Nathan J Murphy: A Conservative path to Scientific Liberalism | Conservative Home

Nathan J. Murphy is author of Liberalism That Wins: Scientific Liberalism: A New Foundation for Liberal Democracy (Prepolitica, 2025)

Across Britain and much of the democratic world, inequality is deepening, trust in institutions is collapsing, and populist and illiberal movements are gaining ground. The political centre offers little more than piecemeal fixes while the public hungers for bold change and a convincing vision of the future.

This is not simply a failure of individual leaders or policies. It reflects the exhaustion of a model built for a very different era. As I argue in Liberalism That Wins, the post-war liberal consensus — combining market capitalism, managed welfare, and a faith in globalisation and technocracy — once delivered peace and prosperity. But overextended and outdated, it has become part of the problem.

For Conservatives, this creates a stark choice: defend a faltering orthodoxy or lead a renewal of democratic legitimacy and national competitiveness.

The End of the Post-War Consensus

In the aftermath of World War II, the victorious Allied democracies built a system to secure stability, cooperation, and shared prosperity. For several decades this liberal order delivered transformative gains in living standards. But its internal contradictions are now unmistakable: widening inequality, stalled social mobility, and a sense that decisions have been ceded to unaccountable global forces.

Mass immigration, another product of globalisation, has further eroded the social consensus that upheld liberal democratic ideals. The economic gains have largely flowed to those at the top, while the costs — from wage pressures to housing shortages — have fallen on working-class communities. Across Europe, far-right parties have surged by capitalising on fears of cultural displacement and economic insecurity.

Together these pressures have driven a deepening sense of helplessness among ordinary people and a perception of a political class increasingly out of touch. The backlash has been unmistakable — from Brexit to Trump to the rise of illiberal movements across Europe.

A Chance for Conservatives to Lead

This is also a moment of opportunity. Britain’s Conservative Party has always thrived when it has combined realism about human nature — or at least voter’s instincts — with a unifying national vision. Today that tradition can be revived by facing squarely the sources of democratic discontent rather than dismissing them as prejudice or populism.

The party cannot rely on technocratic fixes or nostalgia. It needs a framework that is both morally credible and psychologically realistic — a politics that feels legitimate to ordinary citizens because it reflects what they instinctively value and that turns moral legitimacy into competitive strength.

Introducing Scientific Liberalism

We set out such a framework: Scientific Liberalism — a new approach already endorsed by leading scientists in the fields it draws from. It begins from a simple but powerful observation: human beings everywhere are guided by four deep moral instincts — fairness, care, cooperation, and group belonging.

These are not abstract ideals. Neuroscience, behavioural genetics, and anthropology all point to the same conclusion: humans are a moral species with evolved preferences for certain social conditions.

• Fairness is the instinctive sense that fair treatment is better than unfairness. When systematically undermined, societies must rely on coercion to maintain order — impacting basic freedoms.
• Care reflects our evolved capacity for empathy and nurturing. Without it, societies squander human potential and weaken cohesion.
• Cooperation is the human baseline. We are wired to collaborate; trust is simply the expectation of reliable future cooperation. High cooperation societies are more efficient and innovative.
• Group belonging gives meaning and loyalty. It shapes who we identify with and favour, and when neglected, fuels alienation or tribal backlash.

Here, it is worth noting that healthy belonging depends on how boundaries are drawn. When group preference is balanced with fairness and care, it binds citizens together; when severed from them, it curdles into cruelty and exclusion. Tribalism can certainly energise — but cruelty ages badly, corroding both those who practise it and the institutions that tolerate it. This framework therefore treats group identity as a necessary social adhesive, not a licence for exclusion.*

Societies and institutions that reflect all four instincts are more legitimate, resilient and able to mobilise the energy and talent of their citizens. Those that suppress or distort them must rely increasingly on coercion and propaganda to maintain order — and ultimately lose legitimacy.

The Human Social Model – distilled to essence – describes how these evolved instincts interact to confer competitive advantage.

The framework that we describe is not a policy programme or an ideological blueprint. It is a way of grounding political design in a realistic understanding of human nature, much as architects must work with the properties of physical materials. These are not transient cultural norms but stable evolutionary patterns — moral preferences shaped over hundreds of thousands of years of social living and unlikely to shift on any political timescale.

Why This Matters for the Right

Conservatives have long understood that politics must work with, not against, human nature. But too often modern liberalism has neglected the moral instincts that give people a sense of belonging, cohesion, and purpose. By recognising all four instincts together, Conservatives can reconnect with voters without abandoning their principles.

• Fairness and care underpin trust, reciprocity, and voluntary cooperation — the foundations of any thriving society.
• Cooperation is essential for capability and resilience. Societies that enable everyone to contribute to their full potential — through health, education, and fair opportunity — are stronger and more resilient and need less coercion to function.
• Group belonging speaks directly to conservative concerns about national identity and community. Managed wisely, it provides the glue of social solidarity without succumbing to exclusion or xenophobia.

Balancing all four instincts allows Conservatives to offer a politics that is both humane and hard-headed — one that champions broad participation while restoring legitimacy and voluntary cooperation.

From Theory to Practice: Four Instincts, Three Illustrative Themes

This framework does not dictate a single policy menu, but it does set clear parameters for legitimacy and competitiveness. Three examples show how Conservatives might apply it:

• Fairness: Frame tax and welfare reform not as redistribution but as enabling the conditions for national competitiveness. A two-tier system where the wealthy exploit offshore havens while ordinary taxpayers face decaying public services erodes trust and violates our instinct for fairness — impacting the legitimacy of the political system.
• Care: View investment in health, education and skills, and family stability as prerequisites for a society able to mobilise its human potential. A society that neglects care suppresses its own human capital.
• Cooperation: Regulation is legitimate when it advances fairness and care — the moral ends that justify its constraints. When those ends are lost, rules consume cooperation instead of enabling it. Bureaucracy mistaken for virtue replaces moral purpose with control — eroding trust and weakening national capability.
• Group belonging: Address immigration and integration with candour and balance. Recognise the economic benefits but also the cultural and infrastructural strains. Uphold fairness and care for those within the group while setting boundaries that maintain legitimacy.

Such policies are not about moving left or right. They are about aligning politics with the moral instincts that make voluntary cooperation — and therefore freedom and competitiveness — possible.

Outflanking Populists, Rebuilding Trust and Competitiveness

Illiberal populists gain traction by speaking to grievances that mainstream parties ignore. By rooting their offer in fairness, care, cooperation, and belonging, Conservatives can undercut that appeal and reclaim the moral high ground.

As Liberalism That Wins argues, when people feel exploited, neglected, or excluded, trust collapses and governments are forced to rely on coercion. But societies that feel fair, caring, cooperative and cohesive require less force, enjoy higher legitimacy, and produce healthier, more productive citizens.

This is not only ethically compelling; it reduces wasted energy, lowers conflict costs and allows more of the nation’s talent to be used well — which is the real basis of strength in a modern economy and state. The same instincts that made humans a hegemonic species now determine which societies thrive or falter.

A Moral Vision for Conservative Renewal

The post-war liberal order delivered peace and progress, but it is becoming increasingly unstable. More of the same is no longer an option.

Conservatives can either defend a failing model or lead a new one. Scientific Liberalism offers a way to do the latter: a framework grounded not in abstraction but in human nature itself. By defending belonging and cohesion while also championing fairness, care, cooperation, and a functioning, confident society. Conservatives can rebuild trust, outflank populists, and provide the moral clarity needed to govern effectively.

In short, a liberalism that wins — and a conservatism that endures — will be one that speaks to our deepest moral instincts and channels them into a politics worthy of public confidence.

You can order ‘Liberalism That Wins’ via Amazon, Apple and Kobo.

—

*As discussed in Liberalism That Wins, group preference is an evolved moral instinct that supports cohesion but becomes destructive when detached from fairness and care. Ethnonationalism represents a pathological over-expression of that instinct — a moral imbalance rather than a political necessity. Healthy societies manage it through inclusive norms, shared identity, and equal legal standing, expanding rather than contracting the moral circle.