Jesse Norman

Real Conservatism - an essay by Jesse Norman MP

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Letter: Scandal of the private finance initiative still hangs over NHS

From Jesse Norman, MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire, House of Commons, London SW1, UK 

John Hutton (“Labour should consider return to public-private partnerships”, August 6) mentions the need to learn the lessons from the UK private finance initiative model for funding public infrastructure. But as several parliamentary reports have shown, those lessons have been learnt, and they are not pretty. 

Two days after its election in 1997, Tony Blair’s Labour government fired the PFI regulator, Alastair Ross Goobey, as brilliant an advocate for public accountability as he was for shareholder rights. 

There then followed a spending spree in the NHS, the result of which was to create an array of large and extremely expensive bespoke hospitals, a 30-year capital liability of £65bn, and a crippling annual cost to the taxpayer. 

In the rush, many of these hospitals were also very badly constructed. In the case of Hereford hospital, an independent investigation discovered disastrous failings in fire prevention, electrical and water systems, and air conditioning which was pushing microbes out from dirty areas of the hospital into clean ones. 

There is one recent lesson to be learnt. PFI contracts are normally full repairing leases. As the early ones now enter their final years, the government is coming under huge pressure to renew them, lest the contractors walk away or allow the assets to degrade.

 This would be a huge further PFI scandal for the NHS in particular. 

But avoiding it means the taxpayer may never be free of the PFI. 

 

Jesse Norman MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire, House of Commons, London SW1, UK

New Tory leader must rebuild our party from the ground up

Who should be the next leader of the Conservative Party? Every MP will have their own take, of course. But for me it comes down to two key issues: the task and the person.

No one can be in any doubt about the magnitude of the task. Personally I doubt whether a government led by Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott would have performed better over the past five years than the government we have actually had.

But all this is now moot. Whatever the true merits of the case, whatever one thinks about the difficulties of dealing with the long-term impact of the global financial crisis of 2007-8, Brexit, the Covid pandemic, the global spike in energy prices or the war in Ukraine, the national mood on July 4 was “Anyone but the Tories”.

The Conservative Party needs to get the message, and show the country that it gets the message. There has been a lot of talk about the need to bring the party together, and that is important. But far more important is the need to undertake a thorough process of moral, intellectual and organisational reconstruction.

The root issue is not one of political presentation, it is one of values and legitimacy, of earning once again a measure of trust and belief that the Conservative Party is serious, competent and oriented towards the public good, among a vast swathe of the people of this country, including millions of young people who may never have considered voting Conservative.

That will take time, and it will involve hard choices, especially as regards fiscal matters. His Majesty’s loyal opposition cannot leave the field, but equally it cannot pretend that nothing has happened, seek to bounce back immediately and shirk the task of building a new Conservative Party on solid foundations, from the ground up.

The Labour government has a huge majority. But the financial facts of life did not change on July 5, and the new government is already struggling to square the opacity of its mandate with the expectations it has raised, the demands of the unions and the internal contradictions of a top-down yet somehow decentralising administration.

All this demands scrutiny and creates political opportunity. But this will be as nothing if the Conservative Party cannot earn itself a hearing.

In seeking to do so, the party needs to rediscover its commitment to public service. Ever since ancient times, it has been thought that human beings are unique among animals in having the power – however sparingly exercised these days – to govern themselves.

Politics is the messy, compromised and yet vital means by which they seek to do so. It is an activity, not a project, the necessary basis for the very possibility of human society. It can be done better or worse, and the fates of peoples and nations can hang on the difference. But, despite the fond imaginings of the Westminster village, politics has little or no intrinsic merit in itself.

What matters is public service. That is the goal. Putting public service front and centre means a lot less ego, and a lot more thought to the well-being of others, especially future generations. This has always been the spirit of conservatism at its best, and the Conservative Party needs to rediscover that spirit.

That is the task facing the next leader. What about the person? It goes without saying that, young or old, a Conservative leader should have a record of commitment to open markets, individual responsibility, financial prudence and limited state intervention, together with a deep interest in history and policy.

As leader of the opposition, the new party leader will need to be adaptable and resilient, able to bring others together both inside and from outside politics, to draw on the biggest talents and put them to work.

They will need to balance independence of mind with a willingness to take advice. And they will need to be a highly effective communicator, with a distinctive voice and a zest and cut-through that can energise people of all political parties and of none.

But I would go further. A really good leader does not simply articulate but embodies the change they are seeking to make. The media tends to focus on social divisions, but these conceal the deep strengths of our society. The United Kingdom is more vibrantly diverse in its culture and identity now than ever before. Recognising that strength in diversity, and acknowledging its limits, will be a formidable task.

The same is true of facing the twin challenges of Keir Starmer at the dispatch box, and Nigel Farage at the bully pulpit. And in my judgement the right person to take these challenges on, to draw the best from the past but galvanise fresh energies and set a new direction, is Kemi Badenoch.

Published in The Telegraph

Letter to the London Review of Books

I much enjoyed Stephen Sedley's thoughtful review of my novel The Winding Stair.

Sedley suggests that Francis Bacon's handwritten memorandum "Reasons for the Remove of Coke" was not intended for King James I, since it lacks a formal address. But this hardly decides the matter: a separate note of address may have gone missing, or the memo might have been delivered via a clerk or courtier. At any rate, Bacon's memo was very likely read by James, since most of its (non-obvious) recommendations were adopted.

One of the purposes of The Winding Stair is to get as close as possible to that impossible ideal, the reality of a given period. Sedley looks in vain for detailed attributions, but one advantage of the novel form is precisely that, as with Bacon's memo, it allows the reader to sidestep the usual academic scaffolding. Not because that scaffolding is unimportant, but because it can get in the reader's way, and because the shaping context of current academic debates can itself be a source of anachronism and mystification.

Westminster scheming is not all bad. Just ask Bacon and Coke

The King sits fretful upon his throne, while all around him his courtiers jostle for attention and advancement. He insists on his own unfettered power, yet the judges would entrap him in the meshes of the common law.

The Winding Stair

Proceeds from the book will go to fund student bursaries and other support for students at NMITE, the new university project in Herefordshire.

The Winding Stair “An engrossing and compelling blend of political thriller and pitch-perfect historical novel” STEPHEN FRY | Buy from Amazon

Governments must step up to the mark and clean up our rivers

At a time when political debate is dominated by public concern over pollution and other threats to the environment, few things are more important than the protection of our rivers and the ecosystems, livelihoods and businesses they support.

Slow Politics Episode 5: Any ideas?

Who’s got all the good ideas in politics these days? Lara Spirit and Matt d’Ancona are joined by Jesse Norman MP, author of biographies of Edmund Burke and Adam Smith.

Click here to listen

My Letter of No Confidence in Boris Johnson

Dear Boris 

 

As you know, I have supported you throughout your career in politics: for Mayor of London in 2007- 8 and 2012, and for Leader in 2016 and 2019.

 

As Prime Minister, you have been dealt a very difficult hand with Covid and Ukraine, and you deserve great credit for much of the way in which the Government has handled these twin crises. Your recent visit to Kyiv was a conspicuous act of leadership.

Sterile debates over university expansion miss the point

In many ways, UK higher education has been a great success over the past two decades. But our public debate remains trapped in a sterile tussle about whether more university students is a good or bad idea. We need to move on and ask more fundamental questions about the deeper function, effectiveness and purpose of much of UK HE.