WHAT IS POPULAR CONSERVATISM ?
PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, explains:
In late 2023, I set out to solve a conundrum: Why, after 14 years of Conservative government, was the United Kingdom in a less conservative place than the Conservatives found it in? I also wondered what might be done to address this paradox. I concluded that there were two key issues in play.
First, whatever your thoughts about our last five Conservative prime ministers, the problem was not merely one of political will. Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak were not all secretly committed to continually putting spending, taxation and regulation up. Yet this was the combined result of their administrations.
The more I looked, the more I concluded that there was a deeper, systemic problem. The whole machinery of government was firmly geared to an ever-growing state apparatus. The most our elected politicians seemed capable of doing was to resist or delay some of this expansion. Occasionally, they could fend off a little bit of red tape, trim a wasteful government programme at the margins, even reduce a specific tax by a whisker…but the incoming tsunami of “big government” was always going to triumph in aggregate. Whilst there was some resistance amongst Conservative politicians there was also – sadly – a great deal of complicity. It appeared that any comprehensive effort to deregulate and lower taxes across the board would be stillborn – as the collapse of Liz Truss’s government demonstrated.
Second, as a consequence of this analysis, it was vital for conservatives to realise that a full-blown overhaul of the way the government operates was a prerequisite for achieving conservative objectives. The Party was willing the ends of lower taxation, a smaller state and lighter regulation but not the means. The centre piece of a future conservative administration would need to be a genuine restoration of democracy, accountability and transparency. The blob, the bureaucracy, the deep state (call it what you like) would need to be tackled as the primary objective.
This analysis had not been put persuasively within the Conservative Party or across the wider conservative movement. Many were putting the case for a range of attractive “retail” propositions – but then appeared mystified when these proposals – however well put – almost always fell on fallow ground.
I decided to set up an organisation to put this “meta-argument”. To explain that if we did not fix the “upstream” state machinery then conservative “downstream” goals would never be met. The result was PopCon – launched in February 2024. I brought together a mixture of thinkers, campaigners and organisers to advocate this case.
Two things have changed significantly across the past 18 months. Firstly, I met Dr David Starkey who has provided the intellectual gravitas and focus our movement needed and has become integral to the PopCon mission ever since. Together we have forged a fantastic and persuasive partnership driving the emerging appetite for a Great Repeal Act.
Secondly, an early General Election and slow start to the new Conservative leadership, combined with the unprecedented rise of Reform UK, has caused us to widen our outreach to include this new, insurgent party on the right of politics.
Whether Conservative, Reform UK or some form of coalition, pact or alliance, the next right of centre government must have the will, means and wide base of popular support to deliver the grand reset Britain requires. We intend to do all we can to see that delivered.
Mark Littlewood, PopCon Director
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