The Realignment Strikes Back?

Dissatisfaction with elites continues to surge across the Western world

Towering columns

For The Times, Juliet Samuel explains why Britain’s model of liberal technocracy has failed and needs replacing if we are going to reverse national decline.

It is easy to talk as if a dose of “boring” inevitably means a spell of competent governance. This is sadly mistaken. Unfortunately, the most likely version of a government that is “going back to boring” is one that switches back on the autopilot that was forcibly disengaged in 2016 because it had generated economic stagnation, political disillusionment, cultural rifts and excessively fast demographic change. It means carrying on with the model that led to populist revolt and that is now running out of road financially and making the country’s geopolitical position increasingly precarious.

Returning Sunak or putting in Starmer may make our decline less dramatic but neither will reverse it. What’s needed is a decisive break with the current, drifting model of liberal technocracy, whereby civil servants, lawyers and regulators choke the country with ever-more misguided attempts to create a liberal utopia, while state capacity and living standards wither. We need a new state that is more efficient and more forceful in pursuing the national interest, but less oppressively petty.

There is, of course, a “boring” side to this mission. Reform of a complex system is painstaking. A lot of the work involved will be dull to outsiders, just as the refinement of surgery techniques or the improving of battery efficiency involves work that is incomprehensibly tedious to the uninitiated. But getting waylaid in these weeds is not the job of our elected leaders. The job of the prime minister and his cabinet is to provide a sense of urgency and leadership that sets the right priorities, throws out dodgy received wisdom and bulldozes aside vested interests and inertia. This certainly demands careful and strategic governance, but it also requires a kind of free-thinking radicalism that was distinctly lacking on Tuesday’s debate stage. It is the opposite of “boring”.

At UnHerd, Simon Heffer reflects on Clacton’s role in shaping the Eurosceptic movement and Nigel Farage’s return to frontline politics.

The town has the highest proportion of economically inactive people in the United Kingdom: most seats have economic activity of 80% of people, Clacton has 51%. Its crime rate is higher and its disposable income per head far lower than those smart villages just a few miles away. Its public services are dismal. There is rough sleeping and the modern companion of poverty, drug abuse (with its attendant despair and desolation), infects the place. Jaywick, on the southern fringes, is regularly referred to as one of the most deprived areas in the country, and a visiting UN representative in 2018 was shocked by its “extreme poverty”. The incumbent MP, Giles Watling, admitted last autumn to The Guardian that he faced “an uphill battle”, not least because he is a Remainer…

…The cynical might suggest that Farage had been studying the vox pops that reveal numerous Clactonians as feeling betrayed by Brexit and seized his advantage. He too feels betrayed by it, as he said at his launch. Certainly, if there is any seat he can win, it is this one. It is not just because the place voted for Brexit, but because Farage has a direct line to the people who live there.

Even though he comes from Kent, he does indeed speak fluent Essex — as, in his more professorial way, did Enoch Powell 55 years ago. He knows how to press the buttons of promising to enforce borders, deregulate businesses, and improve public services by ramping up prosperity. The speeches he made last week, before re-designating himself as leader of Reform, covered all these topics, and will slot straight into his campaign on this strangely deprived part of the Essex coast.

For The Critic, Phoebe Arslanagic-Little argues that practical pro-natalist policies can raise Britain’s birth rate.

Since the 1990s, Czechia has administered a thoughtful, consistent programme of policies intended to make life better and easier for parents. In 2017, these policies were strengthened, including better access to fertility assistance, a family-friendly tax system, and employer incentives to offer flexible working to young parents. Between 1999 and 2021, Czechia has seen its fertility rate increase from 1.13 to 1.83. 

Do not dismiss Czechia’s achievement because they have not reached the golden “replacement rate” fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman — the level of fertility that means each generation is as large as the previous one, with no population decline. Economically and socially, the difference between a fertility rate of 1.13 and 1.83 is tremendous for any nation. 

Even in the UK’s recent past, we have clear evidence of how government policy has improved birth rates. In 1999, Tony Blair’s government increased social security for families with children, including the introduction of the Working Families Tax Credit. IFS analysis found that these reforms, mostly targeted at low-income families, were responsible for a 15 per cent increase in births in the groups affected, though this was likely not the intention of their architect, Gordon Brown. Again, we see that young families and prospective parents are responsive to national policy efforts that tangibly and positively improve their lives.

At CapX, Andrew Tettenborn sets out why the Conservatives’ proposed reform of the Equality Act is necessary to protect single-sex spaces.

First, allowing genuine sex segregation was clearly the intention of the single-sex provisions contained in the Equality Act 2010. But this hasn’t stopped attempts by the trans lobby to muddy the waters. For example, by invoking an incautious statement in earlier legislation from 2004 that a gender recognition certificate made you a member of your new chosen sex for all purposes including equality law.

Second, the Government has a point when it talks of safety. True, the danger of actual sexual predation from trans women in female-only facilities may be small (though it does happen). But the prospect remains, and it is unsettling. Women have a right to ask for protection even from small risks of that sort, and to be reassured that all proper measures are being taken to avoid them…

…Thirdly, the Government’s solution of allowing segregation by sex is neatly liberal while at the same time taking a good deal of wind out of the sails of the trans lobby. No one, please note, is saying that service providers must provide separate lavatories, changing rooms, and so on for people of a given birth sex, but merely that they may do so without liability. And this latter point is what would make life difficult for aggressive activists.

At ConservativeHome, James Johnson looks at how Donald Trump has kept his momentum despite major legal problems.

The verdict’s impact is yet to be borne out in voting intention polls. Like the Conservatives in the UK, the Democrats do better amongst those voters who say they do not know how they would currently vote. The verdict could shore up undecided voters to Biden’s camp. But there is little doubt that these legal travails have changed the game for Trump so far. Before the indictments started dropping in April last year, people were searching for alternatives to the former president, sick of the drama and political upheaval. Ron DeSantis was poised to win the support of Trump supporters who felt their man had had his time in the sun.

The indictments put those waverers firmly in Trump’s camp. By the end of the year he had the nomination sewn up, formalized in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina in at the start of 2024. It has also made him more competitive with Independents: they recoiled at the idea of another Trump presidency this time last year, but now are more concerned by what they see as an overreaching legal service than his conduct itself. Joe Biden has enabled this. Though he has not directly ordered the investigations, he gave room for Merrick Garland, his Attorney General, to bring federal indictments on behalf of the government. Though the President has less sway over state cases, he has let them proceed without criticism.

In so doing he has nodded through, at least in the case of the hush money Manhattan trial, what even Democratic-leaning lawyers say is a spurious case that was brought against Trump because he is Trump. With it having rallied voters to Trump’s cause, this, along with his decision to stand in a race most voters think he is unfit to be in, could prove to be the unwinding of Biden, just as it marked the unravelling of DeSantis.

For The Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard believes the triumph of populism in Europe could create further distance between the EU and a Labour-led Britain.

Hitherto, the EU’s hard-Right parties have been no more than Balkanised protest groups in Strasbourg. They may soon coalesce into the second biggest bloc of Euro-MPs. Marine Le Pen and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni are in tentative merger talks for a “big tent” alliance. The two dominant groupings would then be the Right (European People’s Party) and the hard-Right, together dominating EU legislation and shaping the new Commission.

You can kiss goodbye to what remains of Ursula von der Leyen’s green deal. You can also kiss goodbye to eurobonds or fiscal union, needed to back up the euro. Monetary union will remain the same half-built structure, stumbling from crisis to crisis with each cycle until the Franco-German divergence in debt ratios reaches snapping-point.

It has long been an article of faith on the British Left that this country needs European directives to curate our farms and forests, or to safeguard worker rights, or to prevent the roll-back of women’s liberation, or to stop us misbehaving in one way or another. Can that mental framework survive what is coming? “I think the EU is going to start looking very foreign and unattractive to people in Britain. I’m actually quite worried about it,” said Andrew Duff, a former Member of the European Parliament and doyen of British federalists in Brussels. Mr Duff said the EU has become “extremely introverted” as the world moves on. It is overinterpreting soft polls that point to a large Rejoiner majority. “They all take it for granted that Britain will have to come crawling back. I have to tell them, honestly darling, that is not how it is across the Channel,” he said.

Wonky thinking

The FT’s The Big Read looks at how Chinese carmakers are responding to protectionism from the United States and European nations by reaching out towards emerging markets. Despite the best efforts of the West, cheap Chinese electric vehicles could still come out on top in global sales and be used to exploit tensions between the United States and its allies.

The International Energy Agency forecasts that this year 10.1mn EVs will be sold in China, 3.4mn in Europe, 1.7mn in the US. Fewer than 1.5mn EVs will be sold everywhere else in the world. Yet the agency has forecast that the global EV fleet will grow eight-fold to about 240mn in 2030. This implies annual global EV sales of 20mn cars in 2025 and 40mn in 2030, or 30 per cent of all car sales. Moreover, an increasingly large share of that expansion is likely to come from new markets.

In some important developing economies, Chinese companies are investing in both production and processing raw materials. Nowhere is this more striking than China’s involvement in the EV ecosystem in Indonesia, home to the world’s largest reserves of nickel, a key component of EV batteries. Last year alone companies domiciled in China and Hong Kong invested $13.9bn in Indonesia, most of which is believed to have been in the metals and mining industry. Chinese companies account for more than 90 per cent of the nickel smelters in the country. Chinese banks have also been keen to provide financing for nickel plants when others have been hesitant, says Alexander Barus, chief executive of the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park — the country’s largest nickel processing site, which was built by Tsingshan, a Chinese nickel producer, and a local partner. 

“When we first started searching for mining investment, we went around the banks in Indonesia, no one supported us. The banks were in doubt, whether it would be profitable or not. But when we went to Chinese banks, they were ready to finance,” says Barus.  Having secured access to Indonesia’s key resources, Chinese companies have also been the first movers in setting up EV manufacturing plants, even as Indonesia — and President Joko Widodo personally — have courted other big names such as Tesla to set up EV manufacturing. BYD said early this year that it would invest $1.3bn in an EV factory in Indonesia. The story is similar in Brazil where BYD and compatriot group Great Wall Motor are about to commence local manufacturing that could also serve for exports to the wider region.

Great Wall is investing about $1.9bn in Latin America’s largest economy with production expected to start this year at a former Mercedes-Benz factory in Iracemápolis, São Paulo state. As well as its investment in auto production at Camaçari, BYD is also on the lookout for lithium mining assets in Brazil, which is ramping up extraction of the key metal for EV batteries.  Brazil, which is the world’s sixth-biggest car market, has been relatively slow to embrace electrification. This is attributed in part to its widespread use of lower-carbon ethanol derived from sugarcane. But there are already signs of a shift. Last year sales of EVs almost doubled in Brazil and in recent months the country overtook Belgium to become the largest single export destination for Chinese EVs.

In an effort to stimulate a homegrown industry, Brasília is imposing rising tariffs on EV and hybrid imports — these will hit 35 per cent by mid-2026. Lula, himself a former metal worker, has promulgated a vision of a “green” industrial rejuvenation. China’s publicity drive in the region includes BYD’s sponsorship of the Copa América football tournament for South American nations. Such marketing campaigns, coupled with aggressive pricing by Chinese car brands, has led to acceptance by Brazilian consumers, says Cassio Pagliarini, chief marketing officer at Bright Consulting, an automotive sector specialist.

The National Center for Social Research has used the British Social Attitudes survey to define six distinctive voter groups that make up the total UK electorate. Rather than relying on a Left-Right binary or political affiliations, the analysis seeks to build a representative picture of voters’ values based on their political views as well as their social backgrounds.

Middle Britons are the largest cohort of voters making up more than a quarter of the electorate (26 per cent). NatCen said that this group of people are “mostly in the middle ground across issues”, are closest to the “typical” voter, have “no clear political affiliation”, are “hard to win over and not that likely to vote”.

The Well-Off Traditionalists comprise 12 per cent of the electorate. This cohort are “highly politically engaged and likely to vote, many living in rural south-east, with socially conservative views that align with Conservative policies”.

The Apolitical Centrists make up 17 per cent of the electorate. This group are the “least politically engaged, generally on the right on economic issues but more centrist on social issues”. They are also generally “relatively young and low income. Many will likely not vote, but those that do will probably choose either Conservative or Labour”.

The Left-Behind Patriots make up 15 per cent of the electorate. This group are “patriotic, mostly voted for Brexit, opposed to economic inequality but conservative in their social outlook”. They also have “no strong allegiance to any party but more likely than any group to support Reform”.

The Urban Progressives comprise 16 per cent of the electorate. NatCen researchers describe this group as “typically university educated professionals” who “lean strongly to the left on economic issues and in a liberal direction on social ones”. They added that they are “likely to support Labour or the Greens, and highly likely to vote”.

The Soft-Left Liberals make up 14 per cent of the electorate. This group are “university educated, politically engaged, liberal on social issues but more centrist on the economy” and are likely to vote for Labour, Greens or Liberal Democrats.

Book of the week

This week we recommend Portrait of a Party : The Conservative Party in Britain 1918-1945 by Stuart Ball. The author examines how the Conservatives successfully navigated a shifting political landscape brought about by a declining Liberal Party and emerging Labour Party. This success relied on a number of advantages distinctive to the time as well as strengths that have timeless relevance.

The factors which contributed to the Conservative Party’s electoral success between the wars can be divided into two categories, the first of which is the underlying and long-term elements. Th e foundation was created by the appeal of the Conservatives’ values, image, and programme to a substantial block of social support which was deep-rooted, cohesive, and enduring. Of course, there was some variation in the scale of support and the vigour of its commitment according to economic and political circumstances, the most important of which were perceptions of the performance of the government (whichever party was in office), pressure from economic depression and the level of taxation, apprehension of domestic unrest, and concern over external threats. Th e next element was the ability of the Conservative Party to mobilize its core support and reach beyond this to voters who were uncommitted or potentially detachable from another allegiance.

This had three aspects: the resonance of its stance on the immediate issues of the day, the appeal of its leadership, and the effectiveness of its organization. Th e first of these aspects developed from the party’s fundamental attitudes and outlook, and the extent to which the resulting policies meshed with the needs of voters determined whether they encouraged or discouraged support. Th e other aspects of leadership and organization were important in communicating the party’s message, but could not, on their own, determine its fortunes; in particular, organizational strength was a product of the extent of support more than a cause of it. The preponderance of support for the Conservative Party in the upper and upper-middle classes provided it with extensive resources in the munitions of political warfare—not only money, but also local candidates and leaders who possessed the confidence and cachet of their superior social status. Th e dividend from this was an organization that was stronger and more sophisticated, innovative, and effective than its rivals at both the national and local levels.

Another underlying element was the developments in the electoral system at the end of the First World War. These brought more advantages than disadvantages, and even the change which Conservative politicians at the time viewed with most concern was far from being entirely negative. In reality, the new male voters were not entirely working class: the previous suff rage had been based on the head of household and ratepayer, and this excluded many younger middle- and upper-class men who had not yet established their own separate domiciles. Th e women enfranchised were in all social classes, and the age limitation at thirty tilted the female suff rage towards the more conservative, if not the more Conservative. Th e party already had considerable and positive experience of organizing women in the Primrose League, and it was more effective than its rivals in shaping and presenting an image that appealed to the housewife and mother. Other aspects of the 1918 Reform Act benefited the Conservatives in varying degrees. One of the most important was, in truth, the rectification of an imbalance, as by 1914 the movement of population had led to some Conservative seats—particularly around the edges of London—having much larger electorates than the norm. When the boundaries were revised these seats became several, all of which returned Conservative MPs; at the same time, the smaller seats which were abolished or merged were mostly Liberal, particularly in Scotland. It has been estimated that the net effect of the redistribution alone was a gain of thirty-four seats for the Conservative Party. Three minor aspects of the nature of the franchise were also in the party’s favour: the retention of the university seats and the vote for business premises, and the rejection of proportional representation, which would have been of more help to the other two parties.

The ‘first past the post’ system had the effect of squeezing the vote of the party in third place, and this was almost never the Conservative Party. A political change which immediately followed the First World War also helped the Conservatives: the disappearance from the House of Commons of the block of around eighty-five seats from the Catholic-populated regions of Ireland, which from 1886 to 1914 had given constant support to the Liberal Party as a result of the Home Rule issue. Th e sweeping away of the Irish Nationalist Party in the 1918 general election by Sinn Fein, who refused to take their seats, was the first part of the process, which was made permanent in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The remaining seats from Northern Ireland were almost all Unionist, and during this period the Ulster Unionists were an integral part of the Conservative Party, taking its whip and, in a few cases, serving in office. The consequence was that instead of being a major hindrance to the Conservatives’ prospects of securing a majority in the House of Commons, Ireland was now a minor help.

These structural changes assisted the Conservative Party in establishing itself as the natural majority party, which in itself brought advantages in terms of self confidence and public expectations. A further significant factor was the consolidation of the upper and middle classes behind the Conservative Party, a process stimulated by the rise of the Labour Party and the decline of the Liberals, and which further contributed to the latter. However, as discussed in Chapter 2 , neither middle-class votes nor rural constituencies existed in sufficient numbers to deliver a parliamentary majority, and the crucial factor was the securing of substantial working-class support as well. Th is was more variable in scale than the middle class support, and its relative volatility probably accounts for most of the rise and fall in the Conservative vote between different general elections. The Conservatives were able to appear to a significant section of working-class voters as the best choice for their vote: the reasons for this included, in different combinations, the image of the party, its Leader, and its policies; the circumstances and temperament of the voter; the long-term effects of local or family tradition; and the short-term impact of the current economic and political situation. The result was a large block of safe seats, the core of which were the suburban, the mixed urban/rural, and the predominantly rural constituencies, of around 200 in number…In addition, there were between 100 and 150 constituencies which were more urbanized and industrial, and with a higher proportion of working-class voters, which were often winnable. As the House of Commons consisted of 615 MPs from 1922 to 1945, this meant that the bare majority of 308 was very much within the Conservative grasp.

These developments made the general context more favourable to the Conservatives than had been the case in the Edwardian era, but on their own did not guarantee victory. Electoral success resulted from the combination of these systemic factors with other more immediate issues and realignments. Several of these were consequences of the First World War; as one of the party’s leading figures observed in 1920, ‘in the storm of war many of the old political questions have disappeared’. The war had an immediate impact in raising the importance of patriotism and discrediting the Liberal government that had been in office when it began, and it led to the decline in significance of old (mainly Liberal) issues such as temperance, disestablishment, and land reform. The rise of the Labour Party appeared to be a challenge to capitalism and property, bringing with it a fear of revolution. This both energized support for the Conservatives and gave them an easy target to attack. Britain had prospered during the previous century, and although there was certainly poverty and hardship, for the most part the economic system remained stable in the interwar era. There were, therefore, certain advantages in being a capitalist party defending a capitalist system, and its opponents had the much more difficult task of demonstrating that their hypothetical alternative would be better. Provided that there was no economic collapse (which was a worry in 1920–21 and still more in 1931), it was likely that most voters would stay with the system that they knew—once again, ‘natural’ conservatism was a powerful recruiter for the party’s cause.

Quick links

Net migration as a percentage of population has increased dramatically since 2021 and well above any levels recorded since 1885…

…including cumulative immigration of 670,000 from India, 310,000 from Nigeria, and 274,000 from China.

UnHerd found that 51% of people believe British foreign policy should focus on the national interest and only 16% would fight to defend France.

Following Islamist knife attacks, Germany will start deporting migrants who commit crimes to their home countries, including Afghanistan and Syria.

Polling from Lord Ashcroft shows 77% of 2019 Conservative voters support the “quadruple lock”.

Parental controls on social media and smartphones in Spain for children below the age of 16 have been significantly toughened.

Welsh First Minister Vaughan Gething refused to resign after losing a no confidence motion in the Senedd.