Do you remember January 2020? I do. It was not that long ago after all, although a lot has happened in the meantime.
But in January 2020, the Conservative MP got into a spot of bother for taking part in the National Conservatism Conference. It was felt, at the time, that speaking alongside individuals known for the homophobia, Islamophobia, and antisemitism, was not quite cricket.
This week when the National Conservatism Conference rolled into town, it wasn’t just backbenchers with rather extreme views that were on the roll call. Cabinet members Suella Braverman and Michael Gove were joined by their colleagues Jacob Rees-Mogg and Miriam Cates, as well as the usual list of hard-right thinkers and commentators, and a smattering of anti-feminists-posing-as-feminists. Suddenly, being associated with the hard-right of US and European politics was not something to be met with a rap on the knuckles. It’s the place mainstream Conservative MPs wanted to be.
Oh what brave new world is this, that has such people in it.
Unsurprisingly – what I want to talk about is the conversation about women.
There were a couple of moments that stood out for me, from observing at a distance via social media. The first was Miriam Cates’ speech, where she talked about how the one thing “liberal individualism” had failed to deliver was “babies”. The second was Danny Kruger talking about the “normative family” and mums and dads staying together for the kids. The third was Louise Perry but I don’t have time to go into that.
Let’s take Cates first. To me, this was a moment where far-right conspiracy theory firmly embedded itself in British mainstream politics, as it has done in Orban’s Hungary, Trump’s America, and Italy (via both Salvini and Meloni). The idea that the West/Britain is struggling because of high migration and not enough babies – and that the lack of babies is a result of individualism – is, I am very very sad to say, linked to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.
From L’SNS in Slovakia trying to ban abortion because of “selfish” and “debauched” women, to terrorist manifestos screaming “it’s the birth rates”, to Agenda Europe obsessing over women’s “individualism” leading to low birth rates, this notion that the nation’s future prosperity is built on women’s reproductive labour takes us down dangerous roads. It is so easy to move from encouraging women to have more babies, to seeing women’s bodies as wombs of the nation.
I am not saying that Cates knows this or is aware of this. But this is the sea they are swimming in, when they come out with this stuff, whether they know it or not.
Now, obviously for many many many many many women, having babies is a good and wonderful and life-affirming thing. Everyone should have the choice to have the family they want, and having wanted children should be celebrated and supported. But for a Conservative MP to stand on a stage and say that “liberal individualism” is failing to deliver babies, while being part of a Party that has stripped women and families of the social support needed to have babies, is highly hypocritical.
Seeing as there’s no suggestion the Tories are going to tackle the housing crisis in a meaningful way, reinvest in maternity services, or reverse the cuts to child tax credits and other benefits – things that might help women who want to have children to have the children they want to have – the message we are left with is one that women should be pinned to reproduction, no matter what.
Which leads me to Kruger, who apparently is scared the UK is becoming like a John Lennon dystopia (why do you hate British culture, Danny? Why?). He is rather preoccupied with women’s duty too, namely the duty to stay married and raise babies in a ‘normative’ family.
Agenda Europe and its acolytes are also rather concerned about women’s ability to leave marriages. That’s why it wants to ban divorce, along with abortion and most contraception and LGBTIQ rights (we love marriage! not like that!).
Why is this concerning? Because once again, the subtext is about controlling women.
The far right believes that women and children should be under the patriarchal authority of their husband/father, and that his role in the household is supreme. This means that women should be subservient, they should be tied to the home, and they should be pinned to reproduction. Abuse is permitted, because the husband/father has the ultimate authority. Abuse from outsiders is absolutely not permitted, because it is seen as an incursion on the husband/father authority. And women can not, must not, leave.
That’s what I hear when I hear men like Kruger say that “the normative family, the mother and father sticking together for the sake of the children, is the only basis for a safe and functioning society”.
Not only is this statement not true, but it denies women (and men, but it is mostly women who leave marriages) autonomy and choice. It demands women give up their freedom. It taps into far right notions of women’s sacrifice and suffering – that women must give up their freedom, their safety even, for the sake of another (be it husband or child). This idea that a woman is not her own person, with her own rights and her own autonomy over her body, is deeply embedded in far right thinking. At best, it traps women in unhappy marriages. At worst, it normalises abuse.
A woman who does assert her right to independence, freedom and choice, is coded as ‘bad’. She’s “individualistic”, selfish and “debauched”.
The thing is, I could give the Tories the benefit of the doubt. I could say that they don’t realise how close their rhetoric is now to far-right thinking about women’s status in society. And there is a part of me that still does give them this credit.
Except for one thing: and that is cultural Marxism and the wider antisemitism on display.
I refuse to believe that the people at this conference do not know by now that cultural Marxism is widely understood as an antisemitic term, let alone that it is steeped in far right conspiracy – that it is a meme that spread in far right circles to create an imagined enemy of feminists, LGBTIQ activists, Black Lives Matter activists, and ultimately, Jewish people. I know that Suella Braverman now understands the antisemitic nature of the term because she got told off for saying it in 2019.
And yet, here they were, happy to speak at a conference where the term was being thrown around without a thought to its origins and its consequences.
There are no excuses now, not to know what these words mean. So the only conclusions to come to is that they know and they don’t care, because they agree.
Ultimately, that is what scared me about this week’s conference.
What was once considered unacceptable is now normal. Terms which are known slurs are now used and nodded along. Cabinet ministers are standing up with men who said the Germans “mucked up” when they mean the Holocaust. They don’t seem to care anymore about what it looks like. They don’t seem to have any shame.
Which brings me to the title of this mini-essay: it could happen here.
Now, on the one hand, I don’t believe there is much public support for the theatrics we saw at the NCC this week. Despite what the hard right of the Tory party thinks, most people aren’t concerned about birth rates and Marxists and whether or not divorce is too easy. I mean, FFS, people don’t have enough to eat and are waiting for more than a year for surgery. Bigger problems people!
But as the Tories continue with their death spiral, they are becoming more and more reactionary and implementing more and more dangerous policy.
I have always been very sure that some of the extreme policies we see in parts of Europe, and the USA, would not happen here. When people ask me, for example, if Britain will ban abortion, I am fairly categoric that no, there’s not enough popular support for such a move and we are not the US. Abortion laws in the UK have liberalised under the Tories, with one of the most important changes spearheaded by a Conservative Peer.
I still think that. But can I now start to see abortion becoming part of the hard right’s culture wars in the UK? That’s a scary thought, and it’s one I am increasingly having.
Obligatory book plug
Two weeks. TWO WEEKS! The book is out in TWO WEEKS!
Earlier this week I had a lovely chat with Leo Hollis and Owen Hatherley about the book and my research at Bath Festival.
Plans are afoot for a London event on 6 June, and you can book tickets for my 7 June Bristol launch, and my panel event with Paul Mason, Nick Lowles and Madhu Krishnan on the 12 June.
What I’m writing
This week I had an article in the Observer looking at sexual violence in prisons.
I have an exciting ‘new publication debut’ coming out this week plus lots of commissions on the go… more soon!
What I loved
Shout out to my friend and collaborator Katharine Quarmby this week, who was shortlisted for her investigation into dangerous gypsy and traveller sites.
You can read her work here.
What I’m reading
I’m just going to list…
The Death of a Soldier told by his sister, OlesyaKhromeychuk
It’s our turn to eat, Michela Wrong
Crooked House, Agatha Christie
Peril at End House, Agatha Christie
Invasion, Luke Harding
A Room with a view, EM Forster
What I watched
Last week I went to the opening of my friend Nicola Dale’s show at Bobbinski Brownlee New River gallery. It was called HEAD ON and it was fabulous, as is she.
I also didn’t write a SubStack last week because I was hungover and watched the BBC Pride and Prejudice in a six hour binge while eating chocolate cornflake cakes. LIVING MY BEST LIFE.
And now I am watching The Camomile Lawn which is - there are literally no adjectives to describe how simultaneously brilliant and awful it is.
That’s it from me for this week! Ciao ciao!