“National Conservatism”

True, but Burke’s arguments work just as well for liberalism. He says we don’t have human rights somehow granted divinely (he was arguing against rights of man in US and French Revolutions) we have rights inherited from a historical process, which we then can alter and pass on. If those rights should be progressive or reactionary is irrelevant to the thesis

I.e we don’t have gay marriage because of some universal human rights, we have gay marriage because society and parliament decided we should have gay marriage

I think that is something certain people find very intimidating. Just from those links posted above you have Douglas Murray who is gay, Melanie Phillips who is Jewish and Theodore Dalrymple, a psychiatrist, atheist and son of a Jewish refugee. A funny line up for a Nazi rally aimed at knuckle dragging bible bashers who secretly just hate minorities. Each of them giving well thought out talks on serious topics from a place of love.

I don't know if there is a Glob Prog conference where alternative ideas are similarly discussed. I've never seen it.

It strikes me that while the progressive left tend to assume intellectual superiority and that conservative ideas are a cover for spite, greed and bigotry, the reality is more like the reverse. They see spite and greed everywhere because that is the lense through which they perceive the world.

Fair point, but I'd have thought that what's going to get them back on track is some clear headed and well informed economic thinking rather than some religious, "anti-woke" stuff. I guess that some of them have picked the latter because they simply don't know how to do the former. Led by the ones that got jobs because of their appropriate views on Brexit or friendship with Boris.

I think about 80-90% of politics is just that, frame-dragging by perception management to acquire voters, but little in terms of any real practical change. Small changes are about the obligation to fulfil specious or purely rhetorical arguments made at some distance from realities.

the problem with the current set of activist cup cakes is that their definition of 'rich' is a nuclear family who can afford a car and a basic house and two children.

not many will challenge the concepts of social justice but the implementation challenges you have with achieving it is that you need everything and all contained inside an air tight box otherwise, the 'rich' will simply flee to a place that's not under tyranny of the implementation of 'social justice'.

I think this is going back to the discourse over whether having £1m+ in assets means you’re well off.

Some people are desperate to prove it doesn’t. Presumably because they see themselves as salt of the earth average guys and being in the top 10% doesn’t track with that.

We did this argument not long ago.

While there is still a generation of people who just bought a house that is now worth a lot of money. It’s more the children of those people who’ve taken advantage of their parent’s good fortune and have ended up pretty well off. They don’t like to admit it though.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, just admit it.

Agreed, but politicians need an "enemy" otherwise they have to admit the failures the provide the above needs are their own. The current government have been in power so long that they're running out of people to blame - it was originally Labour, then the Eastern Europeans, now its the "tofu eating wokerati", or the "anti democratic judges" or asylum seekers, or usually (if Priti Patel or Braverman are speaking) all 3 at once.

The party was gutted of sensible and rational heads who had seen things come and go, and instead it contains a raft of MPs who are utterly unsuited to their roles and instead of fixing real problems which real people care about, they point fingers of blame and attempt to stop those instead.

The reason that asylum seekers are an issue is not the number, but the huge amount of time now needed to process them, which you can map pretty easily against the cuts to the Home Office budget. Obviously the issue is the budget being cut, but far easier to blame the asylum seekers instead.

Good post.