Peter Oborne

Keith Joseph’s lesson to today’s political pygmies

In this extract from his Centre for Policy Studies lecture, Peter Oborne says that the great Tory sage and architect of Thatcherism was quite unlike the politicians of today

issue 07 March 2009

Thirty-five years ago Sir Keith Joseph was the first politician to provide a coherent response to the collapse of the postwar economic settlement. Our ruling elite continued to analyse the financial and social catastrophe of the mid-1970s in traditional terms. But Sir Keith — in an act of quite astonishing courage for a front-rank politician — departed from the orthodox.

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