The blessed Margaret — never short of a turn of phrase with which a devoted acolyte can open a Critic piece — once said that “first you win the argument, then you win the vote”. This kind of first principles thinking served her extremely well. Though the actual legislative and policy programme was more undercooked at the start of her premiership than subsequent hagiography would have you believe, the ideological underpinnings were there.
She really did slam a copy of Friedrich Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty down on a table and assert “this is what we believe”. Having a lodestar like this was crucial to her success; it sustained the true believers who were to become Thatcherites in the difficult early days, and gave them, like the early apostles, something on which to hang their faith.
This kind of approach to politics has been in increasingly short supply in recent decades. When asked why he wanted to be Prime Minister, David Cameron replied that it was because he thought he would be good at it. Boris seemed to think that it would be good for him. And there seems to be literally no sine qua non of this current government.
Sue Gray was supposed to be preparing that for Sir Keir Starmer in opposition. She came up with nothing. The Prime Minister himself is someone who infamously doesn’t even have a favourite book, let alone one that he would flop onto the cabinet table and adenoidally commit himself to enacting.
This complete ideological void at the heart of Downing Street explains so much of the malaise in which Labour finds itself. They are buffeted about by external forces — either unforeseen events or the dark forces of trade unionism and Islamism, which seem to have taken hold in darker corners of Parliament.
This asks a very important question of the party that has topped the last 100 plus opinion polls: what do Reform actually believe? Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform and someone who may be Reform’s first chancellor, was once asked about whether his party was left wing or right. He replied: “Forget all these ridiculous labels; it’s actually about common sense.
Take that Aristotle, you rube, you clown — why didn’t anyone else through the last 3,000 years of political philosophy think to try common sense? The wasted lives, the forests lost to pointless books, the co2 emissions from the brightest minds in human history trying to work through how to live the good life and build a successful civilisation. All this could have been spared if we had just deployed some common sense.
This mindset is fine for an insurgent party, benefiting from a real collapse in the establishment and a genuinely worrying moment for the country. Yet ideology, or to give it a better name, philosophy, is not a pointless distraction. It is a crucial, galvanising requirement to any political project. The lack of it has helped to bring down Labour, the Tories, the Democrats, the pre-MAGA Republicans, and many more.
With Reform looking increasingly strong in the polls, and talking an excellent game about the need to smash up the administrative state and return power to the elected government, they must start to think about what they would actually do with that power, and why they would do that.
Nigel Farage seems to understand this. In his heart, he is clearly, like me, still a Thatcherite. But with the need to campaign and win votes, he has also learned from Maggie that a brain trust around him is necessary to give that direction and cohesion to the project if it has any hope of success.
For example, how would Reform approach issues in education (something not discussed at all at their recent conference)? How would they negotiate trade-offs when budgets are tight between early years care and school investment? How much responsibility should the state have over children vs their parents, and with what justification? These questions pop up across politics, and “common sense” would be a pathetic answer to them.
Luckily, Farage and his comrades have just unearthed a superweapon. To the background noise of jaws thudding into cheap and musty Westminster carpets, Danny Kruger, Conservative Member of Parliament for East Wiltshire, with a DPhil from Oxford in history and a track record of original thinking, became the first sitting Tory MP to defect.
At a press conference, sitting next to Farage, Mr Kruger said: “the flame [of conservatism] is passing from one torch to another” and “while the torch is different, the flame is the same.” Reform showed that the “new torch is already alight, already brighter than the one it is replacing, held aloft in firm and confident hands.”
This is the moment which has shown that the intellectual energy and momentum is firmly with the Right
It already sounds better than “common sense”. Mr Kruger’s defection is one of those things that will not really make headlines outside of his own constituency, but to me it may embody a crucial moment. This is the moment which has shown that the intellectual energy and momentum is firmly with the Right. The competition between the Tories and Reform is already demonstrably improving the policies of both parties on immigration and energy and defence.
With Kruger’s thoughtfulness, his erudition, and his valiant struggle against the horrific assisted suicide bill, he now has a platform to generate more healthy competition, and to try to bake first principles into a party that has lacked them. Many politicians love to talk but seem a lot less enamoured of thinking. Kruger, with his elegant attempts to summon up a new communitarian spirit for modern Britain, speaks carefully after thinking carefully. It is to Farage’s credit that he has both recognised this, and stolen a star player from the opposition.
The Conservative response to this could make or break them. Rising to the challenge and showing the country that they have regained their own principles, or continuing to say that those who disagree with the leadership are “welcome to leave”. I think we have already seen the consequences of the latter.
In many ways, Kruger’s latest book, Covenant: The New Politics of Home, Neighbourhood, and Nation is very different to the one Thatcher slammed on her desk. But it may likewise prove to be the right tome for our time. One thing is for certain, at least — ideas are back. Hallelujah!
