Prime Minister Theresa May. Credit: Jeff J Mitchell / Getty

The psychological differences in political movements interest me more than ideological critiques (which is why I prefer to read a novel than a textbook). What does it mean to be a Labour supporter – what in your ‘story about yourself’ could matter so much that you’d be willing publicly to identify with Corbyn?
I’ve had a go at dissecting the Labour soul before, so it seems only fair to apply the same scalpel to the Tory id. Why am I (and millions of you) Conservative? We could argue that it’s important to control inflation and public spending on the one hand, while maximising personal liberty on the other. Those priorities map to Britain’s Conservative Party, more or less, and so they determine our vote.
That wouldn’t be a lie, but neither is it the (whole) truth. The truth is more about disposition: Toryishness feeds an addiction to something I want. Every movement has a defining politico-psychological sin. What is the Conservatives’?
Conservatism isn’t ideological, no matter how many actors-pretending-to-be-teachers crawl on to Liverpool podiums, heave themselves on to their hind legs, and squawk about neo-liberal wars on the poor. I’m a Tory for anti-ideological reasons: I will vote for whichever candidate and party is best placed to defeat socialism. Is that an addiction? I don’t think so. Conservatives shouldn’t – mustn’t – abandon the war against socialism.
Tory history is long and punctuated with reforms that hit the country like a meteor from the heavens, both in the scale of their impact and because they’re so unexpected (Conservatives? Reforming?). Think about Peel and Catholic emancipation, or Peel again, and the Corn Laws. Think about Thatcher, whose (hugely subsidised) right-to-buy policy was among the single largest transfers of wealth from the middle to the working classes. But this isn’t an addiction (as the post-Thatcher party proves only too well).
Modern Conservatism also inherits Disraeli’s paternalism. There’s a reason every generation of every party’s leadership – Left and Right – lays claim to Disraeli’s One Nation mantle, and not only because he worried about the impact of industrialisation on ‘community fabric’, making him one of Britain’s earliest SJWs. And not only because the coalition of working- and middle-class interests Disraeli fashioned has been the Tories’ most powerful ‘secret’ weapon in that ongoing war against the utopians.
No. One Nation is potent because to adopt it as a guiding principle is to reject the sectarianism on display from Labour since Blair was banished by Brown. You can govern in the interests of Britain or you can govern as the plaything of McCluskey and Stop The War. You most certainly cannot do both.
But the Tory mission is at risk, and for a reason that transcends specific policies. We’ll get to a solution for this in a moment, because it’s linked to our defining sin. What is Conservatism, stripped of all that history? Conservatism as disposition, not as a manifesto commitment. It is a sense of loss.
When I get on the 26 bus to traverse the Hackney Road, and no one else is thinking in English: I feel loss. When I have to interrupt a conversation in Turkish conducted on the shopkeeper’s mobile phone, a shopkeeper who neither speaks to me nor makes eye contact while I buy the cats their tuna fish: I feel loss. When I read about the diminished size of our military, or when I shrivel to my minimal physical volume in a tube carriage stuffed beyond capacity: I feel loss.
Such a sense is uniquely Tory, I think, and as alien to George Osborne as it is to Jonathan Portes, which is why urban liberals, of whichever party, dismiss such sentiment as ‘nativism’. They’re wrong, calamitously so for liberalism – the feeling that we’ve lost something good which we once took for granted – is nothing to do with dislike of individuals. I don’t want to return to the 1950s, however much I yearn for more civilized public transport; but I would like back something of the ‘common sense of belonging’, an attribute of cultures that are more homogeneous than Britain in 2018.
A heightened sense of loss has its uses. It blocks reckless reform (“What if this new paradise you seek to build, comrade, what if it’s not worth the crushed bones and smashed dreams, and ultimately leaves us, you know, less happy?”)
But the near-tangible air of loss which colours the Tory soul has toxic electoral consequences: the sense that we’re looking backwards to a Britain which has gone prevents the party from speaking to the people, and being heard by those people – the Britons whose families arrived here in the waves of immigration since the Second World War – whose support is required to protect the anti-socialist mission into the future.
I say: “I regret the loss of homogeneity in the town where I live.” A black neighbour might hear: “You wish my family hadn’t moved here.” I say: “One Nation is my guiding political principle.” A colleague whose grandmother was born in the Indian subcontinent might hear: “That’s just cover for nativist prejudice, mate, turning a blind eye to institutional injustice.” This is a problem for Conservatism that won’t go away without positive action.
So take some. The party that had the first Jewish leader, the first female Prime Minister, the second female Prime Minister: such a party knows how effective the right leader can be in changing perceptions of our movement. So the next Tory leader, and the next British Prime Minister, should have a non-white ethnic heritage.
I’m not talking about tokenism, still less about positive discrimination, which remains discriminatory, unfair and wrong, whatever adjective is applied to it. No Tory association would select candidates as talentless as Dawn Butler and Diane Abbot, for example, still less put them in the shadow cabinet.
Choosing a non-white leader would be a tactical response to the problem of the anti-Tory cultural hegemony. Conservatives used to ‘own’ institutions; now we are those same institutions’ top political target. Too many Corbynite lecturers and BBC dramatists and Church of England vicars whisper in the ears of their audiences that Tories are backward-looking, nativist, illiberal towards people who don’t look like modern Britain. I don’t believe this to be true. But it is the narrative reality.
Politics is downstream from culture. The culture has it that Tories have a problem with newer Britons. Our addiction to nostalgia makes this caricature hard to shake off. This is translating into a political headache which increases the probability of the worst and most socialist administration the country would ever have seen.
So defy nostalgia, and elect a leader who makes that defiance clear. Change the political narrative about Conservatives and modern Britain, and not only would Corbyn’s rancid pack of sectarian haters be crushed; some of the ‘upstream’ damage in our institutions to the long-term health of the centre-Right would be unwound.
As I write, news is breaking that Shaun Bailey has been selected by London Tories as our candidate against Sadiq Kahn. That won’t be an easy fight, but the election just got interesting, and a large part of Khan’s campaign strategy – the narrative he would tell about his Tory opponent – just vanished into thin air. (The attacks on Bailey from Labour will be disgusting – the odious Emma Dent Coad MP already referred to him as a “token ghetto boy”, a phrase racist enough for all but a Corbynite to be expelled from public life. The Left’s hatred of black Tories, like its hatred of gay Tories, is instructive.)
Now imagine what Sajid Javid could do to Jeremy Corbyn in a general election. Colour-blind meritocratic Tory instincts about candidate selection have led to a parliamentary talent pool that could destroy Labour’s inimical narrative about our party with a glance. We will not be defined by our sense of loss. Look at the sky; the air is fizzing: one of those rare Tory meteors may be about to hit the earth.
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SubscribeThis is a very good article, except that it fails to make the point that Black Lives Matter is a racist hate group which should be treated like the KKK.
The KKKlan with a Tan is what I call BLM.
The difference is that the BLM actually believes its own b/s. The KKK these days, like Trump, are adept at PR-speak to cover up their uglkiness, which even teh KK is ashamed of. But eth BLM are proud of their woke nonsense.
No one can write that in an article without the risk of being cancelled. We need voices like Ayaan’s. I am grateful for her erudite forbearance.
Total clarity, as always, thank you. And highlighting a clear risk. Most radical political movements are destructively neuropathic, as Freud observed, and deserve our effective opposition. My part-Jamaican daughter and her naturalised African American mother would share your views in totality, as do I. My spectacularly wonderful daughter has moved from leftist-influenced opponent of the ‘American Dream’ in her first US liberal arts degree, to a politically conservative about-to-graduate lawyer with a deep interest in politics, an extremely gratifying sign of growth and maturity.
Coherent and accurate as always from this writer.
The adoption of all-things BLM by the blob and media was at best idiotically naive – or worse deeply insidious.
It also gave the failed Remainers a new tool with which to hate the U.K. (and its population).
Do mean the UK or England? Brexit has strengthened English nationalism, at the union’s expense
I guess I’m referring to the way some people view the English. It’s worth differentiating however between “nationalism” and “patriotism” though – and many choose not to see the difference.
To assert that Remainers hate the UK is plain daft. In your own way, you’re at risk of becoming as self-righteous as any wokester.
Fair comment – it’s only a limited subset of Remainers that seem to persist in badmouthing the country
BLM seems to be a conspiracy to ensure that black people maintain their victimhood culture.
A bit like the Labour Party seeking to ensure that the working class remain poor.
It’s in tune with the times. All identity politics – from MeToo through BLM to Brexit – all of them thrive on a sense of being wringed and finding scapegoats, whether such hate figures are men, whites or the EU / Remainers, the mindset is similar.
BLM states that it is “committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement”.
That good old norm bashing on the modern left is tiring.
Firstly, is it not already the case in many Black Communities: absence of family structure? If would appear that not the absence of the norm but the absence of fulfilling that norm is the real issue (causes for this lie both within the domain of individual responsibility as well as that of society. Which is something both liberals and conservaties recognized before being equally infected with neoliberal thoughts, lets call it what it is: relentless selfishness)
Secondly, BLM seem to think that black people are somehow outside of Western thought. Magically, 300 years on North American continent has had no impact on their thinking and how they live in the world. This derives from their their skin colour, which through almost divine power excludes them from their surrounding, which is now an enemy rather than something to reconcile with. This kind of thinking shows the cynical intellectual relationship between the KKK and BLM (imo)
“This kind of thinking shows the cynical intellectual relationship between the KKK and BLM (imo)”
imo too. Hence my earlier comment that we should treat both these violent racist hate groups the same.
I cannot recommend ‘Bannon’s War Room’ enough to see how the Parents movement is taking over the school boards in huge waves through Mother’s finally seeing what horrors were being taught to their children after they got to actually see the school curriculum themselves by school lockdown and home classes on line.
Search the streaming service Rumble – the service, free, which will not be censored. Really – search Rumble – do ‘recent’ and ‘Long’ to get the full shows, of just see the clips. The Mothers of USA are taking back the Country.
In Virginia the amazing sweeping to power of Govoner Youngkin was on this – mobilizing mothers to take back their schools and get elected to the school boards who were twisting the children with their sick curriculum. Desantis of Florida is charging forward with this cause of Parents taking back the schools by running in all the board positions – and sweeping the state.This is snowballing and is changing the Nation.
The Mothers in USA have Mobilized, and they are going to take back the education! It is like watching a Revolution happening.
Search terms? Mothers in USA?
Frank Zappa
The clowns taking over school boards border on inbred nitwits who believe Critical Race Theory is being taught in K-12.
It is not.
Very true, not theory but practical application of the theory.
BLM – Black Lives Monetised?
Having recently been critical of Unherd, i must in fairness congratulate it for the occasional well-argued and refreshingly intelligent piece such as this one.
It strikes me that Ayaan is incapable of committing ‘words to paper’ without soundly demolishing some shibboleth or other. In taking aim at BLM as an organisation, she’s not the first to do so but this is the first piece i’ve read which so clearly exposes how BLM is having precisely the opposite effect on the life chances of black people than intended.
How long will the BLM flag continue to be flown on school gates, i wonder? When these flags become bedraggled through weathering, will they be replaced, or will the perception of BLM have changed?
BLM is not “an organization”.
The term is used by multiple groups, cannot be trademarked and cannot be controlled or owned by one group of people.
The author is shockingly dishonest in selecting one group and painting the entire Black Lives Matter concept to that group.
That’s the same as saying all people who voted for Trump are morons and traitors because Trump is a moron and a traitor.
“Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.”
— https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/
Thank you – a good piece.
Chicago homicide figures for 2021. (Chicago has about a third of the population of London)
Homicides – 798
Black victims – 684
Killed by police – 9
(Courtesy http://www.heyjackass.com)
Homicides in London 2021: 13
Bravo Ayaan Hirsi Ali ! A needed corrective to BLM worship.
The original BLM Manifesto stated they wanted to drive the State of Israel into the sea.Then when they started looking for funding they decided that publicly talking about destroying Israel might be a handicap not least with getting money off the big media corporations.
The reason we’re not allowed to say all lives matter is that they think black lives matter more than others. The left believes that victimhood conveys moral superiority. From this it follows that blacks as victims are better than others. Hence BLM, not ALM.
To display a BLM flag is to declare war against Western man. The cuckoos are well and truly in the nest.
The Western media fanned the flames in the wake of the death of fentanyl abuser and career criminal St George Floyd. As far as I am concerned CNN, Sky, and their like are just as bad as the swindling crackpots at the helm of BLM.
BLM gain hugely from black’s being fatherless. A sad but probably true joke about the BLM race riots of 2020 was that everything was stolen except Father’s Day cards and condoms. Marxists see no need for either of these things.
The Heritage Site | Adam McDermont | Substack
All so true and serious.
A voice of reasoned, fair sanity. I will research the VBMU and lend support.
Curiously not many black faces in the photograph.
Is it really curious? There are not that many faces in the photograph, so if even one was black it might not be representative of that society as a whole.
In the UK we have become used to seeing a disproportionate number of non-white faces in quasi-official photographs. I went to the alumni website of my old college the other day, and one photo had no caucasian faces at all ! (They must have worked really hard to put together such a non-representative ‘woke’ tableau.)
BLM, CRT and their adherents are not out for equality or even equity.
They are out for revenge, and they are willing to sacrifice the futures of their own children to achieve it.
The same children that attend the BLM flag-waving schools that are run by idiots. Idiots who are slaves to short-termism and just want to appear ‘virtuous’ on Twitter for the next month or so.
If these people could recognise their own fatuousness and failure to think an idea through to its conclusion, and realise that total racial segregation is the only logical end-point to their poison, they would at least be partially useful.
As it is, they should never be allowed within one mile of any child. MLK had the best and only way forward.
BLM is a criminal organization: violent, psychotic, and lawless. They are truly nasty, racist people incapable of contributing to the ascent of man.!
BLM staged HUNDREDS of riots which resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of millions in property destruction.
It is therefore a TERRORIST group.
Gosh, even professional footballers saw through #BLM and stopped supporting them.
If professional footballers can work out what’s happening, it must be pretty obvious.
Anti-White thugs such as BLM and Antifa attack White people that peacefully protest against the genocidal policy of mass third-world immigration and FORCED assimilation being pushed in EVERY White country and ONLY White countries. If anti-White ideas are so good, why do they require street violence to make sure nobody will object? It’s obvious that these thugs really only want White Genocide.
A death by police is oppression but no activist cares about black on black deaths. It’s not politically relavant. To white liberals. Who besides a mother cares about some black n…. Not the liberal elite
The foul Floyd wasn’t murdered. He died, mostly by his own hand.
‘10. Black Families
We are committed to making our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children’
I’m not stopping them.
Have they considered becoming Mormons?
This is an interesting article, but misses an obvious point. The term Black Lives Matter does not belong only to the organization the author complains about.
The term cannot be trademarked, is used by multiple organizations and people and hence, her carping regarding the so called positions and alleged corruption of one organization is irrelevant to the concept of BLM.
The issue is very simple.
Do Black Lives Matter?
The rest of her article is nonsense.
Of course black lives matter.
I’m disappointed that Ms. Hirsi Ali conflates the slogan and philosophy of Black Lives Matter with specific organizations that use (and perhaps have co-opted) the name. The BLM flag does not belong to any one organization, just as the rainbow flag doesn’t belong to one organization.
I’m grateful she provided a link to the web page that discussed disrupting the norm of the nuclear family structure requirement, because she seems to be reading something differently into it that what I suspect was the authors’ intent. It sounded to me like a call for community to support families, not calling for the literal abolition of the family, although like the author, I would have liked to have seen fathers explicitly mentioned rather than just “mothers” and “parents.” This is the excerpt:
10. Black Families
We are committed to making our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We are committed to dismantling the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” that require them to mother in private even as they participate in justice work.
11. Black Villages
We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, and especially “our” children to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.
Finally, as with other movements for change, I don’t see BLM as cultivating a fatalistic worldview among Black youth (although it isn’t really my lane as a White man to argue this, since Black Americans are well suited to speak for themselves). By definition, a movement for change is based on a belief that things in fact can get better. Yes, there is racism, both structural and interpersonal, and the broad BLM movement is addressing it. That includes addressing “privilege,” and please note that the statement of values also encourages Black Americans to analyze their own privilege, so we White Americans need not get ourselves tied up in a knot over that:
5. Globalism
We see ourselves as part of the global Black family and we are aware of the different ways we are impacted or privileged as Black folk who exist in different parts of the world.
Like the author, I don’t believe “defunding the police” is necessarily the answer either, but I hope my fellow White Americans who are reading the article can maintain an open mind about the goals of the BLM movement and not write it off completely.
I find it interesting that my carefully thought out answer (and anyone pointing out that BLM is not an actual organization) gets downvoted in a big way without so much as a thoughtful rebuttal, yet two-second potshots comparing BLM to the KKK get upvoted all the way to the top. Some of the comments here with which I disagree seem at least to be thought out, but others indicate many British conservatives aren’t any more open to thoughtful dialogue than American conservatives and the UnHerd readership not much different from the OAN readership in the U.S. It is disappointing because I very much respect UnHerd as a publication and thought the comment section would be less shrill than its American counterparts. As a moderate who seeks to understand both sides, I find that disappointing.
The problem with your comments is that people understood them.
Hence the downvotes.
Patrick, welcome to the tribal mentality of Unherd readers. Your points are very reasonable and stem from fair assumptions.
Upvotes and downvotes on this forum are merely a barometer for whether people share your views, not any measure of whether your argument is strong or weak. Indeed, sometimes good arguments are the most downvoted because they touch nerves and lazy unthinking people react emotionally without having the respect of the argument they disagree with to even bother countering it.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of small minded people here for whom Unherd is a “safe space” to vent views that are not permitted elsewhere. And, many of these people attempt to keep it that way by bullying people like yourself with barrages of downvotes for views that dare to be “main stream” (as they see it).
I hope you’ll continue to make a contribution despite this. I for one appreciate different perspectives, as I have of yours on this occasion (though, I do disagree with a few of your central premises – if I find time this week I will explain why).
Sadly, Unherd provides less and less of this in the comment section now, and I think it’s because the bullies with the downvotes leave so many people feeling unwelcome.
‘Yes, there is racism, both structural and interpersonal, and the broad BLM movement is addressing it.’
No it isn’t
Name one city where BLM has improved the daily lives of black people.
For example, how has Chokwe Antar Lumumba improved the lives of people in Jackson, Mississippi? Oh I forgot, it was white racists who stole the drinking water……
From the perspectives of two of the founders, Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza who both happen to be lesbians, one or possibly both with trans male partners ( technically also lesbian(s) – (the third founder, Opal Tometi too?), I’,m pretty sure that “dismantling the patriarchy and the nuclear family are very much their aims.
I’ve seen a video clip where she prefaces her poisonous spittle with “speaking as a trained Marxist…”
However, I’m pretty sure that although these aims appeared in an earlier version of their website, I think they received so much flack from the black community they removed the anti patriarchy / dismantle the nuclear family portions.
I can’t be bothered to check, but this was the case a year or two ago.