Profiles
Interview with Jesse Norman MP: “I don’t really believe in making political promises.”
By Andrew Gimson in ConservativeHome
Politics is “a noble calling”, and so is conservatism. Few politicians are much good at explaining why they believe what they believe, but Jesse Norman delights in making boldly unfashionable declarations of this kind, and producing the arguments to back them up.
Jesse Norman, the Government's worst nightmare - an intellectual conscience
By Sarah Sands of the Evening Standard
The former government adviser Jesse Norman is perplexed by his sacking last week after abstaining over the vote on intervention in Syria. “I seem to have acquired this reputation as the Che Guevara of the Conservative Party,” he says gloomily.
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Jesse Norman, Tory Rising Star, On Boris, Burke And His Row With Cameron
By Mehdi Hasan of Huffington Post
To call Jesse Norman “clever” would be an understatement. The Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herfordshire has a classics degree from Oxford, a PhD in philosophy from University College London and is the author of several highbrow books, including ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ and ‘The Big Society’. His pre-parliamentary career included stints as a director of Barclays Bank and executive director of the right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange. He is, in the words of GQ, “the preeminent intellectual theorist of Cameronism”.
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“Tories must not forget there is more to life than money”
Jesse Norman, David Cameron’s new policy adviser, insists it won’t be all Old Etonian mates at No 10, he tells Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson of The Times
Jesse Norman plays the trumpet in the parliamentary jazz band and his hero is Louis Armstrong, although he says “don’t ask me to choose between him and Bob Dylan”. The other trumpeter in the group is Lord Glasman, Ed Miliband’s “blue Labour” guru — “so it’s blue-on-blue blues,” the Tory MP says.
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Jesse Norman: Impeccably conservative
Despite having led a backbench rebellion against Lords reform, Jesse Norman is one of the last defenders of Cameron’s “big society”. What’s more, he tells Rafael Behr, its influence is growing. NewStatesman
There’s a great scene in The African Queen, the 1951 film about a colonial military escapade in the First World War: Rose Sayer, a Methodist missionary, disposes of the stash of gin belonging to Charlie Allnutt, a drunken Canadian boat captain. “A man takes a drop too much once in a while,” he complains. “It’s only human nature.” Sayer responds: “Nature, Mr Allnutt, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”
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Interview with Jesse Norman
Jesse Norman speaks to Jane Merrick of the Independent on Sunday about Westminster, the battle of ideas and the joys of jazz.
Jesse Norman has been talking for nearly an hour before I notice the pale green, slightly tatty, cotton wristband on his right hand. It's the fashion among the more socially aware MPs to wear a charity band. This threadbare strap, Norman says, was given to him by a Dusun tribesman in Borneo last year. The man, whose grandparents were headhunters, spotted the MP's own wristband and asked him to swap, and Norman obliged. "So there's a Borneo tribesman wandering around the jungle with a Help for Heroes wristband on his arm," he says, amused.
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Jesse Norman: Captain Sensible proves a major adversary for Cameron
by Nicholas Watt and Juliette Jowit in The Guardian.
As one of the most erudite MPs at Westminster, Jesse Norman naturally turned to Charles James Fox to describe his own predicament yesterday.
Hours after David Cameron remonstrated with him outside the commons division lobbies, after Norman led the biggest Tory rebellion of the parliament, the backbencher quoted the 18th-century Whig statesman.
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Jesse Norman looks firmly towards a bright future, for both county and country
by Tom Kennedy in the Hereford Times
Jesse Norman certainly has a clear image of what he wants for the future of Hereford. The Tory politician is highly respected within the party, and considered as a true pioneer of compassionate conservatism. It is his fresh thinking approach the Tories will need to embrace in order to gain the necessary support to succeed in next year’s general election.
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