Suella leads new Right who fear we are losing our culture because of Thatcherite economics
The protesters are getting smarter. Before Suella Braverman could begin her speech to the National Conservatism conference, a large purple man – he looked so gammony you’d confidently lend him your lawnmower – stood up and began shouting. He was bundled off by three heavies. Suella opened her mouth to restart – only for a woman to have a go, this time dressed straight from the Samantha Cameron catalogue. “Anyone else?” asked Braverman, and the audience laughed nervously. We couldn’t be certain if the vicar or the beefeater sitting next to us wasn’t a commie in disguise.
The place: the Emmanuel Centre, Westminster. The mission: to sell books. Yoram Hazony, an Israeli scholar, has written a tome promoting “national conservatism”, and by throwing this event hopes to establish himself as the Antonio Gramsci of the populist Right. It’s working.
On the guest list are Lord Frost and Michael Gove, giving this meeting the appearance of an official Conservative conference; though it has the character of a Labour one, for there are splinters within tendencies. Many speeches were sceptical of free market capitalism. Jacob Rees-mogg declared that he thinks it’s wonderful. Before he could speak for Enron, however, a fellow in a suit resembling a Tory councillor took the microphone and said: “Ladies and gentleman, I’d like to draw your attention to a few characteristics of fascism...” Security cut dragged him away, too. We never found out if he was for or against.
The spectre haunting Britain is Mrs Braverman, and hers was essentially a leadership speech (delivered, with admirable presumption, before the Tories have lost their current leader or a general election). She announced that “Conservatism is order or it is nothing”, “100 per cent of women do not have a penis” and “white people do not exist in a special state of sin” – lapped up by an audience composed largely of white conservatives with a you-know-what. This new Right is motivated by a fear that we are losing our culture, and they’re coming round to the view that half the problem is Thatcherite economics. People need to have more babies, said MP Miriam Cates; “welcome to Gilead”, muttered a journalist. But if Miriam is right, then mums need to be able to afford to have a baby, and that means a more generous tax and welfare policy. At the same time as Labour is becoming more conservative, the Conservatives are becoming a tad more socialist, with Miriam and MP Danny Kruger positioning as the Natcon vanguard of the Braverman leadership train.
Intriguingly, the cultural conservatives have gone cold on Kemi Badenoch. She turns out not to be as Right-wing as they thought, just bossy.
Kruger’s speech was the best of the day, sobering and radical, though I didn’t signal approval lest the gentleman farmer on my left had a custard pie under his seat.