Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm your host, Adam O'Neill, executive editor of the Dispatch.

This week I spoke with Robert Tyler, a senior policy advisor at the New Direction Foundation.

Robert is based in Brussels but travels throughout Europe to help build an intellectual framework

for conservatives in Europe. In the first half of the podcast, we take a tour of the most

interesting European countries that are currently being governed by the right. After a quick

break, we turn around to focus on Robert's native United Kingdom for a closer look at

the governing record of the UK conservatives. There are any other areas in foreign policy

that you'd like us to explore more, let me know in the comments. Anyway, let's get into

the show.

Robert Tyler, welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. Thanks for coming by. Thanks so much for having me.

Robert Tyler, we've said you work at New Direction, a think tank based in Brussels.

What do you do all day? What is it that a senior policy advisor does at this think tank?

New Direction is in this kind of weird position where what's described as a political foundation.

That's to say we work directly with centre-right to conservative think tanks

centre-right political parties across Europe. So we're talking about people like

George Melloni in Italy, Peter Fiala in the Czech Republic or Prime Minister Mateusz Moravitski

in Poland. And what we do is effectively offer the intellectual backing to the European

conservative movement. We kind of work together with different academics and intellectuals

and foundations to come up with what can be described as a coherent European conservatism.

Yeah, I remember meeting you at a conference in Brussels, I won't mention the name, but

I was amused when I go and talk to conservatives in Europe because sometimes I'll meet someone

who basically would be in the left wing of the democratic party but has one conservative position

...