Jesse Norman is the principal exponent of potentially the most influential political dogma of British politics at present. His career has spanned two continents, banking, teaching and now politics. Last year he wrote a book entitled, ‘Compassionate Conservatism: What it is, why we need it,’ and this has been seen, in its own right to be the ‘filler’ for Cameronian Conservatism. Since Cameron’s inception as leader of the party, he has been subject to vigorous and omnipresent criticism clustering around the view that so far, his many policy reviews, thoughts for the future, and political speeches have contained precious little in the way of hard policy. Jesse Norman intends to change this.

To some extent this changed last year, with the production of a paper entitled ‘Built to Last,’ which was a vision for the future of Britain, founded upon Conservative principles and which drew heavily upon the work of Norman. In many ways, his work is providing the intellectual grounding and the philosophical reasoning for this particular brand of ‘Compassionate Conservatism,’ which has become so entwined with the person of David Cameron. In a very real sense, this is a man to whom the party who might well be in government in three years time, is using to explain its new direction. And that makes for worthwhile conversation.

Jesse Norman is a big guy. Standing at somewhere around 6 ft 5, his inimitable presence reminded me somewhat of Lyndon Baines Johnson in the mid 60’s and I wondered whether he too used this to intimidate potential adversaries. Thankfully he was not prone to walking me off the path as the President frequently did to visiting Heads of State, but rather exuded an affable character, a rare treat from an Oxford man in Cambridge. I’m generally not one for imagery, but the fact we conducted the interview in the basement bar of No1 King’s Parade did get me thinking about broader parallels to the Conservative Party itself, which it seems has gone underground itself since Cameron became leader; in search of a new direction. The leadership and party grandees claim this is in order to get it right, to conduct a proper policy review; critics claim it’s because they have no policies. Jesse Norman is here to provide much of this gap, what he calls the “red meat” to supplement the “hot air”.

The synthesis of Compassionate Conservatism is to exact a fundamental reorientation of the state. You may find it unsurprising then, that one of the defining sound-bites of Cameron’s leadership so far, was his rejection of the Thatcherite argument that “there is no such thing as society”. Cameron’s quip that “there is such a thing as society, it’s just not the same thing as the state,” helps one gain a handle of precisely why Norman’s political thought runs so congruently with the Cameronian Conservative Party. The decentralisation of power away from the honey-pot of Whitehall is a fundamental tenet of this Conservative theory, and Norman is certainly very keen to see local government play a bigger part than it does currently. The theory behind this is that this will provide more accountability, and more voter participation; indeed Norman is keen to trial a form of revised Private Members Bill which would see people sign up, perhaps on the internet, to demand MP’s discuss a particular issue. In this way, he argues, Parliament might be injected with a popular sentiment which would see the big issues in the popular consciousness actually come up for debate, and MPs would be forced into articulating their arguments either way.

Norman does, however, reveal a number of traditional Tory traits, but these are couched in a certain realism of the variation of views amongst Conservatives and a candour towards aspects of Conservative policy. When asked about the spectre of terrorism and the necessary responses by a Compassionate Conservative government, Norman quips, “The Conservatives, when they’re thinking straight, are a party of the Rule of Law.” Here is no shade of grey, of ‘fudging’ or indeed ‘spin’, rather Norman accepts political realities of past and present and also of his difference of opinion with some within his own party. However, Norman’s detest of government “encroachment upon the Rule of Law in the name of terrorism…the move towards ID cards, the move towards restrictions upon freedom of speech or of association,” is a response which one might elicit from a Conservative, Liberal Democrat and many of the government’s own back benchers. What is perhaps different about Norman is the way in which he draws upon historical precedent, stating that “imprisoning someone without charge is a very ancient right and something of which to be reverent and not discarded.” Indeed, earlier in the evening, Norman suggested that rather than somewhat opaque citizenship tests, a more practical answer would be the teaching of British history, in order to understand more intimately the rights and liberties of the subject. This historian sees nothing wrong at all with this proposal; indeed you might say he is somewhat ahead of the game, for the first time.

Norman’s opponents have been eager to criticise him as an advocate of privatisation, and dependent upon the voluntary sector in order to provide public services; but when questioned on this, Norman does not retreat into the world of figures and statistics, but issues a much more frank response, which I think would nevertheless, conflict quite significantly with the ideology of the left, even, dare I say it, the New Left. In a skilful piece of political rhetoric, Norman proposes that “privatisation is a politically loaded word, and to be using privatisation these days is to show that the Left have been allowed to win the argument.” This is explicitly something which would have Norman Tebbit bounding into a tub-thumping tirade about the legacy of Thatcher and the success of BT, and for a Conservative MP to want to shift the goalposts is of certain interest. Norman insists that, “the argument is not about whether services are public or private as such, and it is not intelligent to be ideological about it, but evidence-based about what works…and the Compassionate Conservatism which I advocate, which is nothing like the American version of GWB, is not about privatisation as such, but about diversity and about decoupling the question about how we get public services from the question of whether the state should provide them…we may be able to push power down to people in a way which gives them more responsibility…and there may well be scope for voluntary or charitable groups although they are small in number and there will of course be a role for public organisations.”

For anybody still unsure about what it is that Jesse Norman is trying to do with modern politics, his book ‘Compassionate Conservatism: What it is, why we need it,’ is available free from his website, and is definitely a worthwhile read. You may find yourself agreeing with the need for a new approach to tackle the social problems which afflict our country; such as the fact that we now have the highest teenage birth rates in Western Europe, yet you mind find yourself disagreeing with Norman in his direction for change. Jesse Norman believes that David Cameron has the right instincts to tackle the big issues in this country, and indeed, supranational environmental problems. Norman himself admits that his book gives these instincts the grounding which they need, a grounding which is deeply rooted in the Conservative tradition and also, “independent and solidly robust in its own right.” The best possible outcome of this interview is that you now form your own opinion of this last point, since your opinions on this influential political doctrine in its incipient policy stages could well shape the way you vote in two or three years time.