Maybe the National Conservatism mob are right about ‘unconstrained individualism’

Dismayed by an early morning school trip, Will Gore tries to remember his children aren’t a burden

Suella Braverman et al espouse an overly simplified view of the past (PA)

Last week’s National Conservatism conference grabbed plenty of headlines, as Tory politicians including Suella Braverman and Jacob Rees-Mogg vied for influence, and activists and commentators such as Douglas Murray and David Starkey tried to outdo each other’s stoking of their confected culture war.

Anxiety about the apparent breakdown of traditional family models is particularly acute, and is evident too in a statement of principles for the NatCon movement – drafted by various American conservative thinkers for the Edmund Burke Foundation, the institute which lies behind the broader National Conservatism project. “The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilisation,” goes the thinking, which seems a tad exaggerated.

Apparently, the decline in old-style family set-ups is partly down to “radical forms of sexual license and experimentation” (I wish!), and in part also to “an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden”. In other words, people would rather have fun than a family. I scoffed at this, thinking about the fact that younger adults these days can barely scrape together their own rent, let alone take on the economic baggage that comes with setting up home and with kids.