16th May 2023
Followers of this blog will be used to my typos – and I am grateful for your patience when there are typos.
But sometimes the (mis)placing of a letter may be significant.
Ecce tweet:
This conference is evidence of the intellectual energy we have in the center-right at the moment.
–@michaelgove at #NatConUK pic.twitter.com/VyMzeYWi7A
— National Conservatism (@NatConTalk) May 16, 2023
“Center.”
Perhaps that (mis)placed letter is all we really need to know about what is behind this recent phenomenon of “national conservatism”.
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They are a long way from the ‘centre’.
Apparently, in the new global community, we are equal prey to those in the US who (bored of making money) have determined to cast the World in their own image. The most depressing element of it all, is the craven willingness of many Conservatives to facilitate neo-con colonialism. I guess money continues to shout, and snouts continue to trough.
So, not national after all. More transatlantic
Surely Rees-Mogg would have been beside himself about this? It’s not English!
Soon they’ll be talking of judges banging their gavels.
I’m told there were some colorful characters there
My intuition is that the attempt at resurgence by the British right, by Americanising everything, is downstream from the British left aping their compadres across the pond. Britain seems (at least from my vantage point as an expat now) to be even more of a US satellite than ever.
So apt – US funded think tank funds Nat – C conference and our PM doesn’t have a problem with several of his MPs speaking!!
Tells us all we need to know!
It is a gift to the opposition. The Tories supporting the Nat Cs.
These people are no longer ‘Tories’, they have their own special right-nationalist Overton Window which has slid along and got stuck in a nasty and painful place.
It seems to me that NatC sounds too much like Nazi for it to be a coincidence. Makes me wonder if they are playing a game to try and get people to criticise the name of the conference so they can go on some sort of anti-woke rant to generate right wing press attention.
Possibly. Braverman and Co got very upset complaining that Gary Lineker compared them to the Nazis and the Holocaust (he very carefully did not).
But who in their right mind deliberately gives themselves a name that sounds like Nazi? NatC isn’t their abbreviation. I imagine they thought people would call them NatCons, which would be bad enough given how NeoCon is such a dirty word.
Personally I think NatC is poetic justice.
One may discern what brand of “national” and “conservative” they are advocating by noting that their website features Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orban.
“They call it ‘national conservatism’ but it’s a divisive, far-right movement. Why are Tories embracing it?” says the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/30/national-conservatism-far-right-divisive-tories
Perhaps just photocopied from an American pamphlet: Braverman is quite good at that sort of thing.
Yes. Careless is as careless does.
“Humor” and “humorless” in another tweet, so probably not an accident/predictive spelling.