Few people have been more important to Tory modernisation than Nick Boles. He co-founded Policy Exchange, the think tank that has developed most of its policy ideas, and has been a tireless—and tieless—advocate of it.
But one of the things that has always marked Boles out is his willingness to think and reflect. In an interview with The Spectator this week, Boles — who was promoted to the government in the last reshuffle — assesses what he and his fellow modernisers got right and wrong. He concedes that the modernisers lacked ‘a strong, economic message’ and that they became too carried away with ‘media zeitgeist’ issues like ‘chocolate oranges in W.H. Smith and some of the environmental messages and the work/life balance stuff’.
He reserves perhaps his strongest criticism though for the flirtation with Red Toryism, or as he puts it ‘that Phillip Blond nonsense, we indulged in.’
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