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Wrise conference6/25/2023 ![]() NatCon is an unsavoury pool for the Tories to dip a toe intoįor all the insistence from the stage that the conference, and the Conservative party itself, is a “broad church”, some Tory MPs will be alarmed at the company their colleagues kept. Some experts also argue that an area where UK voters do pay attention, immigration, is one where the Conservatives have arguably tacked as far to the right as they can. However, it remains to be seen whether the UK is as receptive to this as the US, not least because the primary American audience for such views – evangelical Christians – are both much less numerous and very different in outlook here. While the full NatCon philosophy remains a niche view among Conservatives, it is clear some would-be successors to Sunak, notably Braverman, see wider culture war clashes as fertile ground. It was also quite something to see Jacob Rees-Mogg describe mandatory voter ID, a policy he endorsed in cabinet, as an attempt to gerrymander elections in favour of the Tories. While Rishi Sunak will be used to noises-off from the likes of Cates and Kruger, six months into his prime ministership he will note how Suella Braverman, the home secretary, used her speech to both ramp up her culture war credentials and, more notably still, in effect argue against the immigration policy she oversees. Conservative internal discipline is slipping Some confessed to being discomfited, even embarrassed, by the more off-piste speakers. While there were some very earnest US thinktank acolytes – presumably baffled as to why there was a top-hatted protester outside blasting the Benny Hill theme at earsplitting volume – the domestic contingent comprised a mixed bag of culture warriors, free traders, assorted economic liberals and the merely curious. The NatCon conference was reasonably well-attended, at best three-quarters filling the 1,000-capacity main hall of the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster. Jacob Rees-Mogg gave a fairly standard speech on economic liberalism, while Michael Gove actively warned against an over-reliance on populism as an electoral tool. While Cates leaned into such ideas, as did another backbencher, Danny Kruger – who warned against what he described, intriguingly, as “a mix of Marxism and narcissism and paganism, self-worship and nature-worship” – others were more wary. Not every Conservative speaker is a convert ![]() In a sometime freewheeling speech on Monday, Hazony said the UK is plagued by “neo-Marxist” agitators and called for a return to mandatory military service. The conference is run by the Edmund Burke Foundation, a Washington DC-based thinktank chaired by Yoram Hazony, an Israeli-US writer whose populist-nationalist ideas were seen as influential on Donald Trump’s administration. ![]() The NatCon philosophy is quite full-bodied 03:12 NatCon: the most memorable moments from the rightwing conference – video 3.
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