Apart from confirming Dominic Sandbrook’s brilliance, the coverage of Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election told us much about the changing state of world politics and political punditry. For starters, a great lump of the commentariat couldn’t quite adjust themselves to the reality that a great number of Americans do not see the world as they do.
Before the election, Rory Stewart – one half of The Rest is Politics (TRIP), the podcast he presents with Alastair Campbell – was adamant that Kamala Harris had it in the bag. He said, and I quote: ‘If I had to bet, I think Kamala Harris will win comfortably,’ the reason being that, according to Stewart, the polling companies were using data which was ‘no good’.
Two feet in the mouth, Rory. On the TRIP election special, he justified his misjudgement by saying that he would rather be wrong as an optimist than right as a pessimist. Fair enough, whatever he needs to tell himself to get to sleep.
What Stewart and a number of other commentators on the soft Left are reckoning with is, as Steve Davies wrote about in CapX this week, a global political realignment. In recent years, from Europe to the United States, the nature of the Right has changed. Gone is the age of comparatively gentle conservatism, when figures such as Mitt Romney were regarded by many to be on the more radical end of the right-wing spectrum. The rising ideology now is known as national conservatism.
National conservatives, or NatCons, are a loosely affiliated, varied bunch. Still, according to an influential statement of NatCon principles, they are defined by their commitment to economic nationalism, immigration restrictionism, a rejection of globalism and a firm belief in the positive role that religion can play in public life.
Trump’s prospectus hits all of these criteria. On trade, he has floated the idea of putting a 10% tariff on all goods imported into the US, even threatening to impose a 200% charge on certain imported cars. On immigration, he has promised to employ the National Guard and even federal troops to enforce his plans to limit southern border crossings. And despite his track record of shagging porn stars and grabbing women’s genitals, his belief in God is apparently unwavering – the Bible is his ‘favourite book’, after all.
What should we in the UK make of all of this? It isn’t just wet podcasters who have been flummoxed by this realignment: free-marketeers, too, have been left in the lurch. Many of the principles that underlie national conservatism are at odds with those of free-trading, laissez-faire classical liberals. For example, where the latter regard bedroom activities within the law as a private matter, many of the NatCons, particularly in Europe, want degeneracy to be expunged from public life. Where liberals consider the free exchange of goods between nations as the essential ingredient of global peace and prosperity, the NatCons see free trade as a threat to their nation’s supremacy in an anarchic, hostile world.
As it stands, it seems the appetite for this stuff in Britain is limited. The closest we have in Parliament is Nigel Farage, who has made great hay of his friendship and ideological alignment with Trump. However, even Farage still possesses a strong, Thatcherite free-market streak.
The great challenge for free-market conservatives, as the realignment continues, is whether they can, as some hope, combine the popularity of the NatCons with the economic success and commitment to individual freedom of classical liberalism. Steve Davies says no. Others are trying to ride the tiger. The question mark hanging over Trump’s second term will be how he manages to resolve these tensions himself.
In short, while it might be tempting to revel in Rory Stewart’s embarrassment, those on the centre-right should regard Trump and his transnational NatCon allies with suspicion. We may share enemies, but they are not our friends. When the great orange one and his disciples slag off liberals, I assumed for some time that they were referring to the tattooed blue-hairs who want us all to live in yurts and eat grass. Increasingly, though, it seems what they really despise is a liberal economic order which, for some of its faults, has made us all richer.
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