So it looks like Labour is going to get a landslide victory.
And let's not kid ourselves and think that these years will be a walk in the park, they won’t be. As J’Accuse has frequently pointed out, the Remainer establishment is out for blood after Brexit happened, and they will try and ensure something like it can never happen again.
Keir Starmer, as a former ‘human rights lawyer’, personifies the ‘Blob’ (essentially British word for ‘Cathedral’). Despite surface-level appearances, Labour has not even slightly moderated on cultural issues. The discourse surrounding Brianna Ghey (tragic though the murder was) shows they are still in thrall to trans ideology, the horrific proposed ‘Race Equality Act’ would make anti-White discrimination even more entrenched, and the same ‘human rights’ law will be used to stop any action against illegal immigration. Free speech is likely to become even more restricted under Labour, with oppositional television stations like GB News taken off air. All of this J’Accuse has brought up to make the case that we shouldn’t be cheering for a Tory landslide defeat, because the alternative will be so much worse.
I am not blind to these dangers. It will make the job of building institutions on the Right much harder, with arbitrary lawsuits and criminal punishment meted out to all who dare challenge Woke orthodoxy.
However, I still, on balance, believe that this will be worth it, IF, and only if, the Right dedicates its time outside of power, likely to be more than a decade, to building properly right-wing institutions. A decade is a long time, and in that time there is a large amount of opportunity to organise a movement and train up personnel. Somebody choosing a career path at the start of such a time period will be progressing and earning good money by the time it finishes.
If we don’t do this, it could be the 2000s all over again. Somebody like David Cameron will come to power in the Conservative Party, excessively court the Blob, reinforce the framing of Labour on cultural issues, and then when the party gets back into office, the ‘consensus’ moves further towards the cultural left, towards anti-whiteness, towards transgender extremism, towards mass immigration. Groups like ‘Bright Blue’ and ‘LGBT Conservatives’ are aiming to do exactly this.
It would have been better to build these institutions in the past, in a more free and open environment with less Woke censorship and ‘hate speech’ laws.
But we can’t change the past, we can only change the future.
If we choose it to be, opposition can be an enormous opportunity. It can help us remake the Right in our image, build up a vast personnel and policy network, create a counter-cultural appeal, and make it so that when the Right takes power again, as is the cycle of electoral politics, it will not waste 14 years like it has done since 2010, ever again.
Policy vs Personnel
I have frequently discussed on this Substack about how the Conservative Party might either be reformed and democratised, or how another party must emerge to take its place if that fails.
However, many people are justifiably sceptical of what politicians say in public. Kemi Badenoch said anybody teaching Critical Race Theory was ‘breaking the law’, Suella Baverman ordered her department to end association with Stonewall, and in 2019 Boris Johnson campaigned on a populist platform of reducing immigration. Even going back to 2010, the Conservatives under David Cameron said that immigration would go to the ‘tens of thousands’.
Yet when it comes to actually governing, they find themselves utterly unable to exercise power and to put their stated beliefs into action. The Civil Service, captured by Wokeism, simply point-blank refuse to follow the orders of Ministers, and because the Conservative Party did not spend its time in opposition building a personnel who could replace these Woke bureaucrats whilst still keeping the wheels of the state turning, they are forced to rely on people who fundamentally oppose their worldview to run the government.
I still think democratising the Conservative Party/replacing it with a new democratic party is important, but what we say in terms of policy, and the personal beliefs of politicians, will matter little if the bureaucracy is still all Woke. Whilst people are rightfully starting to focus on pieces of legislation like the 1998 Human Rights Act or the 2010 Equality Act, as well as leaving the European Convention of Human Rights, these things are only so powerful obstacles because they have been twisted and distorted by the Blairite apparatus that interprets them. Hungary is still technically a part of the ECHR, but it is not obstructed in the same way, because Viktor Orban understood the importance of building networks of personnel. If all of these laws were repealed but the Civil Service not purged and replaced with ideologically aligned administrators, they would find some other excuse to obstruct an anti-Woke political assault.
The American Right vs the British Right
Aris Roussinos wrote in a brilliant article a few years ago about what the British Right needs to learn from the American Right. The chief difference is that the American Right has a highly organised ‘movement’ in which young people interested in right-wing politics can get careers in a vast network of policy institutes, think-tanks, and lobbying groups. Organisations like the Heritage Foundation since the 1970s have had a ‘resource bank’ of personnel ready to go as soon as a Republican administration takes office.
The British Right has nothing comparable to the Heritage Foundation. Heritage has been completely dominant on the American Right since the 1970s, when it developed its resource bank and sent the ‘Mandate for Leadership’ to Ronald Reagan, of which 60% was adopted. The think-tank, whilst it used to be pretty ‘normie’ conservative, has done an impressive transformation under the leadership of Kevin Roberts (though the Postliberal purists would think differently), and has been responsible for planning ‘Project 2025’, an unprecedented policy roadmap and personnel recruitment drive to get people to staff the next Trump administration, and stop his policies again being thwarted by the Deep State.
In Britain, the conservative institutional space, known as ‘Tufton Street’, is far more fragmented. Sure, American conservatives also have CATO Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, which are not ideologically aligned with us at all, but these have lost influence over the years, and there is a real sense that Heritage is the ‘leader’. Meanwhile, in Britain there is not one institution of the Right that predominantly drives policy, activism, and personnel. The conservative space is divided between groups like Institute for Economic Affairs, Centre for Policy Studies, and Adam Smith Institute on the Thatcherite/neoliberal end, ResPublica and Policy Exchange on the communitarian/populist end, and Bright Blue and the Social Market Foundation on the liberal ‘Conservative in Name Only’ (CINO) end. There is no unity of vision or project on the Right in Britain as of yet, which is partly why the government has been able to get so little done, even on the policies that were relatively right-wing; it has relied almost entirely on the existing Civil Service that is thoroughly ideologically compromised.
Building a ‘British Heritage’
In some ways, the fact that such a ‘mega-think-tank’ and training institute like Heritage hasn’t been set up in Britain yet makes this a great chance for the Dissident/Third New Right. We can shape it with the ideology that we want, as long as the special interests funding us get their piece of the pie.
So how could such a mega-think-tank be built, to shape the future of the Right and to make sure it is actually able to implement the policies it wants? To recruit people who have been trained to intricately understand the workings of the Civil Service and how to get stuff done, like Project 2025 is doing across the pond?
Organisation
An advantage the Americans have is that there is a lot more money in conservative politics over there, which allows the intricate fellowship and training programmes. It would be important for a British organisation to join the global ‘National Conservative’ movement, rooted around Hungary and which Heritage is increasingly a part of, in order to get access to similar funding. As long as we give our donors some ‘policy bribes’, funding is relatively easy to get; what is lacking in the acquiring of personnel is the organisation and vision.
With this think-tank, most of the actual political planning would take place whilst in opposition. We must in effect build something akin to a ‘shadow government’ whilst out of power, understanding its mechanics, how to govern, with a clear ideological vision of what it would do with power. Once that is established, with the personnel ready to go instantly, actually governing is just the final mop-up.
I do not rule out an existing think-tank reinventing itself, like Heritage did under Kevin Roberts, to serve the same role. I know that Heritage has extensive relations with the Institute of Economic Affairs, and that think-tank is already well established. If it wants to reinvent itself in an Anti-Woke direction and start this ‘resource bank’, perhaps with some funding from Heritage, that would also work, although there would be some grumbling from the Postliberals who don’t understand the reality of coalition building.
However, I am not going to rely on that. I will conceptualise this think-tank as a new organisation, though utilising a prominent existing one will probably be easier, and if it wants to take these recommendations, that would be fantastic.
Ideology
Ideology is vital. Without ideology, you have no claim to rule, and when outside of power, the Right must give a convincing case as to why it should be given power, something this bland, technocratic government under Rishi Sunak does not make.
The obsession with ‘pragmatism’ as a goal in and of itself should end. This isn’t to say we should live in ideological fantasy-land, but we should apply a pragmatic strategy to pursue our ideological convictions, not seeing ‘pragmatism’ as the goal in and of itself.
The new think-tank must unite the various factions of the Tory right, which means some kind of ‘New Fusionism’ that would incorporate the views of the Thatcherites as well as the NatCons. We must accept the tactical necessity of Fusionism whilst ensuring that an anti-Woke theme is consistent throughout.
It should not seek to be a ‘big tent’, but absolutely unified according to a distinct vision and strategy for change. This cannot be like Conservative Home where contradictory policies and opinions are constantly expressed, and certainly not like the current government where there are endless ‘conversations’ and ‘reviews’, and with it ending with the ‘One Nation’ Cameronites (nothing to do with Disraelism) stopping any break with Blairism.
What a revied Tory Party/new party needs is something akin to Newt Gingrich’s ‘Contract with America’, that was led by the Heritage Foundation. This should not be Reform type nonsense policy, but a transformative vision for change. If you want to look at what such a vision might look like, that might get support from across the right-wing spectrum, look at CapX, a very good publication published by the Centre for Policy Studies.
This new institution must ensure that Neocons and ‘Woke Tories’ are completely excluded. Whilst there will be a Fusionism between Thatcherites and NatCons, the anti-Woke character of it must be non-negotiable. There will be no concessions to transgender ideology, and a full commitment to rolling back the DEI revolution at the core of its mission. Publications, books, pamphlets, and research should be done to a high quality and a high standard in service of this goal.
The think-tank should have fleshed out policy proposals in all areas, not just around Wokeism but about all issues. However, the underlying theme of all the policies should be towards eradicating Wokeness at its absolute structural root, even if not explicitly; for instance American Compass’ university reform proposals. CapX has gone some way to suggesting what this could look like in Britain, but more needs to be done.
The mistakes that the Heritage Foundation made in the 2000s and early 2010s should be avoided. Absolutely no concessions to LGBT extremism, and be absolutely committed to rolling back the LGBT project and bringing all those involved in the mutilation of children to justice.
Leading Counter-Elites
You need to be an ‘elite’ in order to form an effective counter-elite. I myself, as a non-elite, would not be able to do anything to build this, it would have to be those above me with social status and prestige.
Some notable Red Wall MPs that will unfortunately lose their seats this year, like Miriam Cates and Lee Anderson, could be influential at setting up this organisation, as could many commentators with a strong social media presence.
Here are some key individuals who I think could be important to promote and organise this think-tank, though no doubt not all of them will be, and there will be many other potential figures who would be good.
Miriam Cates
Lee Anderson
Suella Baverman
Kemi Badenoch
Aris Roussinos
Some disaffected British Civil Servants who will be paid to teach new recruits how it actually works and how to govern.
Some Singaporean Civil Servants to make blueprints for the total overhaul of the deep state, in a Meiji Restoration-like transformation.
Lower-Level Counter-Elites
J’Accuse mentioned that Dominic Cummings has been interested in building something akin to a ‘resource bank’, and himself claimed to have connections with these higher-ups. This is a good start.
As for potential personnel recruits, it would be good to seek to attract a large amount of well-educated straight White men, sufficiently highly qualified but shut out of job opportunities due to DEI. This group can be made to be politically radical, and as a high IQ group, if sufficiently able to organise on the basis of its interests, could do enormous damage to the Woke regime.
So outreach should be made to this group in particular, seeking to radicalise them and channel that radicalisation towards something that would actually be effective, and of course not saying this openly. It would not be ‘only’ this group, hiring should of course be meritocratic, but the justified resentment of this group should be made use of and not passed over in the name of ‘diversity’.
Of course, it is good to have attractive women and ethnic minorities as the front-facing public figures in the movement, but this organisation should not be concerned about ‘diversity’ in and of itself, only as a PR stunt.
As J’Accuse said, in order to build an effective counter-elite you don’t need huge numbers. It is not important to persuade the majority, but only to persuade an elite minority who has the will and ability to govern. A couple of thousand staffers will do for a country like Britain.
The Woke know this. Keir Starmer won’t campaign explicitly on Woke policies, but his personnel will all be Woke, and they will get to work at making this country worse than it already is from the second he takes office.
Like with Boris Johnson, who campaigned as a populist but governed like a globalist liberal, what you say to the electorate is irrelevant; what matters is you have an organised personnel. David Cameron didn’t need this, because his policies and beliefs were almost identical to those of Blair’s ‘Blob’, but we must do this if we don’t want the next right-wing government to be as miserable of a failure as this one.
Hard Times Ahead
There is a problem we have with potential censorship and repression. The recent measures taken in Germany around right-wing NGOs are pretty chilling, and there is no doubt the Longhouse Labour Party will do the same if it finds a justification to do so.
But one must put things in perspective. A strong movement can survive mild government hostility. If things get too bad, we do not need to operate primarily in the UK, but can go to the United States or Hungary to operate over there, and not have to be subject to draconian legislation like the Equality Act or the soon to be ‘Race Equality Act.’
There are dark times ahead, no sugar-coating it. But in a hostile environment, the best and brightest tend to shine out of necessity.
When Elon Musk liberated Twitter, whilst there was a much more open environment to allow more dissent, and in some cases this benefited us like with the ‘What is a Woman’ documentary, on the other hand a lot of low IQ right-wing discourse started re-emerging. For instance, Tucker Carlson’s ‘X’ show indulging in the sort of idiotic conspiracy theories like ‘Obama is gay’ that are toxic to our brand. The ‘Alex Jones Right’ is something so poisonous and stupid, appealing to the worst instincts of the right-wing base, that being censored is probably beneficial. There’s a reason why Alex Jones was let back on and Jared Taylor is still banned.
With more censorship, we must sharpen our rhetoric, sophistication and analysis without compromising on our core values. Aesthetics is a language that can be used to bypass censorship, of which romanticism and nostalgia for the past as well as ‘Anglofuturism’ can play a role. By being forced to work within the censorship, we can practice at making our message appealing to the ‘normie’ voter. To look at how aesthetics can be used to penetrate ‘normie’ circles, I would recommend taking a look at Rachel Haywire’s ‘Cultural Futurist’ project.
Conclusion
People are right to point out that formal policies and party-politics only get you so far. It seems that books like the ‘Populist Delusion’ by Neema Parvini have had a large influence, and the experience of Brexit, Trump’s first term, as well as the Covid lockdowns, have vindicated the importance of Elite Theory. A formless mass will not achieve political change, and neither will charismatic-based movements. The anti-SJW movement seemed to be winning the battle of ideas in the 2010s, but due to the elite and well connected nature of the SJWs, they emerged at the end of the 2010s stronger than they had been at the start, almost making it seem like the populist upsurges had never happened.
If we want to win, we must learn from these mistakes, as well as learning from predecessor movements that had very real successes, namely the neoliberal economic counter-revolution. We must do everything we can to ensure future movements are not wasted.
The past 14 years have been an objective failure in terms of policy and law, but they do not have to be so if the British Right learns the correct lessons from them. Those lessons are: that you cannot rely on supposedly ‘neutral’ institutions to carry out your political agenda, that policy is nothing without personnel, and the ‘Blob’ is far more difficult to sideline than many of us believed when Boris Johnson achieved his 2019 election victory.
We have a long period out of power ahead. Let’s make sure these years are put to good use, so that next time, we are able to dismantle Wokeism in Britain once and for all.
Great article, but personally, I don’t believe we can collaborate with more moderate rightists because, in my opinion, they will always side with the cameronites and even labour over the radical right.
I’ve recently been looking at the French Right for inspiration. One think-tank worth emulating is the Institut Iliade, they didn’t try to moderate their message to pander to the more moderate Right and they have now got the ear of many important people in the National Rally and Zemmours Reconquest party as well as providing ideological inspiration for the Identitarian activist movement. They have also been called the ideological vanguard of the National Rally.
Personally I think the French/ European New Right can offer the English Right a better ideological foundation than the American Right especially the ideas of archeofuturism, identitarianism, their geopolitics etc.
Great article, it's interesting to consider the how the political right will reconstitute itself as the neoliberal conservative parties decline with age.