The Tories should embrace national conservatism

A greater focus on nation is important post-brexit. The party should ignore the Left’s hysterical attacks

You can’t have missed this week’s National Conservatism (Natcon) conference in London. If you spend any time on social media, and regrettably many of us must, you will have seen that it sent the Left into a frenzy of a quite ludicrous nature. This gathering of conservative intellectuals and politicians left our opponents wailing and gnashing their teeth, with more steam coming out of their ears than the Flying Scotsman at full pelt.

That is not, of course, surprising. The Left, especially the online Left, seem to enjoy hating their enemies much more than they enjoy generating a positive vision for the future of the country. For them, anything out of their political comfort zone is “far-right”, especially if there are any Americans involved. Their ignorant, humourless bigotry should not be taken too seriously except as something to laugh at, for which purpose they provide plenty of material.

Still, all this stigmatisation has its effect, and some of the non-british participants seemed a bit shaken by the degree of hostility. It may also have encouraged the Conservative Party leadership to keep its distance. Current Conservative parliamentary politics does not seem, shall we say, to be heavily characterised by the vigorous seeking out of new ideas to help us solve Britain’s problems. Indeed, any suggestion of an “ideology” or of fundamental principles seems to make many nervous. That may be why the messaging from Downing Street was of caution, even suspicion, effectively letting ministers who spoke know that on their own head be it.

That is a pity. Look beyond all this, as I hope most Telegraph readers will. The conference gathered together almost anyone who is anyone in the conservative intellectual world today. We had serious discussions about family policy, history and heritage, foreign policy, economics and much more – yes, including religion. The names of St Thomas Aquinas, Edmund Burke, or Sir Roger Scruton were much more in evidence in discussion than those of Viktor Orbán or Donald Trump. Indeed, the stronger critique of the conference might be, not that it was a rally, but that its rarified intellectual atmosphere was a long way from voters’ concerns about the cost of living or the NHS.

That may be true. But all the same there is a close connection between ideas and principles on the one hand, and the ability to deliver effective policy on the other. If you have no policy lodestar or sense of direction, then what you do in government will be dictated by tactics not strategy. The best way to get good ideas is to debate them – and what this conference showed was that there is a huge suppressed appetite for debate within conservatism more broadly. Natcon has tapped into that and it won’t now go back into the box.

There were some differences of view, for example on the right balance between free markets on the one hand and industrial policy on the other, but they certainly weren’t dominant. In fact, I think any interested but not particularly informed visitor would have come away thinking: “These people agree on most things.”

In particular, almost every speaker agreed on one big thing: that nation states mean something, indeed that they are the best way we have found for free peoples to govern their own affairs, and that not only their economic and productive strength but also their traditions and history matter in whether they succeed. The word “national” has tricky associations in Europe, but it is in this sense that we should understand it: about governing our own nation state effectively and creating a renewed sense of nationhood.

Certain policy consequences flow from this and were much spoken of at the conference. There was not much sympathy for the idea that Britain was best governed from outside our borders or that international institutions should have more influence on policy-making.

Most agreed that current levels of migration were far too high. Many thought that current policies were driving disaffection and making it too hard for younger people to form families, have children and generally get on with their lives. And there was also a wish that our education and culture should put more emphasis on the history and achievements of this country, and less on the more bizarre fringes of modern ideology on race, sex, and gender, much of which is totally disconnected from any objective reality.

I don’t find any of these ideas to be unconservative, still less imports from the badlands of US Republicanism. Indeed my experience is that they are widely shared not only within the Conservative Party’s membership but very broadly within the country, even if many people fear admitting it publicly lest the demons of cancel culture descend upon them.

National conservatism is not the whole story. But it can be an important part of conservatism for post-brexit Britain – helping us govern our nation in a tried and tested conservative way. The Conservative Party should embrace it, and draw strength from it, not push it aside.