Jesse Norman

Letter to the Prime Minister

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.

 

When I stepped down from the Treasury last September, you raised the topic of the next reshuffle, and we discussed the potential for me to run a department of state. 

 

I have always been deeply committed to public service. But recent events have served to clarify the position this country is in under your leadership, beyond any doubt; and I am afraid I can see no circumstances in which I could serve in a government led by you. 

 

First, as Sue Gray’s report underlines, you have presided over a culture of casual law-breaking at 10 Downing Street in relation to Covid. To describe yourself as “vindicated” by the report is grotesque. 

 

Secondly, both in the Queen’s Speech and elsewhere, your current policy priorities are deeply questionable. Breach of the Northern Irish Protocol would be economically very damaging, politically foolhardy and almost certainly illegal. 

 

You are the leader of the Conservative and Unionist party, yet you are putting the Union itself gravely at risk. 

 

The Rwanda policy is ugly, likely to be counterproductive and of doubtful legality. Privatisation of Channel 4 is an unnecessary and provocative attempt to address a political non-issue during a time of crisis, at significant cost to the independent UK film and TV industry. 

 

No genuinely Conservative government should have supported the recent ban on noisy protest – least of all when basic human freedoms are facing the threat of extinction in Ukraine. 

 

Thirdly, under you the Government seems to lack a sense of mission. It has a large majority, but no long-term plan. There is no sign, for example, that it has even begun to get to grips with the need for greater security and resilience in a range of policy areas. 

 

Rather, you are simply seeking to campaign, to keep changing the subject and to create political and cultural dividing lines mainly for your advantage, at a time when the economy is struggling, inflation is soaring and growth is anaemic at best. 

 

Sensible planning has been replaced by empty rhetoric. As a former Energy Minister I can tell you that there is, for example, zero chance that this or any government will be able to build a nuclear power station a year at any point in the next decade. 

 

Worse still: you are apparently trying to import elements of a presidential system of government that is entirely foreign to our constitution and law. 

 

But you are not a president, and you have no mandate other than as an MP, and from the confidence of your colleagues. Attempts to centralise power in 10 Downing Street are not merely yet another ill advised political distraction, but almost certain to compound and accelerate the problems listed above. 

 

In my judgement, all these things are at odds with a decent, proper conservatism: with effective teamwork, careful reform, a sense of integrity, respect for the rule of law and a long-term focus on the public good. 

 

Little could please me less than to have to write in these terms. But someone needs to say it, now. With Brexit and Covid behind us, we are at an inflection point. People are crying out for good government and for warm, engaged, unifying and constructive leadership, in the service of a vision all can believe in. 

 

Neither the Conservative party nor this country can afford to squander the next two years adrift and distracted by endless debate about you and your leadership. 

 

For you to prolong this charade by remaining in office not only insults the electorate, and the tens of thousands of people who support, volunteer, represent and campaign for our party; it makes a decisive change of government at the next election much more likely. That is potentially catastrophic for this country. 

 

For these reasons, and with great sadness, I am withdrawing my support for you as leader, and I have notified this to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee. 

 

I leave it to our colleagues to decide where they stand in relation to these concerns. For the avoidance of doubt, however, this is not a leadership bid. 

 

As ever, Jesse Norman 

 

Member of Parliament Hereford and South Herefordshire

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.

 

That is the argument I will be making today, in a debate on water quality in the House of Commons.

 

The River Wye, which flows from the middle of Wales through my constituency and on towards the Severn, is a case in point.

 

The Wye is one of the glories of our country, a priceless national asset celebrated for its beauty since the 18th century, when it inspired the first domestic tourism and the aesthetic movement known as the picturesque.

 

Yet the Wye is at grievous risk from phosphate pollution, which destroys river life and natural habitats. It is the victim of what a recent Commons report identified as a “chemical cocktail” of sewage, slurry and plastic in our rivers, only 14 per cent of which meet good ecological standards.

 

The problem is complex, but the path to a solution is well understood and likely to be relatively inexpensive. But bureaucratic delays and inertia have impeded the way forward.

 

Much recent public attention has focused on the effect of sewage discharges, but the much bigger issue is the leaching of phosphate and other chemicals that have built up in the soil over many years of intensive agriculture on both sides of the border.

 

This has been exacerbated by the rapid development of chicken sheds in England and Wales. Chicken litter is a particularly potent source of phosphate, and discharges upstream are naturally carried all the way down the river.

 

Three agencies are crucial to the clean-up: the Environment Agency, Natural England and Natural Resources Wales. All are needed, together with Ofwat, which regulates the water companies, and with guiding support from the Welsh and UK governments.

 

The solution is evident, as I have argued for more than two years. It is for these organisations to develop a single team and a joint long-term cross-agency strategy covering the river from source to mouth. It will require testing, monitoring and enforcement. But once the team and strategy are in place, we will have the framework needed to secure the necessary funding.

 

And it is nothing new. A very similar issue was addressed in relation to the River Tweed, which straddles the border between England and Scotland, as long ago as 1807, and the Tweed is still regulated by its own commissioners. So the precedent is there.

 

It was that pioneering environmentalist Margaret Thatcher who said in 1988, “It’s we Conservatives who are not merely friends of the Earth — we are its guardians and trustees for generations to come.

 

“The core of Tory philosophy and the case for protecting the environment are the same. No generation has a freehold on this Earth. All we have is a life tenancy — with a full repairing lease. This government intends to meet the terms of that lease in full.”

 

She was right, and that obligation remains today. Now the agencies, the regulator and the Welsh and UK governments need to step up to the mark.

 

Published in The Times

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

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. 

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.

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?