Why Traditional Conservatives Have Failed & What’s Replacing Them | Matt Goodwin

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Why Traditional Conservatives Have Failed & What’s Replacing Them | Matt Goodwin"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Rubin Report
• Host: Dave Rubin
• Description: Care about free speech? Tired of political correctness? Join Dave Rubin for real conversations, real news, and one-on-one interviews with some of the most intriguing names in America today as they break down politics and current events.
• Episode: Why Traditional Conservatives Have Failed & What’s Replacing Them | Matt Goodwin
• Release Date: March 11, 2025

---

1. Introduction

In this episode of The Rubin Report, host Dave Rubin engages in a profound discussion with political analyst Catherine McKenna about the decline of traditional conservative parties and the rise of new political movements. Focusing primarily on the UK's Conservative Party and the emergence of Nigel Farage's Reform Party, the conversation delves into the broader implications for global conservative politics, including parallels with the United States.

2. Political Realignments in the UK and US

Catherine McKenna opens the dialogue by highlighting the significant political shifts in both the United States and the United Kingdom. She emphasizes the volatility within political systems and the emergence of new alignments post-major political events.

Catherine McKenna [00:27]: "The US has just given us a masterclass in how to completely change politics... we have just gone from an enormous Conservative majority in 2019 with Boris Johnson to an enormous Labour majority with Keir Starmer. Now, that itself shows the volatility in the system."

McKenna draws comparisons between the US post-2016 Trump realignment and the UK's post-Brexit landscape, suggesting that both nations are experiencing foundational shifts in their political landscapes.

3. The Conservative Party's Challenges Post-Brexit

The conversation shifts to the Conservative Party's struggles following the Brexit referendum. McKenna critiques the party's inability to adapt effectively to the new political realities introduced by Brexit.

Catherine McKenna [02:43]: "The Tory parliamentary party is absolutely obsessed with social status, with not engaging in culture wars, with avoiding anything that might make them look bad on the London dinner party circuit."

She argues that the Tories failed to capitalize on the Brexit mandate by not addressing the core concerns of their newfound working-class voter base, leading to significant electoral setbacks.

4. Emergence of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party

McKenna introduces Nigel Farage's Reform Party as a pivotal force challenging the traditional Conservative establishment. She underscores the party's grassroots approach and alignment with the electorate's demands.

Catherine McKenna [04:17]: "The British Tories are facing this, I would argue, existential threat from Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, which has now replaced them in the national polls."

The Reform Party's rise is attributed to its authentic connection with voters, contrasting sharply with the Tories' perceived detachment and inability to address pressing issues like immigration and cultural identity.

5. Policy Differences: Immigration and Cultural Conservatism

A significant portion of the discussion centers on policy divergences between the Tories and the Reform Party, especially regarding immigration and cultural policies.

Catherine McKenna [05:27]: "We need to completely reshape and realign politics in this country. So it's much more in tune with the outlook of the average voter."

McKenna criticizes the Tories for their liberal stance on immigration under leaders like Boris Johnson and Kemi Badenoch, arguing that they have failed to implement stringent border controls and deportations of foreign offenders due to adherence to international agreements.

6. Impact of International Treaties on Domestic Policies

The conversation touches upon how supranational agreements hinder national sovereignty, particularly in shaping immigration and border policies.

Catherine McKenna [05:35]: "It's preventing us from controlling our own borders, from stopping the small boat invasion on the southern border."

McKenna contrasts this with the US, where she believes leaders like Trump have more autonomy to enforce strict immigration policies without similar international constraints.

7. Strategy and Campaigning: Learning from Trump

McKenna draws parallels between Nigel Farage's approach and Trump's successful campaigning strategies, emphasizing the importance of grassroots engagement and clear messaging.

Catherine McKenna [08:11]: "He's gone on the campaign trail with Trump... he's learned a lot of lessons about using rallies, but also building a team of people."

She suggests that the Reform Party's potential to reshape British politics hinges on their ability to emulate these successful strategies, fostering a direct and authentic connection with voters.

8. Future Outlook: Potential for Reform to Reshape British Politics

Looking ahead, McKenna expresses a cautiously optimistic view of the Reform Party's chances to overturn decades of Conservative dominance by addressing systemic issues like immigration, economic stagnation, and cultural erosion.

Catherine McKenna [10:13]: "Look, I think we have two general elections to really save this country. Maybe just one, but I think probably we have two."

She underscores the urgency for significant political reform, advocating for policies that reject the status quo of "big immigration, big state, big tax, big debt, big spending, big woke," aiming to reinvigorate British conservatism with a fresh, culturally resonant agenda.

9. Conclusion: Cultural Shifts and the New Political Paradigm

In wrapping up, McKenna reflects on the broader cultural shifts dismantling the traditional left-right political dichotomy. She posits that cultural values are now paramount, reshaping political strategies and party alignments across Europe and beyond.

Catherine McKenna [14:13]: "Samuel Huntington asks, who are we?... I think that's a question many people in Europe are asking. Certainly many people in Britain are asking, who are we?"

This cultural realignment signifies a new era where countercultural movements are becoming mainstream, necessitating a reevaluation of political ideologies to align with the evolving values of the electorate.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Catherine McKenna [00:27]: "The US has just given us a masterclass in how to completely change politics."

• Catherine McKenna [02:43]: "The Tory parliamentary party is absolutely obsessed with social status..."

• Catherine McKenna [04:17]: "The British Tories are facing this, I would argue, existential threat from Nigel Farage and the Reform Party..."

• Catherine McKenna [05:27]: "We need to completely reshape and realign politics in this country."

• Catherine McKenna [08:11]: "He's gone on the campaign trail with Trump... he's learned a lot of lessons about using rallies, but also building a team of people."

• Catherine McKenna [10:13]: "Look, I think we have two general elections to really save this country."

• Catherine McKenna [14:13]: "Samuel Huntington asks, who are we?... I think that's a question many people in Europe are asking."

---

Key Takeaways:

• Political Volatility: Both the US and UK are experiencing significant political realignments, driven by events like Trump's rise and Brexit.

• Conservative Decline: Traditional Conservative parties in the UK are losing their grip due to an inability to address core voter concerns, particularly around immigration and cultural identity.

• Rise of Reform Parties: Grassroots movements like Nigel Farage's Reform Party are gaining traction by directly addressing issues neglected by traditional conservatives.

• Cultural Shifts: The political landscape is moving beyond the traditional left-right spectrum, with cultural values taking precedence in shaping political agendas.

• Policy Autonomy: International treaties and supranational agreements are limiting national leaders' ability to implement stringent domestic policies, especially concerning immigration.

• Strategic Campaigning: Successful modern political movements are adopting strategies similar to Trump's, focusing on rallies, clear messaging, and direct voter engagement.

This episode provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolving conservative landscape, highlighting the necessity for traditional parties to adapt or risk obsolescence in the face of emerging political challenges.

Transcript

[Matt Goodwin]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

[Catherine McKenna]

The US has just given us a masterclass in how to completely change politics. The interesting thing is we have just gone from an enormous Conservative majority in 2019 with Boris Johnson to an enormous labor majority with Keir Starmer. Now, that itself shows the volatility in the system. So people used to say in this country, well, my dad voted labor, his dad voted Labor. You'll never get an insurgent party breaking through. I say look at Germany, look at Italy, look at France, look at Sweden. Everywhere you look in European nations, disruptors are breaking through. Because I think we're not just seeing the re election of Trump. I think what Trump symbolizes is a new chapter in the history of mass democracy. It's a new cultural zeitgeist. Counterculture is becoming the culture. I think that's fascinating. And the old left right split that shaped politics in the 20th century I think is now completely making way for this new two dimensional politics where cultural values are really dominant.

[Unknown Host]

All right, Matt Goodwin, let's talk about what's going on with the Conservatives in this country. Because one of the themes that I've talked to a whole bunch of people about since we've been here at Arkansas is that the Conservatives are better than the Liberals here, but are not that great and seem incapable of solving problems. And of course, now there's Nigel Farage's Reform Party. How do you see the landscape there? Do you think that's the proper assessment of what's going on with the Conservatives? And what does that look like for Americans that maybe don't pay too much attention to the inner workings of British politics?

[Catherine McKenna]

Yeah, well, I think Americans should pay a lot of attention because what we've got in the US in the UK is a story about two realignments. You've had the post2016 Trump realignment, which I think the Republicans made the right choice in leaning into that and then they dominated the system and they've really reaped the dividend of that. And here in Britain, we've had the Tory Party, which was really given the same kind of realignment after Brexit, could have expanded into working class areas, into small towns, medium towns, could have advocated a proper Conservative message, but they chose not to do that. So Then they were decimated at the last election in 24. So what we've been left with here, why is that?

[Unknown Host]

Why did they not lean into? Well, fundamentally I think it's hard for.

[Catherine McKenna]

People to believe post Brexit, sort of. Okay, so the thing you guys had this saying, rhinos, Republicans and name only. Yeah. So we have what I would call Chinos, Conservative and name only. And that the Tory parliamentary party is absolutely obsessed with social status, with not engaging in culture wars, with avoiding anything that might make them look bad on the London dinner party circuit. So they were given all of these Brexit voters, right, who were more working class, who are culturally conservative, who said, we want the border secure, we want immigration brought down. We don't believe in this woke stuff that's telling us everything's wrong about British history. But the Tories never really knew what to do with that because they're London set kind of middle class wets, basically. They didn't really want to get down with that message. So all realignments are about demand and supply. We had the demand, you guys had the demand, but you also had the supply. With Trump, we didn't really have that supply side. So that's why now the British Tories are facing this, I would argue, existential threat from Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, which has now replaced them in the national polls. And this is for Americans unfamiliar maybe with British politics or watching from afar. This is really a pivotal moment in the history of our country because you're talking about the most electorally successful political party, the Tories, in the history of democracy, being replaced by a party that has 15 full time members of staff, not really a lot of resource, but is on message when it comes to that realignment.

[Unknown Host]

But a guy who's on message and goes to the pubs and goes out into crowds with the people and knows how to do that. What are the differences between the two parties actually beyond just sort of. There seems to be an attitudinal difference at least.

[Catherine McKenna]

Well, I would argue the Tory party is a liberal party. So I would argue that Kemi Badenoch, who was speaking here at arc, was interesting to me listening to her as she talked about, well, liberalism has got hacked. Okay, where's the case for conservatism? Like if you, if you take the kind of Yoram has only view of the world, what we need fundamentally in the west is not just a sort of reinvented recycled liberalism. We actually need a new case for conservatism and we need to make it culturally relevant. To new generations. And Kemi Badenoch, what was interesting, she said, look, we need to control the borders, we need to lower migration. But she stopped short of doing things that reform would do, such as leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, which is preventing us from deporting murderers, rapists, killers from our country. It's preventing us from controlling our own borders, from stopping the small boat invasion on the southern border.

[Unknown Host]

From an American perspective, by the way, it's very hard for people to understand that, that you actually cannot do certain things in your own country because of these broader agreements.

[Catherine McKenna]

It's insane. And the reasons are Americans looking at your southern border. Well, you can actually have jurisdiction over that, you can have sovereignty over that. I can see Trump and others moving to do that. We are beholden to supranational conventions and agreements that are stopping us from being able to actually remove foreign offenders from our country and stop those small boats. Now, Kemi Badenoch will not do what needs to be done on that because fundamentally, she's not really a radical, she's a Tory. And the Tories basically created the managed decline that everybody in Britain sees around them. And what I'm saying is very similar to what Nigel was saying. We need to completely reshape and realign politics in this country. So it's much more in tune with the outlook of the average voter.

[Unknown Host]

So are there any other sort of major policy differences besides reform wants out of these international treaties? Is everything else sort of similar?

[Catherine McKenna]

I would say there are a number of other key differences. The Tories gave us mass immigration. Boris Johnson gave us mass immigration. He was a bohemian liberal. He was never a conservative reformer utterly committed to ending mass uncontrolled immigration. The Conservatives never did anything on woke. They talk the talk, they don't walk the walk. Reform will OOVERTURN Woke ideology, DEI, strip it out of the public institutions. A bit like Musk and Trump are doing now? I think it's a reform are a bit more business savvy. They're actually led by people who've created large scale businesses. Nobody really on frontline politics has done that. So they're a bit more in favor of cutting tax, pushing back regulation. They're very critical of our government's Chagos deal. And they go much harder than the Tories on the rape gangs and the victims of rape gangs by saying we should, we should be deporting dual nationals who are convicted of raping our kids. So they are, I think, a sort of unfiltered conservative movement. And they can also reach into parts of the labor areas that. That Tories can simply never do. So they are Trumpian. I mean, Nigel is obviously very close with Trump. He's gone on the campaign trail with Trump. He's learned a lot of lessons about using rallies, but also building a team of people. And I think that's what he took away from watching the inauguration. It's not just Trump anymore. You know, it is about Kennedy. It's Elon Musk. It's a kind of crew of people, and I think that's what he's now trying to put into place here.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah. You might find this interesting, but one of my reasons for supporting DeSantis during the primary was that I didn't think Trump was gonna be able to build out that team. And now he has some of the best people in the world, and I couldn't possibly be more of a supporter. So if Nigel can do that, I think you guys would be in great shape. Are you. Are you. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

[Catherine McKenna]

Yeah. Although DeSantis made the cardinal mistake of backing Kemi Badenov, I always thought, for a guy who was saying, you know, we need a new conservatism, because that's basically what we're all talking about, I was struck that he would back somebody who had presided over the wholesale liberalization of immigration.

[Unknown Host]

So are you sure? Are you surprised that this is the state of Britain right now?

[Catherine McKenna]

No, no. I've been talking about the realignment for 15 years. I was probably the first person in the country to say to the Conservatives, pre Brexit, this is the future of conservatism in terms of the electorate. When the vote for Brexit happened, I was probably the only. The only academic. I was a university professor in my former life. I was the only academic saying Britain was going to vote for Brexit. And then when it happened, I was saying to the Conservatives, this is a historic, unique opportunity now for you to realign your party and the people who are voting for you around this new zeitgeist. And I briefed Boris Johnson and told him exactly how he should do that. What happened then was, as we know, the opposite. And so, really, over the last five, six years, like many people here, I've become desperately concerned about the state of our country. And I've become much more involved with reform, not as a member, but speaking at their events, because what I can see happening. Look, I think we have two general elections to really save this country. Maybe just one, but I think probably we have two. And by save, I mean get reformed to 32% of the vote, win a majority and enact the wholesale repudiation of the consensus that has been dominating Britain for the last 30 years. And by that I mean big immigration, big state, big tax, big debt, big spending, big woke. And I don't think there's ever been as much of an opportunity as there is today to do that.

[Unknown Host]

So the 32%, that's not a technical number, that's just the number you think you would need basically to get enough to form a coalition.

[Catherine McKenna]

No, no, that's the number Reform need for a majority. That's like going into number 10 and saying, okay, we're going to completely turn this thing over now. What? That now to get there, they need to completely decimate the Tories, which they're doing as you and I sit here today, the Tories are on 20% in the polls. On average. Reform are averaging 27. Okay, they need to decimate the Tories and they need to take a big chunk of that working class labor vote, or like the, I guess you'd call them, blue Democrats. They need to eat into those working class heartlands. Take some of those.

[Unknown Host]

And look, it's literally what Trump did. I mean, it's just what Trump did.

[Catherine McKenna]

Exactly. And the funny thing about it is to Americans looking at Britain, because some of Trump's team came over recently and they said, God, I haven't been in London for 10 years, what has happened to this country? And these were serious people, they said it wasn't just the immigration, it's just the way in which your leaders seem to hate your own people. And I think what's so fascinating about Britain now and worrying is if you look ahead, the only thing this country has really is managed decline. We've got low growth rates, we've got spiraling debt, we don't have a strategy to revive our economy, we've just got spiraling immigration, we've got flat birth rates, declining birth rates among the British. And we've got about 10 million more people projected to come into Britain over the next 20 years. And they're all going to come from outside Europe. So there won't be cultural cohesion. Most of those people will be coming from Nigeria, Pakistan, China, Vietnam. How do you build, to go back to the Robert Putnam question, how do you build a functional, integrated, cohesive nation on that basis? What you end up with is a low trust country where everyone just hunkers down and nobody's really contributing to the collective pot. So I'm very gloomy. But within that chaos will come an opportunity to radically Reshape politics.

[Unknown Host]

And that's basically why you think that it's two at most. It seems to me like it's probably one election cycle.

[Catherine McKenna]

Yeah. I mean, who knows? The remarkable thing, I mean, again, the US has just given us a masterclass in how to completely change politics. The interesting thing is we have just gone from an enormous Conservative majority in 2019 with Boris Johnson to an enormous labor majority with Keir Starmer. Now that itself shows the volatility in the system. So people used to say in this country, well, my dad voted labor, his dad voted Labor. You'll never get an insurgent party breaking through. I say, look at Germany, look at Italy, look at France, look at Sweden. Everywhere you look in European nations, disruptors are breaking through. Because I think we're not just seeing the reelection of Trump. I think what Trump symbolizes is a new chapter in the history of mass democracy. It's a new cultural zeitgeist. Counterculture is becoming the culture. I think that's fascinating. And the old left right split that shaped politics in the 20th century, I think is now completely making way for this new two dimensional politics where cultural values are really dominant. It's not to say economics doesn't matter, because of course it does, but cultural values are becoming so much more dominant. So these issues over free speech, over the compatibility of Islam with Western nations, border security, the scale of migration. Samuel Huntington asks, who are we? And I think that's a question many people in Europe are asking. Certainly many people in Britain are asking, who are we? And he said, well, in relation to America, it was funny rereading that book last month. He said, Americans are based on distinctive values and those values are under threat through large scale Hispanic, Latino immigration and a political elite that doesn't believe in its own country. I kind of wish Huntington was still alive because I would say, well, hang on, the Hispanics and Latinos are voting for Trump. Yeah, so you got that one right.

[Unknown Host]

Trust me, I live in Miami, I'm in Hispanic town.

[Catherine McKenna]

Exactly.

[Unknown Host]

What's America Loving people.

[Catherine McKenna]

So he got that bit wrong. But what he got right was what we'd now call the woke elite, the self bashing, you know, self hating, you know, west loathing political elite. And if you look at Europe, I think that's why J.D. vance's speech struck a chord with the European people. He, he irritated the elites, but the people got it. Yeah, because what he was saying is you are now in the hands of an elite class that is using censorship to suppress your free speech. Free speech is imposing mass immigration on you, is eroding your borders and is no longer standing up for those shared values that Huntington talked about. The values of Western civilization. That's why so many elites found it so annoying that he gave that speech. But because they know what we know, which is that the forgotten majority were nodding along saying, yeah, that guy's got it right.

[Unknown Host]

Well, we're happy to send our VP over to. Over to the shores over here to do some damage so you guys can clean it up. Thank you.

[Catherine McKenna]

Thanks very much. Thanks for the chat. Yeah.