Category: Conservatism
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Geopolitics at the End of the End of History
Lee Jones recently spoke to a conference of logistics professionals about the rapid changes in global politics. He argued that the current chaos is the result of the continuing decay of the old neoliberal order, and that this is leading to the militarisation of international relations, regionalisation of the world economy, and the redundancy of…
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Death Warmed Up
Peter Ramsay argues that the British right’s proposal for a Great Repeal Act only reveals the futility of its approach to the nation. An online Anglofuturist put out a video last week weaving together the words of the Tory politician Robert Jenrick, ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe and conservative historian David Starkey, each promoting the proposal…
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The Far-Right Excuse
Peter Ramsay argues that the official reaction to the recent riots in England is an ideological distortion that seeks to deflect responsibility for national disintegration. The riots and disorder that spread across Britain last week involved outright racial violence and intimidation, criminal damage and looting. They were widely condemned, and prosecutors are rightly taking action…
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Rule of the Void
The UK’s general election result might seem like a restoration of the old pre-2016 political order. A bland technocrat has won a sweeping majority. However, Peter Ramsay and Philip Cunliffe argue that Labour’s massive victory is hollow and leaves the state in a weaker position than ever. The election results are a dramatic manifestation of…
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Why the Nation Matters
With a General Election looming, Peter Ramsay spoke last week at the London School of Economics about why the survival of the British nation is in doubt and why the politics of culture war are an evasion of the problem rather than a solution. Here is an edited version of what he said. Benedict Anderson…
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Save Us from National Saviours
Philip Cunliffe considers the current interest in ‘Anglo-Gaullism’ among some British conservatives, and asks whether there is any prospect of a national saviour on the French model coming to the rescue of an exhausted British nation. With the nation in the grip of palpable decay, our existing political system offers no prospect of change or…
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Shuffling Between Populism and Technocracy
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s latest cabinet reshuffle exposes a crumbling government torn between mindless populism and deadend, unaccountable technocracy, argues Lizzie Finegan. Another day, another cabinet reshuffle. The primary victim was Home Secretary Suella Braverman, darling of the right-populist wing of Britain’s Conservative Party. The prime beneficiary was ex-prime minister David Cameron. Rising from…
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Waving the Wrong Flags
The rancorous divisions in Britain over the war between Israel and Hamas exemplify the decadence of our national politics. Peter Ramsay argues that the claims of both sides in the dispute are toxic to the sovereignty of the British people. The sacking of Suella Braverman as Home Secretary is the culmination of an extraordinary round…
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The Embers
10 November 2023 Just when Keir Smarmer might have begun to think that he could ride a low turnout to electoral victory, the world’s most intractable conflict has emerged from the Void to wreck his plans. The Labour leadership’s idea was to bore its way into government by saying as little as possible. But now…
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The Embers
10th October 2023 British politics has been overshadowed this week by news of the atrocities committed by Hamas in its attack into Israel. Peter Ramsay reflects here on the responses from British commentators, too many of which fall into one or other of ‘two poisonous half truths’. Below Ollie Richardson takes a look at other…
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National Sovereignty or Bust
“national sovereignty is a dangerous term for a Left that despises the nation (and in particular its working-class members), and an impossible one for a Right that may be able to stomach the nation but blanches at giving the population real influence over economic decisions.”
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The Graveyard of Euroscepticism
“There could hardly be a more fitting place for the graveyard of Euroscepticism than Northern Ireland…”
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Book Launch
‘This is the most important book to come out of the struggles over Britain’s membership of the EU, and it makes all other works on the subject look trivial.’
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The Triumph of Global Britain
“The failures of Brexit so far must be laid on Tory Brexiters themselves: their inability to understand that economic growth was about much more than trade deals, and their resultant inability to deliver policies that were meaningfully different enough to demonstrate an authentic political independence of the status quo.”
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Whatever Happened to the National Interest?
“Embedded in the idea of the national interest is the principle that there is a greater good that can be institutionalised through state structures and policy, and that political power can be meaningfully exercised to protect a people’s collective interests.”
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When Is a Coup not a Coup?
“The language of ‘soft coup’ tends to hide as much as it reveals about the character of the events it describes.”
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The Singaporeans’ Pyrrhic Victory
“Just as the gods of the market have spurned Truss and Kwarteng’s offerings, with dreary predictability, the left has sided with those very same gods…”
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Who Will Constitute the Nation?
“As the old forms and appearances of nationhood inherited from the past lose their grip on the popular imagination and loyalty, we can more clearly identify the nation’s essence. And it is a potentially inspiring one: it is our own self-government.”
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Johnson’s Populist Evasion
“The problem is not that Boris Johnson’s personal political inadequacy may have endangered the democratic gain that Brexit represents. The problem is that both in 2016 and again in 2019, Brexit had to be led by someone like Johnson.”
The Northern Star 