Could National Conservatism be the Next Big Thing?
After a century of believing either a big state or free markets could deliver shared prosperity and widespread contentment, is it time for a new approach?
[National Conservatism is] a national political ideology by its nature in contradistinction to liberalism or socialism, which since their beginnings have had internationalist ambitions and have attempted to impose similar or identical structures on different nations.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, prominent Tory politician
Political commentators frequently observe that politicians on both the Left and Right often don’t share the values, or even necessarily respect the wishes, of their constituents. The standard shorthand for this is that voters are further to the cultural Right and economic Left than most of their elected representatives.
If they are feeling particularly courageous, political commentators sometimes even go on to point out that leaders viewed as problematic, if not crypto-fascist, by respectable Anglosphere thought leaders – Orbán, Erdogan, Modi, Meloni, Putin and Xi – seem to be rather popular in their own countries despite their inexplicable departures from neoliberal orthodoxy.
You can add to that list other party leaders who were popular enough to win an election or who soon may be popular enough to do so, such as Jair Bolsonaro, Marine Le Pen and Jimmie Åkesson. As always, Donald Trump is in a category of his own. But it’s noteworthy that the one-time Democrat is adored by the Republican base (and despised by much of the Republican establishment) precisely because he promised not to slash social spending while also addressing the concerns many American voters had about immigration. Likewise, before self-detonating, Boris Johnson won a landslide election victory primarily by convincing British voters he would cut migration and level up parts of the UK devastated by Thatcherism and/or globalisation.
You could argue, as many prestigious people writing in many prestigious publications constantly do, that voters should see the light and become more socially and economically liberal. But after four decades of turbocharged social and economic liberalism, lots of voters in lots of countries are wondering if less rather than more social and economic liberalism might be the cure for what now ails them and their societies.
This brings us to National Conservatism.
National Conservatism 101
Inevitably, there is debate over exactly what National Conservatism is and isn’t. But it’s essentially the social and cultural conservativism most English speakers on both the Left and the Right assumed was the natural order of things during the first half of the 20th century.
Alternatively, if you want to get all Hegelian all about it, National Conservatism is the antithesis to the neoliberal thesis. (That is, the belief that there should be minimal restrictions on people, capital and goods crossing national borders and that individuals should be as free as possible to pursue their self-interest, regardless of what impact their actions may have on the broader society).
National Conservatives, like Conservatives in general, are sceptical of one-size-fits-all policy prescriptions, but here’s a workable summary of the National Conservative platform.
Immigration/multiculturalism: If mass migration is occurring, it should be stopped. If it isn’t happening, it shouldn’t be permitted to start. If people do wish to migrate to another nation, it is incumbent on them to adjust to the host culture rather than the host culture remaking itself to accommodate them.
Law and order: National Conservatives are very much for it.
Globalism/Internationalism: National Conservatives are very much against it. While National Conservatives (usually) don’t have a problem with nations trading goods and services, they are the exact opposite of cosmopolitan globalists. They are suspicious of supranational bodies such as the EU, WTO and UN. Especially when politicians leverage membership of such organisations to implement or maintain policies the political class loves but which voters hate.
(Much of Orbán’s popularity with both Hungarians and National Conservatives stems from his refusal to be bullied into accepting migrants by the EU. Likewise, the UK is no longer part of the EU mainly because British politicians played the “Sure, I’d like to get migration under control but those damned bureaucrats in Brussels won’t let me” get-out-of-gaol-free card once too often.)
Family values: There are gays and lesbians, notably Douglas Murray, who are either National Conservatives themselves or beloved by National Conservatives, so I don’t think the movement can be characterised as homophobic. But National Conservatives are undoubtedly pro-family and concerned with issues such as collapsing birth rates, fatherless boys and the disintegration of the family unit.
Economic policies: The National Conservative position appears to be that, since at least 1979, economically liberal conservatives have maintained an iron grip on centre-right political parties throughout the Anglosphere, effectively casting social and cultural conservatives into the wilderness.
If they were given to quoting gay Irish socialists, National Conservatives would argue that the problem with their economically liberal brethren is that they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. That’s meant they’ve promoted policies, such as free trade, mass migration, low taxes, union busting and the upward redistribution of wealth, that have juiced economic growth but corroded social cohesiveness.
Thesis – antithesis – synthesis
At this point, you’re probably thinking National Conservatives are tilting at windmills. Sure, National Conservative attitudes might be common throughout Asia, Eastern Europe, Russia, China and the Middle East, and not unusual in India, Africa and South America. But there’s no way Anglosphere elites will suddenly do a volte-face after so doggedly pursuing ever-greater social and economic liberalism for the last four decades.
Well, yes and no.
Yes, in the sense that National Conservatives are unlikely to lead a successful revolution that sees neoliberal policy settings hurled en masse on the ash heap of history.
No, in the sense that there’s a growing cohort of voters from across the political spectrum who are now either vocally or quietly enraged about issues such as immigration, crime, unaffordable housing, income inequality and national/civilisational decline. This cohort is increasingly receptive to anti-establishment political entrepreneurs railing against out-of-touch political, business and cultural elites. (And this is the ambient mood before an economic downturn has occurred.)
In the space left, let’s briefly review how the Nat Cons might be able to pull the Overton Window in their direction over the next few years.
Immigration/multiculturalism: Immigration is not so much the elephant in the room as the T-Rex demolishing the house in nations such as the US and the UK. I’d argue – in fact, I have argued – it’s going to become a much more salient issue in countries such as Australia over the next 12 months as many hundreds of thousands of post-pandemic arrivals show up, resulting in even higher house prices and rents, a softer labour market, and more strain on infrastructure and social services.
I wouldn’t lay any money on business or cultural elites in any Anglosphere country suddenly deciding to take the views of ordinary voters into account. But I can only imagine that, especially if there is an economic hard landing in the coming months, democratically elected governments will come under intense pressure to (a) reduce migration levels and/or (b) belatedly get serious about building the housing and infrastructure required to accommodate rapidly growing populations.
If a significant backlash against mass migration is about to grip the Anglosphere, I assume it will be accompanied by a rethink of some of the multicultural verities accepted as gospel truth in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand since the 1970s.
We’re never going back to a world where new migrants are expected to assimilate as thoroughly and as quickly to a dominant monoculture as possible. (For one thing, there’s no longer a clearly identifiable dominant monoculture to assimilate into.) But in future, there may be a little less mindless championing of vibrant diversity and a little more pressure on new arrivals to respect the social norms of the country they’ve chosen to move to.
Law and order: This isn’t currently an especially salient issue in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, but it certainly is in the US and, to a lesser extent, the UK. Even those on the Left are now starting to acknowledge that it’s the poor and powerless who suffer most when crime and social disorder are allowed to flourish, as has occurred in progressive redoubts such as San Francisco. So, the Nat Cons will be pushing on an open door when they call for a more punitive approach to be taken with criminals and a tough love approach to be taken with the homeless.
Globalism/Internationalism: For good or ill, the deglobalisation process is now already well underway. If Xi turns up the heat on Taiwan, as he will surely be tempted to do, the decoupling of ‘Chimerica’ will accelerate. However, business elites will be determined to maintain or even increase the movement of goods, people and capital within the US-led bloc. So, whether they are on the Right or Left, I don’t think anti-globalists should start getting too excited just yet.
Family values: Short of a mass religious revival, I can’t see the Nat Cons achieving many of their objectives here. As pro-natalists have discovered in recent decades, once people get out of the habit of getting and staying married and having large families, it’s near impossible to get them back into that habit.
That noted, there are a growing number of what could be classified as National Conservative intellectuals, such as Louise Perry (see
) and Mary Harrington (see ), attempting to convince young people that the sexual revolution was a terrible mistake. So, maybe Gen Z will live much like their great-grandparents did and aggressively promote their straitlaced worldview as they make their own long march through the institutions.Economic policies: I hesitate to make any concrete predictions. But I will observe – and I’m hardly the first to do so – that the current era bears a striking resemblance to the mid-to-late 1970s. That was a period when it was becoming painfully apparent that the Keynesian economic policies that had worked so well for the previous three decades were no longer working.
Since 1947, a small group of contrarian economists, intellectuals and business leaders had been arguing that Keynesianism would end in tears. While Keynesianism was delivering the goods, these anti-Keynesians were widely viewed as a bunch of kooks and had little influence.
But when Keynesianism stopped delivering the goods, the anti-Keynesians seized their opportunity. Almost overnight, taxes were being slashed, unions busted, government-owned enterprises privatised, industries deregulated, tariffs abolished and wealth creators venerated.
If a savage economic downturn convinces Generation X, Y and Z that, no matter how hard they try, they just can’t get ahead, the National Conservatives may also get their opportunity to rocket from the fringe to the mainstream.