It’s time to lurch towards the public

Much of the post-Boris analysis in today’s press features on whether a rightwards shift is appropriate. The Daily Mail calls for a return to Tory values, while Matthew Parris in The Times says such calls are predictable and meaningless. But, to me, talk about moving to the right or the left is pretty pointless. As the Telegraph says in its leader today, what’s needed isn’t a lurch to the right, but a lurch towards the public. This comes back to the great, eternally-relevant distinction that Keith Joseph made between the ‘middle ground’ between political parties, and the ‘common ground’ between a party and the public.
 
The problem with what Peter Oborne called ‘the political class’ is that too many of the guys calling the shots today spent too long in political studies seminars and not long enough trying out the real world.. Nick Clegg was actually educated next door to the House of Commons: from sixth-form to the Cabinet involved moving a quarter of a mile.