2017 sees conservatism at the crossroads. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Will it prove to be the start of great social conservative upsurge and fightback against decades of cultural and political tyranny? Or will it simply mark the end of a notable but brief rebellion in 2016, over almost before it started?
What we do now will decide it.
Without doubt 2016 was an unexpected ‘corker’ of a year, as the happily surprised Tim Stanley puts it. So much so that it is likely to join 1848 and 1968 in the annals of revolutionary history.
But history teaches us that hope is often disappointed. The ‘democratic’ upsurges of 1848 ended in failure and repression. Yet we still living – 50 years on – with the destructive consequences of the spoilt student protests of 1968, ones that its forever ‘unfinished’ cultural revolution continues to catalyse.
So sitting back on our laurels and complacently believing we now have the liberal Left on the run is simply not an option. We have temporarily shifted the goal posts on this side of the pond, that is all.
The Brexit and Trump manifestations of discontent and signs of allegiance to more traditional values are, so far, just that – manifestations.
There is no sign of any real cultural change in the party that is conservative in name only and even less among the Government’s mandarin class. Sir ‘anti-Brexit’ Ivan Rogers may have found his new role unpalatable – but hark at the confidence of his parting injunction to his staff to keep them on message.
The equally archetypical leftist liberal technocrat, Sir Jeremy Heywood, remains ensconced (through three government changes now) in the Cabinet Office, as does the nation’s financial ‘remoaner-in-chief’, Mark Carney, at the Bank of England – a shameless, Project Fear, poseur who has threatened to stay on for another five years to maintain economic calm and continuity. You bet.
When our soon-to-be Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, stood side by side with Angela Eagle and Nicola Sturgeon in the Brexit debates she seemed more than at home with them. Her platform chums could not have secured a better place-person. From day one at the Home Office she’s fostered a ‘hate/racist’ agenda to seek out discord where it did not exist, which has served only to undermine and tarnish Brexit.
The Remoaner Class, whether in or outside government, has one ambition only – to nip the kernel of majoritarian democracy in the bud before it has a chance of flowering. They have no intention of Brexit meaning Brexit.
Hence their repeated ‘warnings’ of bigotry, populism, demagoguery and division (as though the country was not ‘divided’ at every other election) – all effective ploys to repress dissent and to enforce consensus by casting those outside their tent as extremists. (NB memo to the PM: ‘division’ is the new speak to control those who voice disagreement, once integral to the democratic political process but now condemned.)
Its ‘past-masters’ include the overtly bullying Anna Soubry MP as well as the woefully weak but manipulative Archbishop Welby.
They are useful idiots. As TCW’s own ‘Rebel Priest’ reminded me the other day: ‘The Left never sleeps. We conservatives win an election and we think we have won the battle. The Left is always fighting.’
Don’t expect their liberal progressive incarnations to sleep either. They will fight as viciously in 2017 as they can to protect their hegemony if Matthew d’Ancona’s exhortation to all ‘despondent liberals, Labour centrists, Tory modernisers, remainers, social justice warriors, social justice worriers, and everyone out there fretful about Brexit, depressed by Donald Trump, and scared of the alt-right’ is anything to go by.
Well if it is going to be war, bring it on. But we had better be crystal clear about what we are fighting for. So here is my personal aide memoire for 2017 (and please send us yours):
- Not to rest in face of the continuing and all pervasive ‘culture war’ assault on the family, on gender, on Christianity, on education, on defence and on science.
- Advocate unashamedly for the renaissance of the nation state based on Judeo-Christian values in the knowledge that successful assimilation and integration of other cultures depends on this.
- Fight for the survival of maternal care and motherhood; promote married parenthood and reinstate the male provider and authority roles – all needed if the ‘noughties’ irresponsible neglect (affluent as well as impecunious) of children is to end and the next generation are to regain their health, competence and sanity.
- Expose deceit, untruth and bias for what it is – on the BBC and elsewhere – with feminist, equality, social mobility and poverty myths firmly in sight.
- Finally, fight to the death for that one fundamental on which everything else depends – freedom of thought and speech (on which Niall McCrae has written a fuller mission statement regarding our mind-numbingly PC universities here).
As to the rules of engagement – these can be summed up as: never fear to assert your opinions but always do it with a disarming smile (tough one to learn); stay on the front foot staying calm (also tough); never cease to interrogate so called liberal values (with charm and genuine interest) and never, ever, apologise or it will speed us to the gallows as it did poor Sir Tim Hunt. And remember satire is a sharper weapon than anger.
(Image: Garry Knight)
