Could Project 2025 happen here?
The Christian Right that propelled Trump to power is coming for Britain, says American investigative journalist Katherine Stewart.
I’ve just returned from ten days in the United States. It’s a strange place to visit right now. On the surface, little seems to have changed. Time with family was as precious and joyful as ever.
But every so often, a darker reality broke through. The frequent sight of MAGA and Confederate flags flying by the roadside in Georgia. Or sitting in a Tennessee hotel lobby, watching Donald Trump announce live on Fox News that he was sending the National Guard into Washington, DC.
As I travelled through a clutch of ‘Red States’, one question kept coming back to me - could some of what’s happening in the US happen here in Britain?
The easy answer is no. Our histories, politics and cultures are very different. Religion, for example, rarely plays an overt role in British politics or policymaking. Keir Starmer is an atheist. Parliament has recently expanded access to abortion.
And yet, in recent months, I’ve found myself thinking more and more about the transatlantic ties shaping our politics — especially the movement that helped propel Trump into the White House: Christian nationalism.
In the US, Project 2025 provided ‘a blueprint for Christian nationalist regime change’. Eighty per cent of evangelicals voted for Trump. And if you look a little deeper— as I’ve been trying to do — you’ll find growing connective tissue between the Christian Right in the US and the UK.
So this week, I invited American journalist Katherine Stewart onto Democracy for Sale’s video discussion. Stewart is one of the leading chroniclers of the US religious right and the author of several books, including this year’s Money, Lies and God. Although she now lives in London, she joined me from California.
Among the topics we talked about was the increasingly influential National Conservatism conference. When ‘NatCon’ came to London a few years back, Conservative ministers were castigated for attending. Commentators mocked Tory MP Miriam Cates when she blamed “cultural Marxism” for declining birth rates.
But NatCon matters. Vance is a longtime supporter. Its leading thinker, Israeli-American political theorist Yoram Hazony, was described as “the man driving the nationalist revival on the right” when he recently appeared on a podcast with Ezra Klein at the New York Times. (It’s well worth a listen.)
Next month, NatCon will hold its biggest-ever conference in Washington, DC. It’s already sold out. Speakers include Steve Bannon, Tulsi Gabbard….and Nigel Farage.
But one British speaker at NatCon next month has drawn my particular attention: James Orr.
Orr is the UK chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, which runs NatCon. A Cambridge academic, he talks about migrants as “invaders” and openly admires Hungary’s autocratic leader Viktor Orban. Even more significantly, Orr is best mates with US Vice President JD Vance.
The two men became friends in 2019 after personal religious awakenings — Orr after narrowly surviving a skiing accident, Vance following his conversion to Catholicism. Both are acolytes of Palantir’s Peter Thiel.
But the relationship seems deeper than fellow-traveller admiration. Politico describes Orr as “JD Vance’s English philosopher king”. According to reports, Orr even encouraged Vance’s extraordinary claim that Britain had become the first “truly Islamist country” with nuclear weapons following Labour’s victory in last year’s general election.
When Vance holidayed in the Cotswolds this summer, Orr was invited around for a picnic, alongside evangelical Tory MP Danny Kruger and reality TV personality Thomas “Bosh” Skinner.
Orr isn’t just a religious conservative with high-level US connections. He’s also behind a new think tank, the Centre for a Better Britain, which aims to shape policy for a potential Reform UK government.
The Centre consciously echoes the Heritage Foundation, the US think tank driving Project 2025. Orr has spoken admiringly of Heritage president Kevin Roberts, noting to the BBC that the US outfit is now bringing in around $100 million a year.
The Centre for a Better Britain, which is slated to formally launch next month, claims to have raised £1million. It won’t say who its donors are, besides metals traders David Lilley and Mark Thompson.
Even more strikingly, the Centre is also incorporated in Texas as a tax-exempt organisation. Last week, the Observer revealed that an internal presentation described its Canadian charity partnership status and set fundraising targets in both pounds and dollars. The Electoral Commission is now assessing whether the group has breached electoral law.
And Orr seems keen to spread his influence beyond politics, too. I noticed that last month he registered a firm called ‘Areopagus Media Limited’ on Companies House. There’s echoes here of Paul Marshall, the evangelical owner of the Spectator and GB News whose ‘Alliance for Responsible Citizenship’ is also emerging as a key nexus in the transatlantic Christian Right.
Marshall and Orr are not alone. A few months ago Democracy for Sale revealed that US anti-abortion groups have significantly stepped up their funding for the UK recently.
Next month, thousands are expected to descend on London for the annual March for Life. The rally — which draws Catholic, Anglican, and Russian Orthodox groups — is modelled directly on the hugely influential March for Life held every year in Washington, DC.
As Katherine Stewart explained during our conversation, “make no mistake, these people want to end abortion and other civil rights” in the UK.
Britain is not America. But as Stewart shows us, the transatlantic ties between the Right are deepening — from dark money flows to narratives of persecution uniting figures like Vance, Orr, Marshall, Trump, Farage, and many others.
This is a vital conversation for this political moment. I hope you find it as revealing as I did.
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In previous decades these characters would have been called religious zealots. Nobody has the right to force their religious beliefs down other people’s throats.
The misogynistic Christian fundamentalist and racist eugenic Britain Only extremists have been in political and religious power in Northern Ireland since 1921. The late Reverend Paisley’s political DUP were paid by Russian Putinists and US extremists to deliver Brexit. Not just to recreate a hard border but to recreate a Britain First Isles which would return Ireland to London rule as just another British Isle. In the 30 years I have lived in County Antrim the far right Zionist snd Condererate flag flying Christian fascists have increased exponentially in numbers and political influence. They have infiltrated poverty stricken loyalist estates and indoctrinated a couple of generations in MAGA rooted religious extremism. British Intelligence still funds and protects Troubles assets in such areas so seemingly (mistakenly) believes that they pose no national security threat as they can still control them financially. The UK government has also chosen to maintain a deeply sectarian apartheid style education system here since the so called Peace. The Protestant British community education system is generally of a far lower standard than the equivalent Irish Republican areas which now only serves to underpin the ability of extremist Heritage Foundation influencers to more easily rabble rouse loyalist estate gang violence against their chosen targets. The latest have being refugees and immigrants. These far right extremist groupings pose a growing very real danger to Ireland and Great Britain if they continue to be minimised and left to fester.