The growing per il of national conservatism

Zanny Minton Beddoes Editor-in-chief The Economist. When you are in the United States, as I was this week, it can be hard to see beyond Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of American conservatism. But it is a mistake to think about Mr Trump and the MAGA movement in isolation. There are similar things happening to conservative parties in other countries, as our cover package this week explains. Mr Trump, Viktor Orban and a motley crew of Western populists have demolished the old conservative orthodoxy, constructing in its place a statist, anti-migration, “anti-woke” ideology. The alliance behind it may be incoherent, but that does not make these ideas harmless. This could be a remaking of conservatism as big as the revolution ushered in by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. And so this alliance must be taken seriously. The next establishment they seek to overthrow is international liberalism.