'Hearts and Minds' by Oliver Letwin

Took me quite a few months of dipping in and out to read this book. It's quite a dry read; part memoir (Letwin is a former Conservative MP and minister), and part history of the Conservative party from the shift towards Monetarism/Thatcherism to the 2017 election, with reflections on what went well and wrong.

On the whole, Letwin comes across well; the book is clearly aimed at politics nerds, not the general public, and feels refreshingly honest, like a politician talking to another politician in private, without fear of losing reputation by saying the wrong thing. By the time of writing, Letwin had been sacked from the Cabinet by Theresa May, and so was no longer in the centre of government, but he had not yet rebelled against the government during the Brexit votes (which eventually led to him being expelled from the party).

The experience of reading this book was often frustrating, because while Letwin gave the impression of being a well-meaning and compassionate guy, he has been shaped by the frankly shocking amount of privilege he grew up with and has been surrounded with for his entire life.

When discussing 'The Intellectual Origins of Thatcherism', he remarks that the story is also his own intellectual origins, because his parents were well-connected rightwing economists with many influential friends in politics. His parents were friends with Milton Friedman; he shares an anecdote of the future Nobel laureate teaching him some free market economics when he was a child. This is all described very casually, as though having such wealthy and well-connected parents is standard; indeed, I gets the impression that for most of his social circle throughout his life, it probably is the norm.

Letwin describes how he got his first job in politics. Keith Joseph, then Education Secretary, was a friend of his parents. Joseph was round for dinner, and Letwin had recently finished university, and Joseph offered him a job at the Department for Education.

Inspirational.

Later, he transfers to the Policy Unit, and casually remarks that his new boss was another friend of his parents. This does not warrant reflection on his own lucky circumstances, or on the insular culture of Westminster politics.

He does, however, reflect on why free market policies have made many people's lives worse. Thatcherite ideas were thought up by a bunch of rich people whose blissful ignorance of what living in poverty was like meant that the actual lived reality of poor people was excluded from their economic modelling, which largely assumed that 'economic freedom' ('Free to Choose' is the title of a Friedman book) applied to everyone equally, conveniently ignoring how much poverty limits people's freedom and choices. Such economic beliefs, which assume equal freedom between individuals, therefore lead to the false narrative that poverty is due to individual choice and personal failings.

'The attachments of the party to free market theory had unnecessarily become a reason for placing far too little emphasis on social justice, and that this in turn gave the party the appearance of callousness.'

Later chapters of the book - which deal with Letwin's experience in government after 2010, are rather more tedious, with descriptions of a lot of bureaucracy, meetings, discussions, phone calls, showing how extremely tedious a lot of political work is.

While reflecting on the Coalition, Letwin remarks that he found himself having far more in common with the Lib Dems than those further right in the Conservative Party, highlighting that the two major parties are already coalitions of different groups - hence the ongoing Labour civil war, and how different Letwin feels compared to today's Conservative party (which Letwin was kicked out of), dominated as it now is by a different faction.

Overall, I found this an informative look at politics 'behind the scenes' from the refreshing (to me) perspective of a reflective Tory who means well but who has been shaped by, and whose worldview has therefore been limited by, a life of wealth and privilege.