Conservatives need a response to the issues raised by Donald Trump

The president’s defeat is a good moment for the centre-right to consider what it really stands for

While Donald Trump seeks consolation as the world acclaims Joe Biden this week, he can at least reflect on the fact that he got more voters to the polls than anyone before him. As counting continues, the current total of more than 71 million votes cast for Trump is the second largest in US history – although unfortunately for him, well exceeded by the 75.5 million for Biden, the largest ever.

Joe Biden is indeed the “good man” described by former President George W Bush in a characteristically generous statement about a political opponent – not something that Trump will be able to muster. But no one imagines that his record-breaking vote was the product of overwhelming enthusiasm. It is more likely to have been produced by intense hostility to the other side: Trump motivated his Democrat opponents to turn out just as much as his Republican supporters.

A political party faces a particular quandary when it receives a record level of support but loses at the same time, and that paradox now frames the dilemma for Republicans as they try to draw lessons for the future. Does this result show that the Trump version of politics is what works for the Right, and that if only it hadn’t been for the bad luck of being hit by a global pandemic he would have won? If so, he could stand again in 2024, or be followed by his son, or daughter, or whatever Trump relative is to hand.

Or does it show that his approach was so divisive that it can’t prevail, that there is no point motivating your base if you motivate a bigger base to defeat you, and that the huge damage to America from the pandemic wasn’t bad luck but a demonstration of what happens when government is handed over to someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing? If this is the case, Republicans need to turn back to candidates from the stable of Bush or Mitt Romney: centre-right in American terms but more mainstream in their thinking.

So cowed have senior Republicans become during Trump’s four years in office that most will be cautious about even entering this debate. Yet it is the question many will already be considering, and as they think about a future presidential nominee it is one that they will have to answer. Their dilemma is shared to varying degrees by other broadly conservative and centre-right parties around the world, as discontent with governing elites has given rise to a harder, more populist and angrier version of the Right. In France, Marine Le Pen is a bigger force for the 2022 election than the regular conservatives. In Italy, Matteo Salvini has eclipsed the centre-right in recent years. And in Britain, Nigel Farage is starting yet another new party to push the Tories Rightward, something he has successfully done twice already.

In these and other countries, there will be no escaping the debate about what conservatism is going to be in the 2020s. Is it part of a liberal consensus, or the complete rejection of it? Is it globalist or nationalist? Is it the philosophy by which elites try to steer the economy for the common good or the protest movement by which they are overthrown? Do conservatives accept cultural change as inevitable or resist it as destroying identity? Do we acquiesce in lockdowns as necessary evils or rebel against them as intolerable?

Those of us who approach these questions from the more liberal, internationalist, mainstream point of view, as I do, have to recognise something that is very important. There are genuine and legitimate reasons for the rise of the populist Right. The vast numbers who voted for Trump, or for radical Right-wing parties across Europe, or Brexit in the UK, have valid reasons to do so. Their rejection of the post-cold War consensus that still prevailed in the Obama years or under successive British governments is understandable.

People revolt against the spread of global prosperity that leaves out whole towns and cities, against out-of-control immigration, against the half of the population who don’t go to university being left behind in opportunities for the rest of their lives. They resent decisions being made by institutions that are either remote or incompetent, or foreign companies, or algorithms, or experts who can’t explain convincingly what they are doing.

We should not assume, therefore, that once Trump has gone, Brexit has been accomplished and Europe has stabilised itself, that we can revert to where we were before, with populism vanquished. The root causes of this insurrection against centrist, mainstream policies are still there, and will find new outlets and leaders. Equally we should be clear that “Trumpism” is a dead end and a disaster. Complex modern nations cannot be led successfully on the basis of rejecting expertise, defying scientific knowledge, riding roughshod over allies, pretending there are simple solutions to problems and enraging half of society with the result that it rises up against you.

The task for conservative parties in the coming decade is to turn away from populism but also avoid returning to the comfort zone of assuming all will be well in a globalised economy. That means opening our countries to talent but strictly controlling who comes in; believing in global markets but doing far more to back localities; keeping taxes down but arresting the growth of inequality; working with all nations but seeing the importance of promoting a common culture within our own.

Above all, conservatives around the world need to ensure that government is limited but effective, rather than continue as the vast and ineffective sprawl that it has become in many Western societies, Britain and America included. In our countries, the state apparatus is responsible for educating almost everyone, but we are falling way behind our Asian competitors; it is in charge of public health but obesity and diabetes are rife; it commands our transport systems but they are run down and inadequate. It is meant to keep us safe and free, but has performed woefully in both respects when faced with Covid 19.

Such an agenda is vital, and very different from the hopes of socialism and the Left. Trump is not an example for conservatives to follow, but the world before him is not one to which we can revert.