now-evaporated steel industry are examples of sectors that may not take off or survive without a more active state strategy. The global free market does not owe us a competitive tech or pharmaceuticals sector, and Britain’s high-cost base has resulted now in two decades of rapid offshoring.
A restored commitment to economic solidarity and justice through opportunity is now orthodoxy from Badenoch and Jenrick through to the libertarian online right and elements of the ‘YIMBY’ left. Telling millennials and Gen Z they must work harder when the economic returns are a mere fraction of what they were in the 1980s is not good enough. The system must reconnect work, effort and material reward. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for another ‘national conservative’ goal: the creation of strong, resilient and happy families, where parents can have the number of children they want, not the number that penury and a broken housing market say they can.
This sclerotic, aimless and banal Labour government cannot do anything because there is nothing is actually wants to do. Its diagnosis of Britain’s ills is paper thin. Its solutions nonexistent. The Liberal Democrats – houses for me, but not for thee – have become the party of the ancien régime and no more. It is the centre-right that has the ideas, the policies and the talent to save Britain from irreversible decline. The present civil war is a sad distraction.
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