What he’s done in this book is a tour de force of that kind of thinking. He was the first to understand and explain the importance of the family. Now he has explained the importance of generational shifts, of generational equality, of generational obligations. He gives a startlingly original explanation for our problems with saving and debt and some very good modern ways of illustrating how things like the baby boom have influenced social policy. I recommend it because it’s an illustration of very smart, non-ideological thinking that proceeds from an understanding of how society is rather than from how society should be. Tamara Finkelstein". Government of the United Kingdom. Archived from the original on 20 October 2023 . Retrieved 20 October 2023. This appreciation of quiet, pleasant stability — “there’s an awful lot to be said for the so-called bourgeois life” he tells me — and also the kind of consumerism on display at Brent Cross Shopping Centre, comes directly from the experiences of his parents. His father, Ludwik was exiled to Siberia as a child, his mother Mirjam survived Belsen. “They were always progressive,” he tells me, via Zoom from what looks like a deserted Times office “but extremely anxious about extremists. My father was a great admirer of Harold Wilson, but was always wary of the far left.” Maudling therefore emerges as a bit of a wasted talent. But, on the other hand, he does reflect the kind of solid centre of Conservatism that wouldn’t be familiar to an American audience in the way that Margaret Thatcher is. It was the Conservatism that preceded her, the equivalent of Eisenhower conservatism. I also recommend it as a wonderful book of British history and it’s very well-written. I think David Willetts is by far the most considerable Conservative political writer; and I don’t mean he is the most considerable Conservative writing today, I mean it in absolute terms, full stop. He is always interesting and he has read massive amounts of social research. He has inserted sociology into Conservative thinking.

The story of his mother and father’s early lives under, respectively, Hitler and Stalin, it is at once an epic tale on the scale of War and Peace, an intimate portrait of his family and its traumas and a book of compelling urgency, with a vital political message at its heart.Working peerages announced" (Press release). Prime Minister's Office. 1 August 2013 . Retrieved 7 August 2020. This book has only just been written and therefore can’t be described as being in the pantheon of Conservative classics. But, as a modern policy book, it’s hard to beat. It’s an absolutely brilliant book. His basic theory is that all policy questions should be considered through the generational filter: that means booms and busts of population are absolutely critical, that the ties between generations are critical. His views on the ties between the generations are what make this a distinctly Conservative book.

Policy Exchange appoints David Frum as new chairman" (Press release). Policy Exchange. 19 September 2014. Archived from the original on 18 October 2014. , Daniel’s father Ludwik was born in Lwów, the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, Ludwik’s father was arrested and sentenced to hard labour in the Gulag. Meanwhile, deported to Siberia and working as a slave labourer on a collective farm, Ludwik survived the freezing winters in a tiny house he built from cow dung. Before working for the Conservative Party, Finkelstein was Director of a think-tank, the Social Market Foundation, for three years. During his period with the SMF, the organisation brought New York police commissioner Bill Bratton to London, for the first time introducing UK politicians to the new strategies being used there. On the current refugee crisis, for example, this son of refugees says “It is not harsh to say that there is a problem,” and that it is not somehow anti-Jewish to say that there has to be some sort of policy to stop people taking to sea in unsuitable boats.

Zaheer, Mohammad (18 February 2019). "Opinion: It shouldn't have taken a report from outside the Muslim community for Tory Islamophobia to be taken seriously". The Independent. London.