Are the Kids Moving Right?

Young people are reaching for new solutions to restore order from chaos

Towering columns

For The Times, Iain Martin argues that the recent ECHR ruling on climate change in Switzerland could help spark another Brexit revolt.

Looking at the latest rather mad judgment of the European Court of Human Rights this week, I wonder if forces similar to Brexit are being unleashed and history will repeat itself, this time on the question of leaving the ECHR, the European Convention on Human Rights? The court ruled in favour of 2,400 women who said their human rights had been violated by the Swiss government’s insufficiently tough policies on climate change.

Lawyers for the mostly elderly women successfully argued that their clients were being denied the right to a family life as older people are more likely to die in heatwaves. With the planet getting hotter, the government in Bern should do more to reduce emissions, said the judges. There is no appeal.

This is spectacular judicial overreach. The court is involving itself directly in democratic politics, adjudicating on policy questions that are properly left to governments and leaders accountable to electorates. Today, climate change. Tomorrow … where next might the court expand its remit? Perhaps those of us who think we are entering a war era should take a case to Strasbourg seeking judicial support to compel governments to spend much more on defence and deter Russia from threatening our right to life.

At UnHerd, Mary Harrington believes the El Salvador election might indicate that “Right-wing progressives” will do more to shape the future than conservatism.

This outlook owes more to the Italian Futurist Filippo Marinetti than conservatives of the G.K. Chesterton variety, let alone any current mainstream Tory. It has as yet no party-political or institutional representation in Britain, and is perhaps most visibly embodied in American technologists such as Elon Musk, Mark Andreessen or Peter Thiel. As a worldview, it is broadly pro-capitalist, enthusiastically pro-technology and unabashedly hierarchical, as well as sometimes also scornful of Christian-inflected concern for the weak.

We might call it, rudely, “space fascism”, though N.S. Lyons’s formulation “Right-wing progressivism” is probably more accurate. Among its adherents, high-tech authoritarianism is a feature, not a bug, and egalitarianism is for fools. Thinkers such as Curtis Yarvin propose an explicitly neo-monarchical model for governance; Thiel has declared that: “I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible.” And it’s not hard to see the appeal of Bukele as a poster-boy for such movements: while China is arguably a far larger and more successful instance of high-tech authoritarianism, it’s both (by Western standards) off-puttingly collectivist, and also a little too powerful for comfort. By contrast, El Salvador offers a worked example of what it might look like to roll out Right-wing progressivism in a previously dysfunctional polity: a project that both has underdog appeal, and also poses no direct material threat to American geopolitical interests.

For Anglophone Rightists, then, El Salvador is thus the most legible real-world instance of something like a Right-wing progressive programme in practice. And along with the tech enthusiasm and public-order toughness, the third distinctive feature of this programme can be gleaned: a desire not to end international migration, but to restrict it to elites.

For The Times, Kathleen Stock looks at how we can better understand why Gen Z men and women are adopting such divergent views of politics and gender roles.

In a nutshell, then, young women’s political views are taken seriously but young men’s are framed as a result of maladaptive psychology and an inability to cope with loss of status. If this is the calibre of explanation offered, no wonder the latter are feeling hacked off. There should be parity here: either we psychologise both sides of the ideological divide, or neither. And explaining female progressivism away psychologically would be easy enough to do. Since today’s left seems largely to be interested in dismantling social norms rather than standing up for any, its allure for young women could be explained in terms of high levels of feminine agreeableness and a confusion between being socially permissive and kind.

An alternative line of inquiry might be those studies suggesting a woman is more likely than a man to make a political stance part of her social image, incentivising her to feel animosity towards opposing positions as part of identity differentiation. If this were true, it would mean that many of her political affiliations were formed reactively in response to those of perceived male opponents — which would make her look somewhat resentment-fuelled too.

In fact, we might even suspect that the mutual animosity between women and men came first and their respective voting patterns second, as a symptom of their rivalry and not a cause. In her 2017 book Kill All Normies, Angela Nagle described how the toxic aggression of the male-dominated online right emerged as a psychic counterpart to the passive aggression and self-righteousness of female-dominated online spheres like Tumblr, full of posters obsessed with identity politics “calling out” behaviour they didn’t like. And there’s still a sense today that each side is locked in a dysfunctional dance with the other, taking extreme cases in the opposite camp as proof of their own suspicions of victimhood, and moving further apart in the process.

At ConservativeHome, Fred de Fossard encourages Ministers to use their powers to stop the spread of DEI and ESG policies in the private sector.

While the British state lashes itself to the mast of diversity, our cousins across the Atlantic are doing the opposite. After a flurry of excitement around ESG in 2021 – where investors piled trillions of dollars into funds and businesses committed to social justice – American investors have gone cold on woke capitalism. Money is deserting these funds: Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO and once-cheerleader for ESG, has disavowed the term entirely, and many academics are questioning the veracity of the studies that justified it.

Legislators across the United States have been passing bills at the State level to divest public-sector pension funds from asset managers with DEI policies American politicians have been forceful when it comes to demanding transparency and accountability from corporate giants who pursue these agendas. They have used their democratic and constitutional ability to force truth out of these companies, and expose what these policies mean: who is getting de-banked, denied a loan, and whose job application gets thrown in the bin? So far, 15 US states have passed laws to divest and boycott these funds, including fast-growing States like Texas and Florida.

This is paying dividends. While the heavily regulated British and European economies tie themselves in red tape and head for comfortable decline, the American economy is firing on all cylinders. GDP growth and, most importantly, living standards for the American middle class are well ahead of those in Britain.

On Substack, Phoebe Arslanagić-Little and Anvar Sarygulov make clear that more immigration is not the right solution to the West’s demographic problems.

Nations that have traditionally supplied much immigration to the UK – a good example is Poland – are also experiencing declining fertility and becoming wealthier too. In these nations, the economic pressure to migrate to countries like the UK is weakening, reducing the pool of people we can draw on. 

At the same time, many other western countries are experiencing falling fertility and will be looking to bolster their working-age populations with immigration, meaning the competition for people will increase. Our competitors include the US, an extremely attractive destination for migrants. And as the knowledge-based economies of the developed world will require an increasingly skilled workforce, the competition for high-skilled migrants will be particularly fierce. 

The effects of falling fertility and the competition for people mean that the UK might be forced to rely on low-skilled immigration from the shrinking pool of countries who have a high birth rate and low wages. Currently, with net migration to the UK estimated to have been 672,000 in 2022-23, we don’t have a problem attracting people to join our workforce. But immigration at this level increasingly appears democratically unsustainable. Polling from 2023 found that 52% of British people think immigration should be reduced. Only 14% of Brits favoured an increase. 

At ConservativeHome, Zachary Spiro reveals how copious amounts of bureaucratic paperwork are stopping the British state from governing effectively.

The nightmare of paperwork to get Whitehall sign-off for R&D spend was recently the subject of a review by Lord Willetts, the former Science Minister (and ConservativeHome columnist). The process for getting spending approved is known as the ‘business case’, where different elements of the proposed spending (including its economic and financial implications) are considered. Once all of these are done, the overall proposal is assessed and, if the project is lucky, approved.

Official guidance gives that business cases are supposed to be no longer than 40 pages. But, according to Willetts, “DSIT business cases averaged 249 pages… though they can go up to 400 pages”.  This is a startling fact: departmental paperwork is taking up to ten times as many resources as anticipated, implying that whole teams of civil servants are needed to do work that was intended to be manageable by just a few. This is also a recent phenomenon – the review adds that business cases “appear to be more extensive and bureaucratic than even five years ago”.

This enormous amount of paperwork – approximately the length of each of the Lord of the Rings books – adds to the time needed for Whitehall to take decisions. One civil servant interviewed by the review “estimated the time from an original idea… to execution of a programme at over two and a half years”.

Wonky thinking

Dr Hilary Cass has submitted her final report on NHS gender identity services for NHS England, setting out recommendations for ensuring children and young people experiencing gender dysphoria receive safe and effective care. The report calls for greater caution when treating peopled aged under 25 and stopping the routine prescription of puberty blockers to under 18s.

Despite the best intentions of everyone with a stake in this complex issue, the toxicity of the debate is exceptional. I have faced criticism for engaging with groups and individuals who take a social justice approach and advocate for gender affirmation, and have equally been criticised for involving groups and individuals who urge more caution. The knowledge and expertise of experienced clinicians who have reached different conclusions about the best approach to care are sometimes dismissed and invalidated.

There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop. Polarisation and stifling of debate do nothing to help the young people caught in the middle of a stormy social discourse, and in the long run will also hamper the research that is essential to finding the best way of supporting them to thrive.

This is an area of remarkably weak evidence, and yet results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint. The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.

It often takes many years before strongly positive research findings are incorporated into practice. There are many reasons for this. One is that doctors can be cautious in implementing new findings, particularly when their own clinical experience is telling them the current approach they have used over many years is the right one for their patients. Quite the reverse happened in the field of gender care for children. Based on a single Dutch study, which suggested that puberty blockers may improve psychological wellbeing for a narrowly defined group of children with gender incongruence, the practice spread at pace to other countries. This was closely followed by a greater readiness to start masculinising/feminising hormones in midteens, and the extension of this approach to a wider group of adolescents who would not have met the inclusion criteria for the original Dutch study. Some practitioners abandoned normal clinical approaches to holistic assessment, which has meant that this group of young people have been exceptionalised compared to other young people with similarly complex presentations. They deserve very much better.

In an interview with The European Conservative, former Cabinet minister and Chief Brexit Negotiator Lord Frost reflects on the successes and missed opportunities that have emerged from leaving the EU. Lord Frost believes that the Brexit revolution remains incomplete due to an establishment that is trapped in the mindset of running an EU member state rather than a country with restored sovereignty.

Despite the difficult policy choices that Britain currently faces, the political establishment still clings to the view that, when it comes to international politics, the UK has an important global role to play. This role has long been as a leading supporter of the ‘rules-based international system.’ As a result, the Foreign Office has been preoccupied with rules and international law, and finds itself uncomfortable thinking about ‘hard power’ or how to defend the national interest (rather than the international interest).

Other major powers are now challenging this system. Meanwhile, the UK—and the West in general—are in relative decline, and neither has adapted yet to this new world. So Frost says it is crucial to now build a sense of Western cohesion and strive to construct effective defences, both of which require growing economies and a clear-eyed, realist view of the post-COVID world.

On the issue of Ukraine, Frost believes it is important—whatever the rights and wrongs of Western policy over the last decade—to keep in mind that a great wrong has been done to Ukraine by Russia, and that Russia must not emerge from the war as the ‘winner.’ Despite growing criticism of the West’s involvement, Western arming of Ukraine remains crucial, he says. But they now need to think hard about their real war aims if further escalation is to be avoided.

The West, then, needs to do some hard thinking in 2024—a year of transformative elections but no effective leadership. And while the world does not look to be in great shape, it is possible to be overly pessimistic, cautions Frost. Democracies are beginning to respond to what people really worry about—namely, the economy, migration, and national identity. And it is vital that they do so, for if mainstream parties don’t address these issues, fringe parties will emerge on both the extreme Left and Right.

Book of the week

This week we recommend Realpolitik: A History by historian and government advisor John Bew. The author provides an account of realpolitik in foreign policy from its nineteenth century German origins through to its emergence in Anglo-American statecraft during the twentieth century. This book reveals how important realpolitik has been to international affairs and how it could influence the future global order.

To many, Machiavelli remains the consensus father of Realpolitik—the individual with whom the term is most commonly associated. Yet other supposed heroes of Realpolitik, from later eras, have recently enjoyed a return to prestige. Among them are Viscount Castlereagh, Britain’s foreign secretary from 1812 to 1822, and Count Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian Empire’s foreign minister of the same era, and its chancellor from 1821 to 1848. In A World Restored, published in 1957, Henry Kissinger described the achievements of Castlereagh and Metternich in stabilizing Europe after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815. Realpolitik has also been closely associated with Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian chancellor who united Germany in 1871 after a successful war with France. In a book about Realpolitik, Bismarck certainly deserves a prominent place, though—as we shall see—it is mistaken to see him as its theoretician-in-chief.

The canon of Realpolitik, as it is conventionally understood, links together these nineteenth-century statesmen with some of the most prominent figures of twentieth-century American foreign policy, particularly of the Cold War era. George Kennan, often taken as a paragon of American diplomatic realism, was a scholar of Bismarck’s foreign policy. Kissinger’s doctoral thesis, which became A World Restored, was also originally intended to include a section on Bismarck, whom he wrote about at a later date and—as later chapters will discuss—of whom he had a different view than Kennan. If Machiavelli is commonly understood to be the father of Realpolitik, Kissinger himself is assumed to be its most prominent torchbearer in the modern era. When the “return of Realpolitik” is discussed, it is no surprise to find his name often mentioned in the same breath. There was no greater indication of the influence that Kissinger’s prognoses on foreign policy still have than the carefully crafted 2,000-word review of his 2014 book, World Order, written by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Yet the assumption that Kissinger is the inheritor of a Bismarckian tradition of Realpolitik is, it will be argued, misleading.

As something born in the dark heart of Europe, imported from Germany—the great bogeyman of the two world wars—Realpolitik has always had an odd place in Anglo-American political discourse. Usages of it, both negative and positive, reveal much about British and American worldviews. The word began to seep into the English language in the era before the First World War. Even though it has been used frequently in foreign policy debates in Britain and America for more than a hundred years, it is still regarded as somewhat exotic. Consequently, even when Realpolitik has been used favourably in the United Kingdom or the United States, it has caused discomfort. In the 1930s in Britain and the 1970s in America, in very different contexts, the critics of foreign policy often cried foul about the ingestion of Realpolitik by their own statesmen and diplomats. A harsh Teutonic neologism, it has a tendency to get stuck in the craw. As Peter Viereck, a German American critic of Realpolitik wrote, in 1942, it was “pronounced with a long, throaty, truculent ‘r’, and connotes ‘r-r-ruthless’ (r-r-rücksichtslos, Hitler’s favourite adjective) and ‘r-r-realistic’ (r-r-realitsich).”13 One might well contrast it with the smoother inflexions of French—the traditional language of diplomacy—of which détente provides a notable example.

Over the last decade, Realpolitik has been shorn of some of these negative connotations for a number of reasons. The first is that the return of great power rivalries and the fraying of the international order has evoked comparisons with periods in our past when Realpolitik was seen to provide a useful tool of statecraft—chiefly, nineteenth-century Europe, when great powers buffeted each other. The second is that Realpolitik has been presented as a necessary antidote to the perceived excess of idealism in Anglo-American foreign policy of the post–Cold War era—a return to the “real” over the “utopian.” In this incarnation, it is simply understood as a cool, circumspect approach to statecraft, deliberately contrasted to what is presented as the naïve idealism of others.

Quick links

Polling revealed that just one in four British Muslims believe Hamas did not commit atrocities in Israel.

Eight days after October 7, an asylum seeker murdered a pensioner and tried to murder a Christian housemate “for the sake of Palestine”.

Business optimism improved for the third consecutive quarter, reaching levels similar to other periods preceding economic growth…

…but the London Stock Exchange is at risk of losing Shell, its biggest listing, to New York due to European investor apathy.

The UK’s tax-to-GDP ratio of 35.3% was ranked 16th out of 38 OECD countries.

Research found that the average salary of migrants entering the UK on a visa dropped by £10,000 in 2021 to 2023.

A record 787,000 international students, an increase of a third on the previous year, studied at UK universities in 2022/23.

The Department for Health and Social Care budget has increased by 42.2% in real terms between 2009/10 and 2024/25.

Spending as a percentage of GDP on health, adult social care, and state pension is projected to grow from 15.1% in 2021/22 to 25.6% in 2071/72.

The happiness of young people across 34 countries has dropped since 2011.

London suburbs can accommodate 900,000 new homes according to PricedOut.

German supermarket chain Tegut forced to close fully automated store on Sundays in Hesse due to a court ruling on shopping rules.

There are half a million new robots in factories globally, but the UK lags behind Thailand with 2,534 industrial robots.

Alstom’s rail assembly factory in Derby could close, putting 1,300 jobs and local supply chains at risk.