The last time we had met, Ronald Reagan’s deregulation tsar Chris DeMuth reminded the audience, it was “the last week of normal life in Europe to date”. In February 2020, the National Conservatism conference had assembled in Rome, just as the first cases of Covid-19 were detected there. Back then, a line-up of 26 speakers invoked the values of “God, Honour and Country” against the unholy alliance of “woke capital” and “cultural Marxism”. Now, after two years of pandemic – and one month into war on the continent – what do Europe’s nationalists have to say about the global disorder? One couldn’t help but be impressed by the organisers’ sense of place for NatCon 2022. After meeting in Rome, they were now only a few hundred yards from the European Parliament in Brussels. With Nato leaders simultaneously meeting to discuss Ukraine, the 23-24 March conference – which promised the Polish and Slovenian prime ministers, recently back from Kyiv, plus various MEPs and pundits – made a bold bid for Brussels’ attention.