The real father of Cameronism

24 June 2006

Instead, the party must discuss what interests voters. Tories, he says, should listen to ‘the pressures of being a working mother that the columnist Allison Pearson writes about’. He thinks of another author: ‘Who wrote Man and Boy — Julie Burchill’s ex ...?’ ‘Tony Parsons,’ says his press officer, who is perched in a corner. ‘Yes, what Tony Parsons writes about should be what politicians say as well. It’s marvellous that David is getting into this type of territory.’

And marvellous that the party leader says so little on policy. ‘Ironically for me, the supposed wonk, I think policy detail is much overrated. People want to judge what we will be like in government, with all its uncertainties. Part of the party’s problem is thinking we could respond to the lack of trust in politicians by saying, “We’ll take £17.9 billion out of this and put it into that.” That isn’t how you get trust in politics.’ Instead, he says, the Tories should ‘give a sense of what our beliefs are and the coherent intellectual framework in which they fit. One of the ways in which I’m enjoying working with David is helping to provide that intellectual framework.’

So he is still giving policy advice — or, in this case, non-policy advice. It is a seminal moment for the Conservatives: David ‘two brains’ Willetts is declaring that policy doesn’t win elections. And as so often in the past, his advice is being quietly taken.

Fraser Nelson is political editor of The Spectator.