Jon Cruddas is frightened. Not of what he describes as the ‘bloody big’ task of leading his party’s policy review, but of the future direction of the Conservative party. Throughout his lunchtime interview with James Purnell at the Labour party conference, Cruddas brought up Britannia Unchained, the latest book from a group of Conservative MPs about how Britain can become a world leader, and about what is currently holding the country back. The party’s policy review chief said the vision presented by those MPs was ‘quite frightening’ because of its stance that the ‘state is totally malign’, and its support for what he described as a world where ‘if you sink or fail it is because of your own calculations’. Those who have followed Cruddas around the fringes from the Liberal Democrats to this Labour conference will note that this is not the first time he’s brought up this book: to him, it’s a sign of the direction of the party he is fighting.
Because there is no critique of this view within the Conservative party, Cruddas told the event, those ‘economic liberal’ MPs will take over the dominant narrative.
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