The real father of Cameronism

24 June 2006

He stresses that the education portfolio was his first choice under Mr Cameron, but there is little he can say on his day job given that the party’s policy group won’t report until next year. His office is still a shrine to public policy, which he evidently loves. His bookshelves contain nothing so lowbrow as books and are instead lined with policy documents, think-tank pamphlets and bulletins of raw statistics. On the other wall hang paintings of beach life on Cape Cod, where he holidays every other summer. Opposite the bookshelf there is a giant oil-on-canvas depiction of a Californian coastal highway. The two walls represent Mr and Mrs Willetts: the artist is Sarah Butterfield, his famously charming wife, who seems to have made a profound impact on his political outlook.

‘My personal definition of a Conservative is a free-marketeer with children,’ he says. A single man may believe in deregulation, low tax and freedom, he says, but his outlook transforms on becoming a parent. He speaks from experience. ‘You start thinking about what drugs are available and what’s being broadcast on television. Suddenly you realise there is more to life than a free-market economy,’ he says. The task is tuning the Conservatives to the same wavelength as parents.

This means using fundamentally different fighting methods from those deployed in last year’s election campaign. ‘I remember having an argument with a colleague before the last election where I thought we had too much detail on public spending. I said, “It doesn’t matter what we say about these figures because within six weeks every figure will look different.”’ There are no prizes for guessing which colleague this was, but Mr Letwin has learnt his lesson and his tax policies are now even broader-brush than Mrs Willetts’s impressionistic artwork.