Is THIS the new split on the right? And will it open the door to an age of centre-left hegemony?

My latest podcast (which you can see by clicking the video above) features ex-GB News presenter Albie Amankona. Albie is an important member of the LGBT+ Conservatives and lost his job at GB News after a comment about Suella Braverman having less than stellar views on an important topic (I could say something here about the channel and its commitment to free speech, but I shall digress). I hope you think it’s an interesting chat.

One of the big things we discuss is what I see as a growing split on the right of politics, all across the west. It is being exasperated by Trump’s belligerence, in particular his foreign policy. Strangely enough, the thing that provides the essence of the dividing line is what used to divide the left a few years ago (and still does now, albeit to an increasingly lesser extent): identity politics.

When identity politics first started to spin out of control on the left, arguably beginning in the wake of Brexit then Trump, picking up extra speed after Covid entered our lives, I argued repeatedly that it was opening a can of worms that may lead to identity politics emerging on the right. If the left wanted to abandon the notion that race shouldn’t be an issue and we should aim for a society that judges everyone individually, not by ethnicity, all in favour of a worldview where in fact race must be thought about and talked about all the time, then the right could pick that up from the other end. We might get a form of right-wing politics that said white people need protecting from the race baiters of the left, proceeding to a form of white ethno-nationalism. And that’s exactly what has emerged.

This has led to a paradox at the heart of western conservatism. You have on one hand a continuing love of free markets and free speech, two hallmarks of liberal conservatism, while also having the increased pick up of great replacement theory, adoration of Russia and more specifically Putin, alongside a sort of whiny victimhood culture that looks and smells remarkably like the same sort of thing you get on the far-left. In fact, Gawain Towler, former head of press for the Reform Party, recently described this latter portion of the right as the “Corbynista right”, and I think that’s bang on (that it was someone who is from Reform, not a Tory, who said this is particularly noteworthy as well).

When one says “I think saving the west is of vital importance” do they mean, “That’s why we need to defend liberal democracy from those trying to hurt it, internally and externally” or do they mean “Immigration is destroying the west because the native culture is being replaced by foreign ideas and ways”. Not that there couldn’t theoretically be some crossover between those two positions, but ultimately they rub against each other badly and you are either in one camp or the other.

Trump is demonstrating what the US having a belligerent foreign policy in regard to America’s western allies looks like in real time. In the Trumpian worldview, Europe has become tainted by excess immigration. Although, given Europe is, you know, where white people come from, I don’t understand how lovers of the great replacement theory can hate Europe as much as they seem to do. I suppose they are adhering to the “destroy the village to save it” idea, although I had sort of figured we’d proven the fallacy behind that worldview some years ago.

At present, the Conservative party is putting zero percent effort into trying to navigate this issue. In fact, Badenoch and those advising her seem oblivious to the idea that there is any sort of a conflict here, never mind how serious it is for the future of the British centre-right. In fact, Reform seem much, much more aware of the issues and paradoxes at play (thus Farage disavowing Tommy Robinson, for instance, and the whole Lowe v Farage public spat). That’s rather remarkable.

If you are a liberal free marketer type person who disliked Brexit and lives in the south of England, you increasingly vote Lib Dem. If you’re a person who thinks there is far too much immigration and wants to see it cut way down, you almost certainly vote Reform, particularly if you live north of Enfield. There is no room for whatever it is the Tories are at present. It is very close to a zero percent strategy.

This is why I keep coming back to Labour winning the next general election. Not because the right-wing vote gets split between the Tories and Reform (if the Tories continue to be as bad as they are at present, that really won’t be the problem), but because the right is split between people pursuing a form of identity politics that is repellent to way too much of the country, or busy pretending that that this form of identity politics doesn’t need to be taken on in order to represent a form of conservatism that will be palatable to enough Britons to gain a parliamentary majority.

Britain isn’t the only country that could face this “accidental” centre-left hegemony. The Liberal Party in Canada is a great example of this - dead and buried only a few months ago, Trump’s posturing has completely revived them. Poilievre’s Conservatives could still win, of course - but they were nailed on favourites to win at the end of 2024. They have since become victims of the this identity politics paradox, brought to a head by Trump. It has the potential to eat the right over the rest of this decade, just as identity politics ate the left in the first half.