Free speech and DEI are not minor culture war skirmishes. They are fundamental battles over power. The party must stop treating woke as a political game, hoping to win quick points over gender definitions. The post Rafe Fletcher: What Conservatives must learn from Vance’s Munich speech appeared first on Conservative Home.

Rafe Fletcher is the founder of CWG Speakers.

The BBC was quick to criticise US Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference. Frank Gardner reports that he “shocked delegates” with a “blistering attack decrying misinformation, disinformation, and the rights of free speech.”

These are supposedly superficial concerns and distractions from the weightier matters of defence and Ukraine. But the new US administration understands that free speech isn’t just a culture wars tool. It is a question of power. If an unelected elite can dictate what can and cannot be said, they also control the Overton Window. And limit the ability of elected politicians to enact real change.

That is why Vance, like others in Trump’s orbit, is influenced by the work of blogger Curtis Yarvin.

The mainstream media is quick to dismiss Yarvin as an advocate of authoritarianism, cherry-picking his more provocative ideas. But they miss his central argument: we don’t live in a real democracy. Power is not wielded by elected officials but by what Yarvin calls “the Cathedral”: an informal alliance of the media, academia and state bureaucrats.

Enforcement of acceptable speech extends into the workplace, public sector and government. DEI is a prime example of how the Cathedral embeds ideological conformity within institutions. Hence why Trump has targeted that framework so aggressively in his early flurry of executive orders.

DEI is not merely woke’s institutional cousin; it is a structural tool that entrenches elite dominance. It prioritises identity and rewards those with the right opinions, rather than the most capable. In rejecting objectivity, it places truth in the hands of ideological gatekeepers rather than democratic debate.

Those same anti-democratic instincts are just as evident in how the Cathedral allocates public money. Decisions are not made with the interests of ordinary people in mind. Bureaucrats and NGOs allocate public funds according to their own moral priorities, rather than in the best interests of the electorate.

Rory Stewart may be devastated to see his wife’s USAID funding cut. But a more pressing question is whether the American people ever consented to millions of dollars being spent on projects lecturing Afghan women about conceptual art. USAID reflects the elite mindset of so many Western institutions. It does not serve voters but an ideological class that believes its preferences are synonymous with the common good.

Defenders of such schemes argue that their cost is trivial in the grander scheme of government spending. Compared to the vast sums allocated to defence, welfare and interest payments, what difference does a few million really make?

But that misses the point. Firstly, it eschews old Thatcherite wisdom that government finances should be run more like a household’s. No one would suggest that a family deep in debt ignores wasteful spending just because it’s a small fraction of their overall budget. And more importantly, it’s about accountability. If officials can direct funds towards ideological pet projects without public scrutiny, what else can they do?

America is taking a sledgehammer to these entrenched government interests because that is the only way to break their power.

What should the Conservative party learn from this?

That free speech and DEI are not minor culture war skirmishes. They are fundamental battles over power. The party must stop treating woke as a political game, hoping to win quick points over gender definitions. These forces are far more pernicious and embedded. They punish merit and aspiration and let mediocrity fester.

Reactions to the recent Labour WhatsApp scandal shows Conservatives don’t grasp this. Shadow Minister Mike Wood said, “Was Stephen Morgan aware of the messages being sent in a group he was admin of, and if so, why did he sit idly by as individuals made these hateful remarks?”

One appreciates the schadenfreude in scoring points against a party that has been so eager to demonise free speech. But fleeting victories are meaningless if they don’t lead to a serious stand against a culture that promotes such purges. Conservatives should be fighting a culture of hyper-surveillance, not indulging in it.

Stop policing language so officiously and judge people on their actions.

Writing in The Times about a possible pact with Reform, Robert Colvile argues that the Conservatives must first explain why they should exist as a distinct party at all. Free speech is one area where they can and must draw this line.

Starmer’s government may already be unpopular, but barring an extraordinary collapse, the Conservatives are heading for years in opposition. Rather than indulging in cheap point-scoring, they must define a clear identity to make themselves competitive again.

And free speech isn’t an abstract ideological pursuit. It’s essential to the party’s ability to govern effectively. As Dominic Cummings recently put it, the Conservatives “were in office but never actually in power.” Their failure to challenge the institutions that control speech and shape the Overton Window is fundamental to why they delivered so little in 14 years.

Vance’s Munich speech defends free speech not just because we need ideals worth fighting for, but as vital to prosperity. “The freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, to invent, to build” is essential to progress. An unelected class “cannot mandate innovation or creativity—just as you can’t force people what to think, feel, or believe.”

The Conservatives must ignore patrician voices urging a retreat into a tired centrist orthodoxy that prefers progressivism to progress.

Instead, they should embrace the radical energy of the Trump administration in dismantling the technocratic class. These are the same voices who cheered the return of “the grown-ups” after Starmer’s election. Or the commentators who bemoan Kemi Badenoch’s recent Triggernometry interview because it bypasses the established media.

The free speech debate is central to reversing Britain’s stasis and breaking free from its narrative of managed decline. Conservatives must stop playing to the “gotcha” gallery that punishes officials for misspeaking and instead commit to opening public debate. Only then can it seek the bold ideas needed to reignite the country’s prospects.

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