What I told NatCon Brussels

My speech from the event the left tried to shut down

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I’m writing this on the Eurostar, heading home after what can only be described as a historic few days at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels, Belgium.

As you may have seen, the conference became a global story when an alliance of local left-wing mayors and left-wing extremists repeatedly tried to shut down it.

So alarmed were they about the fact democratically elected politicians, prime ministers and scholars might want to meet to discuss issues such as the glaring ‘democratic deficit’ in the European Union, the impact of immigration in the West, and the future of Europe that they tried to do everything they could to shut it down.

Two venues suddenly pulled out of hosting the conference at the last minute while the police then arrived at the third to declare the event was going to be shut down.

People were free to leave, they said, but they would not be allowed to return to the building, effectively shutting down the conference and the discussion.

Was I in Belgium or North Korea? I wasn’t quite sure.

I won’t go through all the details here —as my fellow Substacker and Times columnist Melanie Phillips, also at the event, has aptly summarised them here.

Suffice to say the symbolism was not lost on us.

Here, at the very heart of the European Union, in the capital of what is meant to be a Western liberal democracy, was a concerted effort to shut down free speech, free expression and the market place of ideas.

Well, they failed.

After the police arrived, we simply refused to leave. The conference continued. A legal case was won in the late hours of Tuesday evening, ensuring the remainder of the conference could go ahead. And then the indefatigable owner of the venue, a passionate defender of free speech from Tunisia, raided his wine cellar.

Meanwhile, everybody from Rishi Sunak to Belgium’s prime minister hit the air waves to denounce the local left-wing mayors and left-wing extremist activists for trying to stamp out democracy —that is, except Britain’s Labour Party which is apparently fine with suppressing free speech.

Radicals 0 —Democracy 1.

So here, along with a few behind-the-scenes pictures from this historic event, is what I told NatCon Brussels —about the dire state of conservatism in Britain, about the dire state of our country, and about what to do next.

Onwards.

Matt.