I don't often agree with Melanie Phillips, but her latest offering raises more than a fair share of serious issues deserving a serious response.

I take a point I accept first: that many of the public favour a cultural conservatism that Professor Matthew Goodwin identifies as represented by Richard Tice's Reform Party. But if we step forward to consider such cultural conservatism in government; themes of anti-'woke', national identity and immigration control, and abandoning net-zero climate policy, all mean driving ahead with economic growth and technical change. These have many advantages to offer but conserving traditions and identities are not among them; on the contrary they keep us on the modernising trajectory.

Such points are merely the latest form of the reason why cultural conservatives like Melanie Phillips have been on a hiding to nothing (or, rather, to modernity) for centuries. That applies irrespective of the irrationality of much of the left (one reason why Paul Mason stands head and shoulders over most of his ilk is that in the main he holds his rationality). 

I could have sympathy with Phillips' theme of the 'traditional' family if, first, she explains what she means. Does she mean the so-called 'nuclear' family common in the West from the 19th century, or does she mean the extended family still prevalent in Asian and African cultures? Second, if she recognises the thread of sense in feminism which applies resistance to abuse of power to within the family. Family confusion is a real challenge, but we need to do better than any current ideologies in dealing with it.

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