After Cameron: the New New Right and the unchaining of Britannia

Abstract

This article looks at an emerging and ideologically influential grouping within the Conservative Party that presents a challenge to the dominant contemporary Cameronite interpretation of Conservatism. This grouping is fashioned as the ‘New New Right’ composed of an identifiable number of the ‘2010 generation’ of Conservative politicians. The most prominent among these are the five authors of After the Coalition and Britannia Unchained: Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss. Employing Michael Freeden's ‘morphological approach’ to ideology, in addition to utilising interviews with key members of this group, this article situates and interrogates the explicitly post-Cameronite thinking of the New New Right drawing on three central features of its thinking: the rejection of the rhetorical ‘de-neoliberalisation’ of British society after the financial crisis of 2007–08, a resistance to ‘anti-market socialisation’ and the promotion of a ‘thin’ conception of social rights. The difference between ‘Cameronite’ Conservatism and the New New Right is more quantitative than qualitative, as, while they occupy the same semantic field, the latter poses a threat to the former's commitment to civic conservatism. This ideological innovation is not a revival of Thatcherism; it is more conservative fiscally and largely anti-statist on a gamut of social issues. The New New Right potentially provides the ideological template for the next generation of Conservatism after Cameronism.