To those who would say that such reports have been exaggerated, forecasters would point to the cannibalisation of the US Republican Party by the forces of the extreme right beginning with the Tea Party and culminating in the second election of Donald Trump to the Presidency in 2024. There is also the example of the collapse of the mainstream centre right in France in the form of the Republicans (and its Gaullist predecessor Union for a :Popular Movement – UPR) and the Union of Democrats and Independents and its colonisation by the National Rally – the rebranded Front National- led by Marine Le Pen. The disappearance of Italy’s post war hegemon the Christian Democrats and the rise of far-right Georgi Meloni to the post of Prime Minister can be seen as another harbinger of doom to mainstream conservatism. Flush with defections of prominent figure from the Conservative Right such as Nadine Dorries and David Kruger, the insurgent Reform UK is confidently proclaiming that “we are coming for you.” But to what extent do these developments represent the death of a distinct mode of politics and philosophy - the imperative to conserve institutions, opposition to change for change’s sake but commitment to liberal democracy or the reorientation of Conservatism in the era of the Global Convergence of the Right which represents more continuity with the past rather than a clean break?
Citing the observations of Corey Robin in The Reactionary Mind, James Bloodworth points out that conservatism is not just about preserving what exists, but about mobilising elites and the masses against any emancipatory project. In true amoebic style Conservatism reinvents whenever it feels that existing privileges are under threat. Today, this reinvention manifests itself in populist anger aimed at migrants, welfare recipients and an imagined progressive, wokeist ‘elite.’[1]
Bloodworth also cites the critical Gramscian insight that power rests not only on coercion but also on hegemony: the ability of a ruling class to embed its worldview as ‘common sense’ through culture, institutions, and discourse. With the hollowing out of the state in so many areas from local government crippled by the austerity agendas of central government; poor service delivery to the degradation of public spaces by fly-tipping, anti-social behaviour and disrepair and diminution of shared civic values, populists on the radical-right have seized the moment to undermine traditional institutions and to construct parallel ones. In so doing, they have exploited the lack of compelling narratives from the left and centre-right and the cynicism of many towards politics and politicians, to stoke the flames of resentment, prejudice, and paranoia.[2]
This ‘counter-hegemony’ has its origins in the ‘Gramscism of the right’ of the European New Right led by thinkers such as Alain de Benost in the 1970s and 1980s. Their goal was to normalise ethno-nationalist ideas in cultural life before translating them into politics. Contemporary Alt-Right figures such as Steve Bannon in the United States have developed this logic further, urging conservatives to match ‘the long march through the institutions’ journey that has often been attributed to the radical left.[3]
In practice, this has meant billionaires buying up substantial segments of the media landscape, as well as right-leaning academics establishing new scholarly and research institutions to rival what they regard as bastions of ‘progressive orthodoxy.’ It has also meant that with the end of the era of the Reithian BBC and other respected public service outlet such as the NBC of Walter Cronkite fame, a modern information ecosystem in which partisan news outlets such as GB News and Fox News and an Elon Musk controlled are major players has emerged which feeds its consumers a diet of triviality, entertainment, and polarisation.[4] The original public service broadcasting mission to inform, educate and entertain has been replaced by a new generation of media entrepreneurs (think Trump, Berlusconi) who seek to profit from the Triple P virus of populism, polarisation and post-truth of which they are not insignificant spreaders.
The current wave of right-wing populism is a simultaneous reaction, continuation and unwinding of the contradictory nature of the ideological impulse which underpinned the electoral triumph of the political right in the 1980s in the US and UK – the marriage of free-market globalisation with traditionalism and nationalism. The contradictions lay in the way free-market economics undermines traditional social values and the grafting of a patrician and paternalistic conservatism onto a more populist appeal to aspirational but socially conservative voters (in marketing speak – the C2s or Essex/Basildon Man). There were also elements of pragmatism in the conservatism of that era.[5]
These contradictions were embodied in arguably the most iconic conservative figure of that era, Margaret Thatcher, who to her detractors was so ideological that she birthed an explicit philosophy – “Thatcherism’” As the “grocer’s daughter”, she espoused the ‘Victorian values’ of hard work and thrift yet her “bonfire of regulations” financial policies turbo-fuelled a generation of maxing out the credit card consumption and led to the 2008 financial crash. During her time in office, traditional businesses, strongly rooted in local communities, gave way to rootless ‘casino capitalism.’ While certainly an ideological and nationalist politician, she retained a pragmatism over, for example, the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 and over EU membership (or rather the Single Market rather than closer EU political integration.
Part of the driving force of the contemporary right-wing populism is a reaction to the effect of the global free market, including the fight of traditional manufacturing jobs, and the erosion of the communities they sustained. Despite this, the deregulatory elements of the alliance continue. The vote for Brexit was an amalgam of the preferences of those who wanted a Global Britain of even more deregulation and global free-trade deals, who fantasised about a Singapore-on-Thames economic model for Britain and who did not stress over immigration, with those who wanted economic protectionism and massive reductions in immigration.[6]
The effects of these incompatible expectations are still being acted out. The four per cent drop in the UK’s GDP since it left the EU does not appear to feature in the calculus of free market thinktanks like the Institute of Economic Affairs while the unrelenting animus over immigration has been fuelled by the rise in immigration from outside the EU in the post-Brexit years powered by the Boris visas. Forgotten or conveniently ignored by Brexiteers is that the ability to return rejected asylum seekers to France has been hampered by Britain’s departure from the Dublin Convention and returns arrangements from its erstwhile EU partners as a consequence of Brexit. But rather than offering mea culpas for their deliberate conflation of freedom of movement with asylum and economic migration from outside the EU bloc; the forever warriors of the Brexit conflicts trained their sights on the “small boats” threat to English shores.
What has disappeared from this alliance are the vestigial remains of patrician paternalism, pragmatism and social progressivism which are important elements of most centre-right formations. In the US, those strands of conservatism represented by patrician, elder states people figures like Senator John McCain, East Coast preppy Rockefeller Republicans, scions of Republican dynasties like Liz Cheney and even national security hawks like John Bolton have all but disappeared from Donald Trump’s Republicans. In Britain, Boris Johnson as PM expelled virtually all pragmatists and progressives such as Dominic Grieve and David Gaulke from the Conservative Party for deviations from Brexit orthodoxies. As a consequence, the Tories are locked in possibly mortal combat with Reform for populist support, having shed much of its Blue Wall “small c” support to the Liberal Democrats.
A significant factor in the Conservative Party’s lemming like march to the populist right is thus this loss of the strong connection of its leadership with its middle-class base since the John Major era. While Margaret Thatcher’s hostility towards the trade union movement and the immiseration of those made redundant by the demise of heavy industry guaranteed her status as a hate figure for working-class voters, her rewarding of the middle-class and aspirant middle class through extension of home ownership, lower taxes and creation of share options in privatised utilities created a large enough franchise to ensure four successive general election victories and 18 years in power for the Tories under Thatcher and Major. Both Thatcher and Major, and in turn Tony Blair, became synonymous with social mobility and ‘Middle England.’[7]
However, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, both Etonians from comfortable backgrounds, could not ‘get’ the aspirations of their electorate in the visceral way Thatcher and Major had. The Conservative Party was now being financed by hedge funds and oligarchs rather than small donors. Cameron’s reckless gamble on a binary in/out EU referendum in the interests of his party, not the country, ushered in the culture wars and the damaging economic consequences of Hard Brexit. The austerity agenda of Cameron and George Osborne, his Chancellor, plus an increasing tax burden restricted social mobility in the UK to such an extent that in 2023 the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that it was harder for children from poor households to move into higher income brackets than 40 years ago.[8]
With the seeming death of Thatcherite aspiration and its inability to reboot it, the Conservative Party now offers MAGA style politics of grievance and othering which is out of sync with its centre ground supporters who are not a dying species as shown by analysis in 2024 by the National Centre for Social Research of the British Social Attitudes data which estimated that 43% of the population could be classed as part of the centre or middle-ground.[9]
Furthermore, University College London also conducted a More in Common Poll in 2024 that found that 73% of English respondents said they neither want to “recreate the country’s past” nor “forget it entirely” – rejecting polarised extremes, with only 13% saying they thought they thought the Establishment was “too woke”.[10]
And it is on the issues of asylum and immigration that the venture of contemporary conservatism onto the terrain of ethnic “blood and soil” nationalism has been most pronounced. Crass though the language of a 1983 Tory campaign advert proclaiming “With the Conservatives, there are no blacks, no whites, just people “appears, it is hard to imagine Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick uttering those words. For in May, he complained that “the white British population has reduced by 50%” in 25 years in parts of Dagenham and “understandably, some people who live there will feel the place that they knew no longer exists”[11]
Conservative MP Neil O’Brien claims that, in places like Islington, “people cannot really integrate into the traditional majority culture – it doesn’t exist any more.”[12]
So stripped of all the resource arguments around immigration; the pressure on local school places, NHS capacity, jobs and the economy and the logistics of the accommodation of asylum applicants is the real driver of migration anxieties; the prioritisation of ethnic identity over all the other profound transformations that British society has undergone. The sugar coating of such anxieties, that it is human nature to be uncomfortable with rapid ethnic change, has been used by politicians to justify restrictions on immigration to avoid the accusations of racism.[13]
But when ‘sensible’ commentators such as David Goodhart – head of the demographic, immigration, and integration unit at conservative think tank Policy Exchange predicts that within a decade only one in five Londoners will be “natives” (a category he reserves for white people) or Ed West – former Deputy Editor of Unherd – asserts that “it is not the 1990s: there has been drastic and dramatic demographic change since then, way beyond what any group of people would find tolerable”; they do not specify the why, the how and who would find this process intolerable. But the underlying logic is the same as “blood and soil” nationalism and that of The Great Replacement Theory – that ancestry and ethnicity is the most important identity, trumping class, age, and everything else.[14]
Such is the moral and political cul-de-sac that modern conservatism has boxed itself into it.
Citing the observations of Corey Robin in The Reactionary Mind, James Bloodworth points out that conservatism is not just about preserving what exists, but about mobilising elites and the masses against any emancipatory project. In true amoebic style Conservatism reinvents whenever it feels that existing privileges are under threat. Today, this reinvention manifests itself in populist anger aimed at migrants, welfare recipients and an imagined progressive, wokeist ‘elite.’[1]
Bloodworth also cites the critical Gramscian insight that power rests not only on coercion but also on hegemony: the ability of a ruling class to embed its worldview as ‘common sense’ through culture, institutions, and discourse. With the hollowing out of the state in so many areas from local government crippled by the austerity agendas of central government; poor service delivery to the degradation of public spaces by fly-tipping, anti-social behaviour and disrepair and diminution of shared civic values, populists on the radical-right have seized the moment to undermine traditional institutions and to construct parallel ones. In so doing, they have exploited the lack of compelling narratives from the left and centre-right and the cynicism of many towards politics and politicians, to stoke the flames of resentment, prejudice, and paranoia.[2]
This ‘counter-hegemony’ has its origins in the ‘Gramscism of the right’ of the European New Right led by thinkers such as Alain de Benost in the 1970s and 1980s. Their goal was to normalise ethno-nationalist ideas in cultural life before translating them into politics. Contemporary Alt-Right figures such as Steve Bannon in the United States have developed this logic further, urging conservatives to match ‘the long march through the institutions’ journey that has often been attributed to the radical left.[3]
In practice, this has meant billionaires buying up substantial segments of the media landscape, as well as right-leaning academics establishing new scholarly and research institutions to rival what they regard as bastions of ‘progressive orthodoxy.’ It has also meant that with the end of the era of the Reithian BBC and other respected public service outlet such as the NBC of Walter Cronkite fame, a modern information ecosystem in which partisan news outlets such as GB News and Fox News and an Elon Musk controlled are major players has emerged which feeds its consumers a diet of triviality, entertainment, and polarisation.[4] The original public service broadcasting mission to inform, educate and entertain has been replaced by a new generation of media entrepreneurs (think Trump, Berlusconi) who seek to profit from the Triple P virus of populism, polarisation and post-truth of which they are not insignificant spreaders.
The current wave of right-wing populism is a simultaneous reaction, continuation and unwinding of the contradictory nature of the ideological impulse which underpinned the electoral triumph of the political right in the 1980s in the US and UK – the marriage of free-market globalisation with traditionalism and nationalism. The contradictions lay in the way free-market economics undermines traditional social values and the grafting of a patrician and paternalistic conservatism onto a more populist appeal to aspirational but socially conservative voters (in marketing speak – the C2s or Essex/Basildon Man). There were also elements of pragmatism in the conservatism of that era.[5]
These contradictions were embodied in arguably the most iconic conservative figure of that era, Margaret Thatcher, who to her detractors was so ideological that she birthed an explicit philosophy – “Thatcherism’” As the “grocer’s daughter”, she espoused the ‘Victorian values’ of hard work and thrift yet her “bonfire of regulations” financial policies turbo-fuelled a generation of maxing out the credit card consumption and led to the 2008 financial crash. During her time in office, traditional businesses, strongly rooted in local communities, gave way to rootless ‘casino capitalism.’ While certainly an ideological and nationalist politician, she retained a pragmatism over, for example, the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 and over EU membership (or rather the Single Market rather than closer EU political integration.
Part of the driving force of the contemporary right-wing populism is a reaction to the effect of the global free market, including the fight of traditional manufacturing jobs, and the erosion of the communities they sustained. Despite this, the deregulatory elements of the alliance continue. The vote for Brexit was an amalgam of the preferences of those who wanted a Global Britain of even more deregulation and global free-trade deals, who fantasised about a Singapore-on-Thames economic model for Britain and who did not stress over immigration, with those who wanted economic protectionism and massive reductions in immigration.[6]
The effects of these incompatible expectations are still being acted out. The four per cent drop in the UK’s GDP since it left the EU does not appear to feature in the calculus of free market thinktanks like the Institute of Economic Affairs while the unrelenting animus over immigration has been fuelled by the rise in immigration from outside the EU in the post-Brexit years powered by the Boris visas. Forgotten or conveniently ignored by Brexiteers is that the ability to return rejected asylum seekers to France has been hampered by Britain’s departure from the Dublin Convention and returns arrangements from its erstwhile EU partners as a consequence of Brexit. But rather than offering mea culpas for their deliberate conflation of freedom of movement with asylum and economic migration from outside the EU bloc; the forever warriors of the Brexit conflicts trained their sights on the “small boats” threat to English shores.
What has disappeared from this alliance are the vestigial remains of patrician paternalism, pragmatism and social progressivism which are important elements of most centre-right formations. In the US, those strands of conservatism represented by patrician, elder states people figures like Senator John McCain, East Coast preppy Rockefeller Republicans, scions of Republican dynasties like Liz Cheney and even national security hawks like John Bolton have all but disappeared from Donald Trump’s Republicans. In Britain, Boris Johnson as PM expelled virtually all pragmatists and progressives such as Dominic Grieve and David Gaulke from the Conservative Party for deviations from Brexit orthodoxies. As a consequence, the Tories are locked in possibly mortal combat with Reform for populist support, having shed much of its Blue Wall “small c” support to the Liberal Democrats.
A significant factor in the Conservative Party’s lemming like march to the populist right is thus this loss of the strong connection of its leadership with its middle-class base since the John Major era. While Margaret Thatcher’s hostility towards the trade union movement and the immiseration of those made redundant by the demise of heavy industry guaranteed her status as a hate figure for working-class voters, her rewarding of the middle-class and aspirant middle class through extension of home ownership, lower taxes and creation of share options in privatised utilities created a large enough franchise to ensure four successive general election victories and 18 years in power for the Tories under Thatcher and Major. Both Thatcher and Major, and in turn Tony Blair, became synonymous with social mobility and ‘Middle England.’[7]
However, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, both Etonians from comfortable backgrounds, could not ‘get’ the aspirations of their electorate in the visceral way Thatcher and Major had. The Conservative Party was now being financed by hedge funds and oligarchs rather than small donors. Cameron’s reckless gamble on a binary in/out EU referendum in the interests of his party, not the country, ushered in the culture wars and the damaging economic consequences of Hard Brexit. The austerity agenda of Cameron and George Osborne, his Chancellor, plus an increasing tax burden restricted social mobility in the UK to such an extent that in 2023 the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that it was harder for children from poor households to move into higher income brackets than 40 years ago.[8]
With the seeming death of Thatcherite aspiration and its inability to reboot it, the Conservative Party now offers MAGA style politics of grievance and othering which is out of sync with its centre ground supporters who are not a dying species as shown by analysis in 2024 by the National Centre for Social Research of the British Social Attitudes data which estimated that 43% of the population could be classed as part of the centre or middle-ground.[9]
Furthermore, University College London also conducted a More in Common Poll in 2024 that found that 73% of English respondents said they neither want to “recreate the country’s past” nor “forget it entirely” – rejecting polarised extremes, with only 13% saying they thought they thought the Establishment was “too woke”.[10]
And it is on the issues of asylum and immigration that the venture of contemporary conservatism onto the terrain of ethnic “blood and soil” nationalism has been most pronounced. Crass though the language of a 1983 Tory campaign advert proclaiming “With the Conservatives, there are no blacks, no whites, just people “appears, it is hard to imagine Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick uttering those words. For in May, he complained that “the white British population has reduced by 50%” in 25 years in parts of Dagenham and “understandably, some people who live there will feel the place that they knew no longer exists”[11]
Conservative MP Neil O’Brien claims that, in places like Islington, “people cannot really integrate into the traditional majority culture – it doesn’t exist any more.”[12]
So stripped of all the resource arguments around immigration; the pressure on local school places, NHS capacity, jobs and the economy and the logistics of the accommodation of asylum applicants is the real driver of migration anxieties; the prioritisation of ethnic identity over all the other profound transformations that British society has undergone. The sugar coating of such anxieties, that it is human nature to be uncomfortable with rapid ethnic change, has been used by politicians to justify restrictions on immigration to avoid the accusations of racism.[13]
But when ‘sensible’ commentators such as David Goodhart – head of the demographic, immigration, and integration unit at conservative think tank Policy Exchange predicts that within a decade only one in five Londoners will be “natives” (a category he reserves for white people) or Ed West – former Deputy Editor of Unherd – asserts that “it is not the 1990s: there has been drastic and dramatic demographic change since then, way beyond what any group of people would find tolerable”; they do not specify the why, the how and who would find this process intolerable. But the underlying logic is the same as “blood and soil” nationalism and that of The Great Replacement Theory – that ancestry and ethnicity is the most important identity, trumping class, age, and everything else.[14]
Such is the moral and political cul-de-sac that modern conservatism has boxed itself into it.
References
[1] James Bloodworth, From Maggie to MAGA: The Transformation of the Conservatives Mind. Byline Times. October 2005 pp.38-41
[2] Ibid, p.40
[3] Ibid, p.41
[4] Ibid, p.41
[5] Chris Grey, The New Traditionalism: Targeting the ‘Enemies Within’. Byline Times. October 2025 p.37
[6] Ibid
[7] Stephen Colegrave, How Conservatism Vacated the Centre-Ground. Byline Times. October 2025 p.33
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid
[10]Ibid
[11] Jonathan Portes, The Return of ‘Blood and Soil’ Nationalism. Byline Times. October 2025 p.31
[12] Ibid
[13] Ibid
[14] Ibid
⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.
[1] James Bloodworth, From Maggie to MAGA: The Transformation of the Conservatives Mind. Byline Times. October 2005 pp.38-41
[2] Ibid, p.40
[3] Ibid, p.41
[4] Ibid, p.41
[5] Chris Grey, The New Traditionalism: Targeting the ‘Enemies Within’. Byline Times. October 2025 p.37
[6] Ibid
[7] Stephen Colegrave, How Conservatism Vacated the Centre-Ground. Byline Times. October 2025 p.33
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid
[10]Ibid
[11] Jonathan Portes, The Return of ‘Blood and Soil’ Nationalism. Byline Times. October 2025 p.31
[12] Ibid
[13] Ibid
[14] Ibid
⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.
