Rebuilding Western civilisation in an age of disruption and disunity was the main focus at the 2025 ARC meeting in London.
There is a new vibe for the renewal of Western civilisation. It intersects with politics, religion and public policy but it isn’t owned by any of them. More than 4000 people from more than 90 nations met in London this week to give tangible meaning to the vibe.
This was the second London meeting of
the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, a unique organisational experiment founded in the belief that “a civilisational moment has arrived” – that the West will sink further into individual unhappiness and loss of conviction or find the keys to restoration and renewal.
ARC is based on the profound truth: politicians alone cannot solve problems of our age because they originate in cultural malaise and blunder. The frustration of the people and the ineptitude of the politicians go to deeper afflictions that must be addressed at source. No institution exists to do the job – hence ARC.
ARC’s chief executive, Baroness Philippa Stroud, sketched the scale of ambition: “Decline is not inevitable. Life can be a glorious adventure. We are at a crossroads when our nations must choose what ideas will animate our public life and philosophy in the years to come.
“The time has come for a better story; one that reconnects us with the original inspiration of our civilisation. We believe we can see families flourish, our economies grow, innovation accelerate, freedom established, a culture of responsibility restored and our civilisation set once again on the pursuit of the true, the good and the beautiful.”
The driving force behind ARC is the recognition that
Western societies are increasingly divided and diminished, plagued by a crisis of meaning, weakened by ineffective governments, suffering from a loss of trust in institutions and beset by a fracture between powerful elites and alienated publics. What makes ARC unique is that it seeks to tackle the malaise at the level of culture and is an international movement because the malaise transcends borders.
It is neither a political party nor a religious movement. But under Stroud’s guidance – where she opens the cultural lens wide – it evokes the foundational idea of liberal civilisation: humans made in God’s image.
As a necessity ARC has no prescribed platform and issues no communiques. Its operational idea is that our future has been compromised by abandoning the things that once made us great and that served for decades and centuries as the lights guiding the West’s long succession of dynamic adaptations. But the model has malfunctioned. For young people,
being “cool” today often equates with indifferent denigrationof their own country’s democracy. The focus of ARC 2025 was the rebuilding agenda, to inspire within and across nations the campaign for civilisation renewal from the local school to the family dinner table to the national parliament. The opponent is secular progressivism.
For ARC, its flawed imprint is everywhere undermining life in the West – the legacy seen in narcissistic individualism; its substitution for religious norms; its suspicion of traditional families; its deployment of state power to advance its values; its compulsion to big government and higher taxes; its attachment to false education theory in schools; its promotion of climate catastrophe; its renewable ideology driving soaring energy prices; its hostility to resources development; its indifference to the collapse in fertility and the coming demographic crisis; its promotion of identity politics in an attack on liberal universalism; and its disdain for national symbols and patriotism.
The
Donald Trump presidency is an opportunity and a danger for ARC – Trump will boost conservative confidence across much of the world but simultaneously trash some of the sacred conservative principles as he functions as a rebel ditching respect, prudence and global responsibility.
ARC met when the Trumpian revolution was in its dramatic early weeks.
In his opening address prominent ARC financial supporter Paul Marshall, whose British interests include GB News and The Spectator, said “We are not explicitly a political movement”, but the aim was to influence politics.
“We are not Trumpians”, Marshall declared, but added there was a lot in the Trump movement “that we agree with”. The task was to keep the balance.
The Australian contingent including
former prime ministers Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, former treasurer Peter Costello and former deputy prime minister John Anderson, who serves on the main advisory body and is the key link to ARC central, were conspicuous in navigating that balance.
Outside the conference Abbott welcomed Trump’s “common sense” on energy, gender and woke “madness”, saying “the swamp does need to be drained” – but he
criticised Trump on Ukraine, warning against “a surrender to vicious, naked aggression”, and said any refusal to provide security guarantees for Ukraine would constitute “a sellout”. Many delegates fear Trump will terminate the post-WW II age of Pax Americana and the global stability secured by the US-led alliance system. That would have
profound consequences for Australia.
ARC functions as a movement united by many common beliefs yet containing significant differences of opinion, testifying to the Trump-induced upheaval within conservative politics.
The situation might be likened to a tension between the Churchillian right and the Trumpian right – the former standing for tradition, the glory of the English-speaking heritage and a muscular outlook on the world, while the latter seeks to dismantle a perceived corrupt established order, claims to act in the people’s name while flouting democratic norms and retreating to a mindset of protection and national self-absorption.
During three days at ARC with 150 speakers and panellists, five central themes emerged – conservative
momentum against net zero is gathering immense force led by Trump, spilling into Britain and bound to influence Australia; alarm that high debt levels in the West, conspicuously in the US, constitute a crushing burden eroding military strength and the ability of democracies to meet the challenge of the autocracies; the conviction that excessive state power fused with secular progressivism has weakened the bonds of community, family and society, undermined the optimal way to raise children, compromised the quality of education and contributed to a culture burdened by an advanced low fertility crisis; that the more progressive policies are, implemented by parties of the left or by deluded parties of the right (witness British Tories), the greater the public policy failure, community division and general unhappiness; and that the task for conservatives and liberals, working together, is to build an alternative credo, based on civilisational renewal and the best of our inheritance with policies tied to freedom, economic creativity, government restraint and personal responsibility.
In an
age of disruption, omens were everything.
ARC conducted a debate on the proposition “that protection makes us poorer” – virtually a truism – and took a vote on the floor showing protection won over free trade 46-45 per cent. Here in a forum that champions economic freedom and markets. Did the 1000 delegates from Trump’s America deliver for protection?
Veteran New York Times columnist David Brooks delivered a stellar speech – and provoked murmurs of protest. Brooks said contemporary America had created a caste system with elites far distant from the people. But there was no sign Trump was the answer.
Referring to Trump, JD Vance and Elon Musk, Brooks said: “They’re anti-left, they don’t have a positive, conservative vision for society, they just
want to destroy the institutions that the left now dominates. I’m telling you as someone on the front row to what’s happening, do not hitch your wagon to that star.
“Elite narcissism causes them to eviscerate every belief system they touch. Conservatives believe in constitutional government – Donald Trump says: ‘I can fix this’. Conservatives believe in moral norms – they’re destroying moral norms. The other belief system that they are destroying is Judeo-Christian faith – based on service to the poor, to the immigrant and service to the stranger.”
Brooks enunciated a truth and a dilemma for ARC – Trump is not a conservative. How can an anti-conservative be a role model for a civilisation revival?
When I congratulated Brooks for his speech, he told me a lot of the people thanking him seemed to be Australians.
The vibe shift began when Trump was re-elected. It’s now global. Artwork: Frank Ling
Historian Niall Ferguson said the sense of a civilisation in “confusion and decline is pervasive” – the Enlightenment as a replacement for the religious Judeo-Christian foundations had failed. But Ferguson said he was more worried about actual war than the culture war.
He warned the axis of the four authoritarian powers – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – constituted a more daunting force now than the Axis powers of the 1930s. A potential world war III was closer than many people realised. Ferguson nominated a law: “Any great power that spends more on interest payments on its debt than on defence will not be great for long.”
And the US broke that law last year. On current projections, by 2049 the US will spend twice as much on interest payments as on defence. The debt burden sends “a signal of weakness”. The problem exists across the G7 countries.
Beyond this, Ferguson identified a cycle of decline – collapsed fertility in the West leading to an ageing population and deeper fiscal crisis; flatlining productivity entrenching economic weakness; educational degeneration; and, reinforcing ARC’s mission, Ferguson said since the 1980s Europe and the English-speaking world had staged a cultural departure moving further to self-expression and secular values against traditional values.
He feared the cultural factor “may be the most profound reason why we are not all thriving” – a reference point to ARC’s core stance that political and economic outcomes are downstream of culture. In short, it’s the culture, stupid.
That leads directly to Costello’s interview with Vivek Ramaswamy, entrepreneur and aspiring Republican politician. Costello said as treasurer he had improved the bottom line by the equivalent of 2 per cent of GDP. But the US budget was in deficit to 6 per cent of GDP. He politely asked: how could Musk and Trump deliver their promised $US2 trillion savings?
Ramaswamy explained: it was no real problem, it would be no “great feat”. It was only a matter of getting spending back to US levels in 2019, that’s six years ago and before the pandemic. It was a “technical and a moral” issue. It was about eliminating waste, fraud and spending people never authorised, getting rid of the “nanny state”.
It sounds good and smaller government is needed. But these ambitions and figures belong to a fantasy world.
Nigel Farage, who spoke at ARC, ‘presents as a poor man’s Trump’. Picture: Andrew Parsons / Parsons Media
It highlights the bizarre nature of Trump’s America – a cultural campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion and identity politics that will have immense traction next to wild claims about tariffs and spending cuts that suggest a major failure of realism.
Commentator and author Douglas Murray said the times should be branded “The Age of Reconstruction”, the purpose being “to put the civilisation back together”.
He warned of the West’s fatal mistake: that in seeking to absorb so many migrants it began to pretend it didn’t have a culture.
Murray directly addressed school education: “In New York state, where I spend much of my time, an average spend for a state school is now per pupil around $US35,000 a year.
“For that sum, kindergarten through to (year) 12, students finish with only about half of them attaining basic literacy and about half basic numeracy.
“Everybody who reveres TS Eliot reveres him in part because he told us and tells us still that a civilisation can be reclaimed even at the 11th hour.”
In writing of ARC, Stroud said: “We will know we have succeeded when we can send our children to school and know they are being taught the extraordinary story of our nations and will develop character, hope and a vision for the future. We have a rich inheritance of beauty in the arts, culture and architecture, whether in the music of Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Handel, the drama of Shakespeare, the poetry of Homer, Dante, Keats, Shelley, Blake or TS Eliot, the paintings of Michelangelo and da Vinci or the great cathedrals of Europe.”
Commentator and author Douglas Murray warned of the West’s fatal mistake: that in seeking to absorb so many migrants it began to pretend it didn’t have a culture. Picture: Andrew Parsons / Parsons Media
One of the most powerful speeches came from Marshall, making clear that the conservative movement is pledged to fight the spirit and policy detail of the renewables-dominated energy transition. This is now a frontline struggle where Trump’s impact will be far-reaching.
With British Labour now in office and Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, Marshall said there was an “emerging split between the continents” on net zero. He said Britain, leading the G20 on emission reductions, had got the trade-offs wrong. It was “wrecking our industrial base”, “impoverishing our people” and “destroying our ancient landscapes”.
“What I’m describing is a European problem, a Canadian problem and an Australian problem,” he said. “These countries have been infected by an ideological zeal which is leading us to sacrifice our economic prosperity and our people’s livelihoods all for the sake of making some fractional changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
Electricity costs for industrial users in Britain were now five times that of the US and seven times that of China. Germany was following Britain in “economic suicide”. Renewables were theoretical low cost but able to function only as part of an energy system balanced by other providers. Britain had enough gas reserves in the North Sea to cover 35 years of consumption yet the UK had refused to grant any new oil and gas licences. The message is manifest.
The politicians pretend to be in control but they’re not. They trade in promises and predictions that cannot be delivered. This is the nature of
the energy crisis and transition. Governments of all persuasions are gambling with their economies and the living standards of their peoples.
Australia won’t be exempt. The campaign against net zero is coming and will intensify.
Centre-right politics in Britain is badly fractured, split between the discredited Conservative Party, now led by a black woman, Kemi Badenoch, and Reform UK, a populist party surging since the 2024 election, headed by Nigel Farage. Both leaders spoke at ARC. While Farage presents as a poor man’s Trump, he operates within the British parliamentary system where the pose of a populist president is unavailable.
Badenoch, facing a daunting task to revive Tory fortunes, said of Britain that “we see so many social and economic challenges that we doubt ourselves”, while Farage asserted the Conservative Party was “not on the right” because it had delivered high taxes, illegal migrants and net zero enshrined in law.
Speaking on the theme of “Responsible Citizenship and the Social Fabric”, one of the strongest messages at ARC came from clinical social worker, author and parent guidance expert Erica Komisar, who made clear that parents are primarily responsible for the plight of today’s children.
In her longer conference paper, Komisar said the “tear in the social fabric” was undeniable.
She said: “We are raising children who are self-centred, self-focused and without the inclination or ability to take responsibility or to sacrifice for others. This change is occurring despite the research that shows how happiness is tied to the ability to give to others and giving to others is tied to happiness.
US academic Erica Komisar.
“Our children are affected in many ways from this shift towards self-centredness. Some are just less happy, more dissatisfied and more bored with their lives. Others are more obviously symptomatic, suffering from depression, anxiety, ADHD, suicidal thoughts, personality disorders and loneliness – all of which are on the rise.”
The culture is at the heart of the issue. Komisar quoted Pew Research that 18 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds do not want to have children and only 45 per cent of young women in the poll want to have kids.
“They feel that having children is a burden which would require them to sacrifice time, money and personal freedom,” Komisar writes. “When they do have children many do not want to raise them themselves.
“The repercussions of three generations of self-centredness and a lack of empathy mean parents are modelling their selfishness to their children.”
The cultural transformation has seen men and women being taught that children were “an afterthought to their education, career and personal goals”. Komisar said: “If we place our ambition above those we love there is a price to pay.”
In her advice on parenting, Komisar said: “Prioritise your children over your work or any of your other pursuits.” She warned of the myth that women “can do it all at the same time”. The culture, however, cultivates the notion that the individual is more important than the family or community. The wider environment beyond the home is important – Komisar said it was best to raise children in “caring, faith-based communities which promote self-sacrifice, volunteerism and empathy”.
In conclusion she said: “It is only by changing ourselves that we can change the path for our children and that we can change the world.” Core point: again, it’s the culture, stupid.
Paul Kelly travelled to London as a guest of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.