James Price served as Chief of Staff and as a senior special adviser to Nadhim Zahawi.
The British constitution is about to come under attack. Serious, sustained attack by people who neither care about it, nor who are humble enough to realise that there will be damaging consequences to their assault. The first campaign will be against the House of Lords, and the hereditary peers will be first in the firing line.
But when their other schemes fall apart, Labour will turn on the rest of the Upper House and attempt to desecrate it for the sake of short-term headlines about progress and modernity. What is a party with ‘conservative’ in its name if not to stand up for our constitutional settlement and conserve that which works so well?
In what will be one of his final acts for the Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak will be issuing a resignation honours list (as long as he doesn’t listen to those foolish enough to suggest to him that he shouldn’t).
Adding firepower to the defence of the Lords should be the focus of Sunak’s list, and despite it all, we are blessed with some stellar people who can and should be elevated for this fight.
As someone who worked as the special adviser to the Leader of the Lords through much of Brexit and COVID-19, I have seen the strengths and weaknesses of the Tory grouping in the Lords. Given the Bishops vote against the Conservatives more than 90 per cent of the time, and shy away from ecclesiastical issues too often, I have included theologians Nigel Biggar and James Orr.
Similarly, there is an occasional chilling effect when a noble Lord begins speaking by outing themselves as a lawyer, with non-lawyers afraid of being caught out. Accordingly, Super SpAd Sheridan Westlake and City grandee Mark Watson-Gandy are included to give more legal firepower.
We will need intellectual pugilists, too, especially those with the oratorical ability to shame those who would hurt the Lords. This accounts for Douglas Murray and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The age of peers, an advantage in many ways, does inhibit their understanding on issues from modern family life to the current geopolitics, and so refreshing the benches with Miriam Cates and John Bew will bring things up to date.
Professor Nigel Biggar CBE
A thoughtful, kind, and deep thinker, Biggar was forced into the limelight after an academic book weighing up the merits and demerits of the Empire became a heated battle in the culture wars. Biggar has the same thoughtful, nurturing, and probing disposition as the late Roger Scruton, his great friend, and is the obvious successor as the leading British conservative thinker.
To watch him gently probe the paper-thin arguments of the Government in the Lords, much as we would have done slightly lazy undergraduates would benefit the Government as much as the Opposition.
Dr James Orr
Another who could have chosen a quiet, easy life. A successful lawyer who caught the bug for political and religious philosophy and retrained as an academic (at, one assumes, great financial cost), Orr seems to have made the further realisation that a quiet academic life is no longer an option for someone with conservative beliefs.
Even more rarely for a conservative, he organised. The National Conservatism conferences and the Edmund Burke Foundation make him the sort of political entrepreneur that is needed to rekindle the flame of conservative thinking.
Douglas Murray
No one in the public sphere has the potency of Douglas Murray today. Combining the destructive power of an American bomber squadron with the cold fury of a man possessed, watching Murray’s debate performances of recent years is like watching the walls of Jericho tumble down under the blowing of the trumpets.
To watch the sleepy ranks of Liberal Democrat peers, elevated after a few years running a district council, suddenly find themselves toe-to-toe with Murray would be priceless, let alone giving him the platform to advocate for conservative ideals more forcefully than anyone else on earth.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
An incredible life story that seems certain to have many more acts left to it; Hirsi Ali is the bravest public intellectual in the West. Her recent admission that personal suffering caused her to change her attitude towards faith has led to her conversion to Christianity.
It has also led to ‘Reformation’ a scintillating Substack that combines the best analysis with her trademark bravery to speak the truths so many are afraid to utter. She would wipe the floor with the many mediocrities in the Upper House who would be blown away by her fortitude.
Miriam Cates
Miriam Cates may have lost her seat in the last general election, but few current or former members maintain such a strong sense of mission. A degree in Genetics from Cambridge came in particularly handy in her spirited defence of children from the horrors inflicted upon too many of them by those pushing harmful surgeries and experimental drugs in the name of woke. Cates would bring passion and care into the Chamber with a fearlessness that few could match.
Sheridan Westlake OBE
The ultimate SpAd, Westlake holds the record for continuous service between 2010 and 2024. Across my own time in Government, there was barely a single civil servant who hadn’t heard of him, lost a fight against him, and who hadn’t joined a pre-meeting session of dozens to work out how they would try to combat his awesome administrative abilities. Westlake worked for five prime ministers, with his leaving being likened to the ravens leaving the Tower of London.
Mark Watson-Gandy OBE
A barrister and City grandee with almost as much experience running livery companies and ancient chivalric orders as practising at the bar, Watson-Gandy would hit the ground running in the Upper House amidst the procedures and traditions that baffle even other lawyers. Having also served on multiple departmental boards, this is the kind of quiet, probing legal mind the Party needs to delve into the reams of legislation that will be thrown at them.
Dr. John Bew
Another long-term survivor of successive governments, Bew is thought to have been kept on in a Starmer premiership, such is his reputation and grasp of foreign affairs. In an age where so much of the debate about international relations is, at best, domestic politics in disguise, or at worst, hypocritical cant, his experience would be a great antidote.
And such recent, deep experience will provide a useful antidote to those noble lords whose experience is, shall we say, somewhat less contemporary?
