The right moment?

All aboard the good ship ARC! Is it just me or does it seem to come around earlier every year? Yes this was the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, in all its eccentric glory, elegantly ringmastered by an ever more ethereal Baroness Stroud. 

The Olympia centre in its bright Victorian and Edwardian glory was a significant improvement on the bland corporate vaults of the Excel centre of the previous outing. Not least, it was air-conditioned — an oasis of relative cool in the midst of a torturous heat wave. Indeed, one did one’s best to avoid making eye contact with the green activists protesting outside. It’s a bit hard to deny climate change during 38 degree weather.

There was the surreal pageantry we know and love. Peter Andre starred in a video about the dangers of smartphone use, interspersed with a lady doing interpretive dance. Dominic Frisby played a song about quantitative easing to the tune of In the Hall of the Mountain King that included a line about the great replacement. But the charming absurdity of right wing counterculture, often a comfort in the days of “peak woke”, didn’t quite feel as if it suited the present moment.

British politics is in uproar, and with blood on the streets of Edinburgh and Belfast, there is a new urgency and seriousness to British populism and conservatism. For many years, including, let’s be honest, the 14 years of wobbly Tory government, these dissident forces have had the luxury of eternal opposition, raging against a progressive establishment from the sidelines. With Labour tottering only two years into government, and Reform poised to sweep into Parliament with hundreds of MPs, the court jester act is starting to wear thin, and long-ignored questions of how to govern, of economic policy and a vision for national flourishing, can no longer be forever deferred in favour of big tent anti-wokery.

There were many interesting and worthwhile talks at ARC, but all eyes were on two speakers in particular: Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, who were both in attendance. Surrounded by loyal veterans of the culture war, the pair were addressing troops keen to hear how the peace was to be won.  

There were clear signs that both leaders were starting to grapple with the scale of the challenge. Badenoch seems to appreciate that her party has been abandoned by its voters. The Conservative Party had done “weird and wonderful things” but don’t worry: “we’re not doing those things you didn’t like any more, we’re going to do the things that you do like”. She is also clearly making a bid for younger voters, an approach that has been sorely lacking across the English-speaking right. She spoke of problems with work, student debt and housing. It was unfair. Addressing the need for a new social contract, she actually apologised to young people and promised to “deliver an inheritance for the next generation” — there would be homes for culture war heroes. 

This was a bid for Reform not just as a populist anti-migration party, but as the true home of conservative ideas and sentiments

If Kemi struck a remorseful figure calling for an armistice with betrayed conservatives and demoralised youngsters, Nigel Farage was, as usual, more confident and bellicose, using his speech to denounce the “gutless, cowardly political class”. But there was something a bit different about Nigel. His mic crackling and hissing in the manner of someone having a phone call in the wind — or like the audio off some recently recovered archival WW2 footage — Farage spoke of “Judeo-Christian culture” as the “basis of Western civilisation” linking the loss of social cohesion with a crisis of meaning felt powerfully by Gen Z in particular, and worsened by the government’s “two-tier” approach to justice. 

This was a bid for Reform not just as a populist anti-migration party, but as the true home of conservative ideas and sentiments. He spoke of the loss of the “values of our grandparents”, the breakdown of familial and communal life, the need to recognise the value of marriage in our tax system. He talked about the small town he grew up in, and the centrality of the pub, the shop, the church. Farage the communitarian had taken the stage, transmitting the comforts of the home front over the wireless, as he and Baroness Stroud sat before a crackling fire. 

Despite the usual contrasts, there was ultimately much in common between Farage and Badenoch. There were predictable overlaps on migration, but also a common note of concern about social and cultural breakdown. And both spoke of the need to reindustrialise, and both branded Ed Miliband and net zero as the deindustrialising villain. 

For decades, it was impossible to find a frontline politician willing to piss on British industry if it was on fire, with the popular wisdom having it that the wholesale destruction of our industrial base was a form of exciting progress towards our service-based future. Now, we’re all donning hard hats. Farage simply started chanting energy at one point in his interview, which was greeted with rapturous applause. His “first phone call” as Prime Minister wouldn’t be to Donald Trump, or poor old Robert Jenrick, but rather to South Korean atomic engineers, who would be flown in to revitalise our civil nuclear sector. When asked about productivity, Farage practically purred, releasing a surprisingly long and husky ahhhhhhh of pure pleasure. At another point, he started rhapsodising about the importance of baseload power. I fully expected him to fashion a model of a small modular reactor out of clay, right there on stage. Static subsequently drowned out what was shaping up to be a cogent point about the overregulation of small business, but one hardly minded.

There is a not entirely unwelcome feeling that our political debate is moving at lightspeed. Once marginalised critiques of issues like migration and policing moved to centre stage in a matter of weeks, as a hail of shocking videos shattered the Overton window and centrist politicians dived for ideological cover. The energy issue, so long complained of, so long neglected, is now going to be a central narrative for the political right across the spectrum. With policy papers on Manchesterism and energy policy already coming off the production line, the Labour government will be forced to find a coherent response.

What we’ve seen in the past weeks, and on stage at ARC, is a paralysed British politics finally stumbling into motion. But like any awkwardly splayed sleeper suddenly awakening, it is still tottering clumsily on benumbed limps tingling back into painful life. We’re finally starting to name problems and gesture at what needs to be done, but we are short on both policy detail and ideological principle. 

The lack of the former was extremely evident. Kemi’s pitch was that something good was arriving for Christmas, but one had the worrying sense that it was already Advent and she was going to be frantically searching Amazon as soon as we all left the room. Farage had somewhat more substance, backing both nuclear power and nuclear family, but those hoping that cheap energy alone can revive our flagging economy will be in for a rude surprise if we cannot also address housing, skills, welfare reform, infrastructure, regional disparities, and a shortage of investment capital. 

Badenoch and Farage both had moments of self-deprecation, with Kemi saying her clergyman grandfather would be “ashamed” of her lax church attendance, and Farage laughingly admitting he “may not be the best advocate for marriage” as his “track record’s a bit chequered”. These were exchanges that rendered them likable, but it raised awkward questions. If Farage and Badenoch are the champions of Christian (or Judeo-Christian) civilisation, and are, in their own words, respectively a “lapsed Anglican” and a “cultural Christian”, the crisis of meaning seems rather close to home. 

The right remains a negatively premised proposition, excellent at dishing out criticism of climate change policy, deindustrialisation, cultural relativism and mass migration, but struggling to positively articulate its own vision for environmental stewardship, industrial policy and civilisational and national identity and belonging. Enlightenment liberalism is awkwardly mashed together with medieval Christianity and classical philosophy, in a combination that makes for compelling slideshows, but struggles to fill a half an hour speaking slot. 

Can we imagine a competent, credible political movement committed to Western civilisation

If populism, nationalism, conservatism, post-liberalism or whatever we’re calling it today (and that lack of a clear label tell its own story) wants to become a governing project, it needs to get serious fast. The days of tolerating grifters and sub-par outrage merchants — of trading in dodgy facts and boomer memes — are an indulgence that it can now ill afford. 

Can we imagine a competent, credible political movement committed to Western civilisation, determined to oppose globalisation, capable of restoring a flagging economy, and willing to conserve natural and human beauty? At present, it feels possible, but only just.