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  • Opinion | Conservatives Used to Rule the World. What Happened ? - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/26/opinion/trump-far-right-conservatism.html

    C’est toujours intéressant de lire les conservateurs (les vrais, pas les hystériques qui se montent du col un peu partout sur les télés).
    Et c’est absolument effrayant de voir son pays appartenir à la frange (la fange) qui peut tomber dans le pire.

    By Ferdinand Mount

    Mr. Mount is a political commentator and a former columnist for The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. He wrote from London.

    Sept. 26, 2024

    The British Conservative Party has long boasted of being the most successful political party on the planet. The unimaginable scale of its defeat on July 4, when it won the fewest seats in its history, looks like the downfall of moderate conservatism. It appears to be the final straw for the center-right parties offering pragmatism, prosperity and opportunity that have dominated Western politics since World War II. Almost everywhere conservatism’s brash rival, nationalist populism, is on the march: already in power with its colorful leaders in Hungary, Italy and Argentina; on the brink of it in the United States and France; and eroding the old-style conservatives in Germany, the Netherlands and now Britain. The rivalry on the right is in danger of becoming a rout, with the senior, steadier force swallowed by its insurgent challenger.

    These shocks to our established ways of thinking are so violent that we immediately assume that this must be a unique apocalypse, the product of unprecedented social and economic forces. This, I think, is a temptation to be resisted. The reality is that something similar has often happened or nearly happened before, at different times and in different places. Nationalist populism, my umbrella term for the smorgasbord of hard-right forces, always sings the same song. The circumstances that gain it a sympathetic hearing are usually much the same, too: decline of old industries and loss of well-paid jobs for men, undercutting by rising nations and, of course, fresh waves of immigrants from new places. It’s when mainstream conservatism visibly flounders in dealing with the challenge — as it has so clearly done in recent years — that such movements can hope to surge.

    The upshot is both concerning and consoling. Conservatism has been here before — and it can get through it again.

    Our parents and grandparents had to grope their way through that postwar fatigue. The Conservatives then were especially aware that they had to begin afresh, to attend closely to the world as it was and not cling to outworn ideology. They worked to become relevant again, humbler, readier to listen. Today, that must include learning from the example of Keir Starmer and his patient remaking of the Labour Party, his professionalism and his attention to detail. The next Tory leader will need to be someone in that mold. In Europe, conservative parties must reposition themselves not as handmaidens of the far right — with whom they have developed an unfortunate habit of collaboration — but as guarantors of prosperity and social order.

    In the United States, too, moderate Republicans should be quietly regrouping and rethinking a program for the future. The situation frankly is a bad one, given the Trumpists’ grip on the party, but renewal is not impossible. A path to a more thoughtful and sociable politics can be cleared by those who want a responsible, common-sense alternative to the Democrats. I cannot pretend that it will be easy. The election campaign, with the two assassination attempts on Mr. Trump and the replacement of Mr. Biden with Kamala Harris, has been a roller coaster of emotion. Debate is far from sober, and hysteria and hostility abound. Yet in the end, nations calm down, because they have to. At that point, sensible conservatives should be on hand to pick up the pieces — as they have so many times in the past — and start again.

    #Conservateurs #Politique #Monde #Extrême_droite