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Gramscian politics for the 21st Century
Right Hegemony - from the Conservatives to Reform and 21st Century fascism
Following the 2016 EU Referendum and the narrow victory of the Leave Vote, Theresa May's Conservatism was characterised as a 'soft nationalism' with the slogan 'Brexit means Brexit'. Written in the aftermath of the 2017 General Election and the loss of a Tory majority, this publication focused on both the adaptiveness and fragilities of Conservatism under May. The think piece contains two main messages - that Mayism's pragmatic nationalism laid the basis for a new type of English nationalist Conservatism. The second message concerned Corbynism and the argument that it had to adapt to the new post-referendum environment by building a broad progressive political bloc.​ In retrospect, the key question is how both Corbynism and Starmerism have thus far failed to build such a progressive bloc.
During 2019 the adaptive capabilities of the Conservative Party were in full view. In the space of six months they moved from a party in crisis, polling around 25 per cent, to winning the December General Election with 44 per cent of the vote and an 80-seat majority. The key shift was Johnson's (Cummings's) hardline Brexit position in order to plunder Brexit Party votes. Corbyn's Labour, on the other hand, failed to adapt to the nationalist terrain. The publication concludes with thoughts on the challenges for Labour and progressives more generally in a period following a severe political defeat.
Study the Right political adversary
During the past decade I have studied the political Right in Gramscian style to try to understand the politically adversary. Generals do this on the battlefield, football managers study their opponent on a weekly basis and I imagine competitive chess players do it too. But the Left rarely studies the Right and this is one of the reasons why it almost always loses. The Right does wins not only by the in-built powers of capital; they build ideological and political hegemonies of popular appeal. While devoid of constructive solutions, the Right tells not only a good regressive political story, they are adaptable ideological and political shapeshifters. This is done instinctively and, from time-to- time, through the intellectual activity of right wing think tanks. The Left, however, does not have the luxury of capital, nor can it effortlessly call on a dominant ideology. Instead, progressive forces have to 'think' and 'act' in ways to produce counter-hegemonies. This is a long and arduous process.
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These studies of the political adversary , in the form of Compass publications, started with the Osborne Supremacy and how the Conservatives managed to weaponise austerity to defeat Labour in 2015. This was followed by a study of Conservative adaptation following the EU vote of 2016 - Mayism and the Regressive Alliance - and what proved to be its gradual morphing into a Brexit party. The third study analysed the political shapeshifting of Boris Johnson and the transitioining of the Conservatives into a Brexit nationalist party that helped them win the 2020 General Election. The fourth study focused on Conservative Hegemony Lost and seeming terminal decline of the Tory Party following its political defeat in 2024.
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The rise of National Populism as 21st century fascism
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National Populism and the Political Three Body Problem - Ken Spours, 2025.
This recent Compass think piece argues that the rise of national populism as a 'third force' is the result of the twin historical failures of neoliberalism and centrist social democracy - thus the idea of three political bodies. Using the three-body problem metaphor from the Chinese sci-fi novel - Remembrance of Earth's Past - the think piece analyses the rise of the far right in the US and UK and argues that the three-body political problem can only be solved if one of the other bodies - the Left - manages to exercise sufficient counter-hegemony to produce a less chaotic orbital alignment.
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The Conservative Party - from political hegemony to its death phase?
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The first analysis of the evolution of modern Conservatism was in the publication The Osborne Supremacy. Written in the wake of Cameron's unexpected election victory in 2015, this Compass report argued that one of the principal reasons for the Tory success was the hard work undertaken by Cameron in the early noughties to socially modernise 21st Century Conservatism and to have then combined this with Osborne's neo-Thatcherite economic strategy of austerity. The Compass think piece proceeded to raise issues for the Left and, in particular, the new phenomenon of Corbynism, with the argument that the Left had to develop its own hegemonic project if it was to successfully compete with a rapidly evolving British Conservativism. ​
Hegemony Lost: The decline of the Tory historical project - Ken Spours, November 2022.
The report analyzes the Conservative Party's political adaptability, which it likens to a "tethered beetle," that goes round and round by repeatedly "shapeshifting" and disowning past policies, eventually loses its political way and ideological hegemony. The report concludes with a critical set of questions for the Labour Party under Starmer, challenging it to build a new, progressive hegemony rather than simply 'winning by default' due to Conservative failures. This Compass think piece predicted the near collapse of the Conservative Party that only a few years earlier looked as if it reigned supreme.