The author is an FT contributing editor and is writing a book on the rise of the New Right in Europe
A recent conference in London on “national conservatism” was largely dismissed as a pointless demonstration of a minority political strain. It was seen as a reactionary forum for pushing criticism from the right of UK government policy, especially on immigration. An American import, better kept at home.
But it is not. National conservatism, rooted in homeland, family, Christian observance and sovereignty, has been part of British conservatism since its beginnings. More than that, it now emerges as the operating system of the EU’s New Right, or hard-right, parties. Despite Brexit, British national conservatism paradoxically helps form the base of these European parties.
In her conference speech, home secretary Suella Braverman stressed that “we need to get overall immigration numbers down”. She referenced Italy, as well as Greece and Denmark, as countries “seeing things the same way”.
Two parties that broke through in general elections last September — the Sweden Democrats and the Brothers of Italy, whose leader, Giorgia Meloni, is Italy’s first female premier — are strongly Anglo-Conservative in political orientation. Mattias Karlsson, architect of the Sweden Democrats’ election manifesto, told me he reveres the work of Sir Roger Scruton, the late Tory philosopher.
Meloni also sees British conservatism as an ideal. Her 2021 autobiography, Io Sono Giorgia (“I am Giorgia”), quotes Scruton as saying “the most important thing a human being can do is to settle down, make a home and pass it on to one’s children”. The cult of Scruton spreads: Budapest has a small chain of three Scruton cafés.
New Right groups are also on a roll. Vox, Spain’s third-largest party, greatly increased its number of councillors in last month’s regional elections and may enter a coalition with the centre-right People’s party if the latter wins national elections in July. An Ifop poll in April found that Marine Le Pen was the most popular politician in France.
The Finnish National Coalition party and the New Right Finns party announced a governing coalition on Friday, in spite of disquiet from many Coalition members.
Alternative for Germany, now shunned by all the country’s mainstream parties as a coalition partner at national level, is doing well enough in polls to raise the question of whether the opposition centre-right Christian Democrats may have to co-operate with it to return to government.
Yet a report by the German Institute for Human Rights contends that AfD meets all conditions necessary for the authorities to consider banning it. It claims it pursues “racist and rightwing extremist goals”, shifts the boundaries of acceptable speech to normalise racist and nationalist positions, and seeks to undermine constitutional guarantees of the inviolability of human dignity.
The main elements in New Right thinking include strict barriers to illegal immigration, reduced legal immigration and hostility to the EU — not to the extent of exiting like the British but with a determination to stop further integration and shrink that which has taken place.
They include a firm belief in the family as the bedrock of morality, communities and the nation; an effort to raise birth rates, now running well below replacement level in Europe; and a view of “wokeism”, cancel culture and retrospective blame for imperialism as dangers to democratic values.
Many parties strongly support Christianity, though they fear it will disappear within a few decades. Meloni stresses her Catholicism and attachment to the late doctrinally conservative pope Benedict XVI.
The New Right parties are often framed as neo-fascist or post-fascist. Some like the Sweden Democrats and the Brothers of Italy do have roots in that world. Yet they are rebadging themselves as national conservatives, purged of extreme-right views, racism and antisemitism. They propose a cross-class appeal, with the accent on working and lower middle classes, their main voters.
Electorates from these classes, especially men, increasingly see themselves as better represented by the New Right than the Old Left.
After Italy and Sweden, more such parties are likely to make electoral advances in Europe. For all of them, the challenge will be to prove they can govern competently and that they remain democrats despite the concern and alarm of their adversaries.
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