Jesse Norman

Bright Blue: Centre Write Interview

Phoebe Arslanagic-Wakefield and Joseph Silke speak with the Financial Secretary to the Treasury about COVID-19 and what it means to be a conservative in modern Britain.

Who are the people who have most influenced your political philosophy?
I’d have to choose Michael Oakeshott, Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, since I have written so much about them, but that is by no means an exhaustive list. The joy of political philosophy is that it continues to be a very lively area of debate and thought. I’ve just written a piece for Prospect Magazine on John Rawls and his book A Theory of Justice, which presents a remarkably useful and prescient set of philosophical tools for thinking about where we are now with COVID-19.

You’ve said that people often ask you ‘What happened to the big society?’. In your view, has the pandemic begun a revival of the ‘big society’?
That depends on how you interpret the phrase ‘big society’ — a set of ideas, a set of activities or a political programme? Considering those three, the ‘big society’ was in part an attempt to describe what was distinctive about British social and political life, with its astonishing abundance of independent institutions sitting between the individual and the state. As a political programme, much of Conservative policy between 2010 and 2015 — free schools, the returning of powers to local authorities, National Citizen Service, attempts made to devolve powers back to cities — can be brought under the ‘big society’ label. Though the Cameron Government pursued these policies it didn’t brand them together coherently as part of the ‘big society’. This meant that the ‘big society’ was vulnerable to charges that it was actually about philanthropy and volunteering, but it was about so much more than that. The institutions in Britain that make up the ‘big society ‘remain vigorous and energised. We have an astonishing record of setting up independent institutions, both inside and outside the public sector.

The extent of the expansion of the role of the state during the pandemic is something that a lot of conservatives feel deeply uncomfortable about. How easy will it be to roll back this expansion?
There have been two broad extensions of the state in response to the pandemic. First, through the spending on programmes designed to address effects of COVID-19. Second, via lockdown. People have different reactions to these expansions, they may welcome extra support from government, or worry about the longer term financial implications of that support; they may welcome lockdown as a way of suppressing the virus, or worry that it is a suppression of individual liberty. There are colleagues across the House of Commons who fall into one or more of these four categories.

UnHerd: The Tories should have listened to Jesse Norman

James Kirkup, published 30th December 2019

“Without realising it the free-market West, most notably the US and the UK, has sleepwalked into a species of financial crony capitalism that has disguised economic reality, shielded underperformance, cosseted poor management and leached away value.”

In 2011, a junior Conservative MP published a pamphlet, The Case for Real Capitalism, which anatomised the failures that led to the global financial crisis and — by implication — the policy responses that followed. Jesse Norman had been elected for the first time the previous year, and no one took much notice of his work; but looking back, he may well be considered a prophet whose foresight ought to have been perceived by his own party.

https://unherd.com/2019/12/the-tories-should-have-listened-to-jesse-norman/

Sunday Times op-ed: Beyond Brexit, the chance to be One Nation again

A striking thing about this Conservative leadership election is just how unconservative it is. In days gone by one might have expected the candidates to extol the importance of fiscal rectitude, keeping taxes low, deregulation and public spending restraint. But there has been very little of this.

The fact becomes more surprising still when one thinks that the UK is now in its ninth year of economic growth. Inflation and interest rates are low, employment is at an all-time high. The UK’s public finances are at last under control. This is, many would say, the moment to be storing away the grain against the proverbial and inevitable “rainy day”.

Telegraph: No Deal would be bad, but its possibility will get the EU to engage

How should the next Conservative leader and PM deal with Brexit? Only by facing the facts and then acting with energy and decisiveness.

First, we need to acknowledge the mistakes of the past few years. It was a mistake to agree a short Brexit timetable without a clear understanding of how that timetable could be achieved; not to recognise that the narrow but decisive Referendum vote could and should form the basis within Parliament for an agreed withdrawal deal; to allow the EU to dissociate the financial settlement from the overall deal; and above all not to prepare from the outset for No Deal.

Twitter thread: Conservatism, the party leadership, and the future of our country

In recent days I’ve been asked a lot if I would stand for Leader of the Conservative Party. It’s already a crowded field, and my reply has been that the views of my constituents, party members and colleagues should shape that decision, and I will carefully consult among them.

As a campaigner, over the past fifteen years and more, through books and articles, in interviews and speeches, as candidate, MP, Select Committee Chairman and Minister, I have tried to make the case from first principles for a proper, classic conservatism of public service.  That conservatism ties thought and action together, and I have argued for it in politics since 2006:  in Compassionate Conservatism, Compassionate Economics, The Big Society and my books on the ideas and impact of Edmund Burke and Adam Smith. 

Why Burke and Smith? Because they wrote the Operating System for representative government and open markets, for politics and political economy. Their ideas underlie my conservatism. And they have taught me a vast amount about Ireland, Scotland and the Union. 

The same core belief in public service has always inspired me:  in 1989, when I gave up a job on Wall Street to run a charitable project giving away medical textbooks to doctors behind the Iron Curtain, helping build free institutions in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia; it inspired me in 1997, when I left Barclays to do an MPhil and PhD in philosophy and teach at University College London; and over 20 years in working with astonishing organisations such as The Roundhouse in London which my father created, the Hay Festival, and many others in Herefordshire.

The Legacy of Adam Smith: A Conversation With Jesse Norman MP

How did Smith’s insights into moral sentiments and governance transform the modern world? Do they offer answers to the deepest political challenges of the twenty-first century? Jesse Norman MP sits down with Mark Pennington to discuss his new book on the Governance Podcast.

KCL: Centre for the Study of Governance & Society, The Governance Podcast

Brexit amendments put the British constitution in danger

One of the most striking things about Brexit has been that so far it has been debated, however rancorously, through the medium of normal politics. Yes, the EU referendum in 2016 was unusual, but it was hardly a constitutional innovation. Tempers have run high, there have been all kinds of argy-bargy in the House of Commons, but the British constitution—the political “rules of the game”—has broadly held.

All that changed two weeks ago. The question is, what does it mean?

First, it’s important to be clear again why the Speaker’s decision to accept the Grieve amendment, dictating the pace at which Brexit legislation is moved, really matters. The Speaker’s authority derives from his position as the elected nominee of MPs, his adherence to expert legal advice, and his neutrality. None of these was in play here: he acted on his own personal authority, against expert advice, and apparently not in a neutral way.

Some people have said, in effect: “There has been a lot of constitutional skulduggery on all sides so far. So what?” But this argument does not work.  Yes, party politics can fray the understandings and trust that underlie the British constitution. But changes made on purely personal authority by a Speaker to the rules of procedure of the House of Commons strike directly at its heart.

It’s also said that this was a democratic act. But the truth is that in many ways it was the exact opposite. It overturned the agreed rules of Parliament without notice, without previous deliberation and apparently without reflection on the precedent created, or its potential effects. It also undermined the status of the Clerks. Why should any MP or Government seek a ruling from them as to the correct legal procedure now, when the Speaker may simply decide to change the rules?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I hope 2019 brings all readers of this website great joy and happiness.

For me, 2018 was a year in which I tried to make an extended argument for a different kind of economics, or rather, political economy, in the UK, USA and elsewhere.  

My book on Adam Smith and his impact was written to help us regain a better public understanding of the ways in which different markets work, the dangers of crony capitalism, the factors that shape social norms and expectations, the benefits of "commercial society" and open trade, the co-evolving mutual advantages of markets and a well-functioning state, and the dynamic nature of human commercial, moral and intellectual exchange.  On all of which issues Smith has insights of still-astonishing depth and importance.

Literary Review: Letters

Jesse writes to The Editor.

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Philosopher, king?

Jesse Norman, the former philosophy teacher tipped as a future Tory leader, tells Mark McLaughlin how austerity is compassionate, tuition fees are progressive and why the robots are our friends.

Download Holyrood