Where is the Arthur Seldon for our own era?

Colin Robinson, biographer of the sage who so influenced Thatcherism, says that Seldon has no counterpart now — the Tory party is no longer receptive to such challenging ideas

Arthur Seldon deserves greater recognition as a central figure in a small group of economic policymakers which started the transformation of the British economy in the last two decades of the 20th century.

Seldon, who was born in 1916 in London into an émigré Russian Jewish family, was orphaned early in life and brought up by his adoptive parents in the Jewish East End in a community in which hard work, self-help and caring for the disadvantaged were the norms. He had early experience of welfare without the state: when Seldon was ten, his adoptive father died but the financial impact was mitigated by his mother’s receipt of death benefits from his father’s friendly society and some help provided by the Jewish community.