The British Right should put Kent before Kyiv

Telegraph

2 days ago

Shortly after the local elections, in which the Conservative Party suffered one of its worst electoral defeats in living memory, I addressed a small group of shell-shocked Tories and warned them that the results indicated their party faced an existential challenge unlike any it had faced in its long history.
To my astonishment, the post-speech discussion veered instantly towards the war in Ukraine and the US vice-president's perceived incivility towards President Zelensky. Momentarily losing my composure, I accused them of suffering from 'Ukraine Brain' and argued that polling in the run-up to the elections had made it unambiguously clear that the British people would rather its leaders prioritise 'the defence of Kent over the defence of Kiev [sic]'. There followed a stunned silence that was broken eventually by an aggressively whispered ' Kyiv.'
The furious intensity with which so many Tories of a particular age follow every twist and turn of the Russia-Ukraine conflict – even when staring in the face of electoral oblivion – can be hard to understand. Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that it is psychological displacement, a way to sidestep the spectre of national decline by chasing the phantom of a geopolitical influence that has long since faded.
The incident returned to my mind when reading Charles Moore's bracing column last weekend, in which he warned that National Conservatives like the US vice-president and myself were, as the headline theatrically put it, flirting with 'a perverted patriotism that may yet lead to neo-fascism'.
In a Gallic modulation of Godwin's Law, Moore claimed he had detected an echo of the Vichy slogan ' Famille, Travail, Patrie ' ('Family, Work, Country') in the title of a speech I had given – 'Faith, Family, Flag, Freedom' – in which I argued that the New Right should adopt a version of Augustine's ordo amoris as the organising principle for a conservative politics of home and belonging.
I did not mention Ukraine or Russia once, but my discussion of the importance of family and nationhood at a major conservative conference was to his mind evidence that I was a Pétainiste and so, by extension, a Poutiniste. He then cited my accurate observation that more people face penalties for free speech in Britain than in Russia as proof of my sympathy for the latter, when my point was to underscore the severity of Britain's free-speech crisis by comparing it to the most notoriously oppressive regime I could think of. (And, in any event, to note that X is worse than Y in respect of Z is not to endorse Y in any respect.)
Baffled though I was by his reasoning, I found it hard to disagree with Moore's claim that a tension is indeed emerging across the Western world on the Right, on the neuralgic question of how to weigh national interest against risky and costly involvement in faraway conflicts.
He was right too to note that the issue has become a key point of contention among National Conservatives, a global movement of the New Right numbering thousands of Right-wing politicians, academics, and commentators from dozens of countries. Where he went wrong was thinking that there is a single leading figure in the movement who does not unequivocally condemn Russia's unprovoked violation of Ukraine's sovereignty, or salute the extraordinary courage that nation has shown in defending itself against Putin's shameless aggression.
Some view support for Ukraine as a moral and strategic stand against authoritarianism and are convinced that appeasement through negotiations with Russia will only embolden further aggression. Others argue that Western support is prolonging an unwinnable war and inflicting far greater suffering and destruction on Ukraine than might have been avoided had peace negotiations been pursued more vigorously early on.
The debate highlights the principled realism of the New Right, a realism that tries to balance the claims of justice with the competing priorities of nations affected in different ways and to different degrees by geopolitical conflict.
Regrettably, that is an approach that seems to enrage the Old Right, which insists on refracting almost every geopolitical crisis through the prism of the 1930s and 1940s. Steeped in the post-war myths of British exceptionalism – Chamberlain's folly, Churchill's heroism, the grit of the Blitz – they insist on treating Putin as Hitler, Zelensky as Churchill, Ukraine as Poland, and any pursuit of peaceful resolution as the appeasement of a Chamberlain or the collaboration of a Pétain.
This mindset – 'World War Two Brain,' in the idiolect of the Right-wing Zoomers who are most mystified by it – motivates hopelessly muddled thinking and ignores the realpolitik of Russia's longstanding paranoia over Nato, the conflict's devastating effects on European energy prices, and the disastrous realignment of Russia with China.
It is fuelling a confrontation that is inflicting damage on Ukraine from which it will take decades to recover, it is straining Britain's resources amidst a flurry of domestic challenges unprecedented in living memory, and it is demonising voices calling for peace and restraint.
Thankfully, this is a mindset that the US vice-president unequivocally rejects. He understands that dewy-eyed idealism and anachronistic analogies are a recipe for conflict and instability, and that America must pursue peace through strength as it navigates a multipolar world that could not be more different from the geopolitical landscape that vanished nearly a century ago.
As for the emerging figures on Britain's New Right, it is they alone who seem to understand that the time has come to rally behind politicians who will put Kent before Kyiv, Glasgow before Gaza, and Bournemouth before Beijing.