Elizabeth Oldfield speaks to Conservative MP Danny Kruger. 11/05/22
Danny Kruger MP is a Conservative Member of Parliament for the Devizes constituency in Wiltshire. He and his wife founded and ran Only Connect, a charity that works with men and women in prison or recently released, with the aim of helping them live crime–free lives. Prior to this he worked as a speechwriter for the Conservative party, for a think tank, and as a journalist.
He speaks about his conservatism, his conversion to Christianity in his 20’s, and why he thinks running a charity is harder than being an MP.
We recorded this while Danny was driving, so you may hear a faint ticking noise from his indicator.
You can read a full transcript here:
Elizabeth
Hello, and welcome to The Sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield. And this is a podcast about our deep differences, and how we might grow in empathy and understanding of the people behind the positions in our somewhat fractured public debates. Every episode, I speak to someone who has some kind of public voice or platform. And honestly, I’m really on a mission to understand how people have ended up believing what they believe, and doing what they do. I’m especially interested, confession time, as someone with some tendency to judginess, I imagine I’m not the only one, but I might be. I have a tendency to assume things about people based on their jobs, or their politics, or even their gender, or their class, all manner of different things about their identity, I’m an equal opportunity judger. And I want to challenge myself, because I do not like this about myself, to listen and to connect with a complicated human person, not just a type. The project grew out of a deep worry I had, yes, about myself and in the environment. And the way I felt it was changing me, and more generally, about the ways that our technology and our institutions and our democratic processes and our social norms were forming us were forming our characters and our habits and our understanding of what’s acceptable and not acceptable in ways that I felt we’re driving us further and further apart. And so in some ways, this podcast is a spiritual practice for me to listen deeply to a range of people, and I hope that you also find enriching. As usual, please do hop on over to Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. It is such a delight when I see a new review pop up, we haven’t had one in a little while. So I would love someone to tell me that they love the podcast, frankly. That’s the honest thing to say, isn’t it? Tell me that you’re enjoying it, as I put my voice out into the air in my slightly lonely attic room. If you don’t love it, you know, you should probably tell us there too, for the sake of transparency, but also you can get in touch with feedback via email, or social media. There we go. Embarrassing and needy beg for likes reviews shares over. To the important bit. In this episode, you will hear a conversation I had with Danny Kruger MP. You know, I really liked the fact that he’s still called Danny and didn’t feel the need to change it to the more formal Daniel, when he was elected to the mother of all Parliament’s. A bit like Danny Finkelstein, actually another really thoughtful conservative we’ve had on the podcast. He is the Member of Parliament for Danny Kruger, this is. Danny Kruger is Conservative Member of Parliament for the Devizes constituency. And he has run several charities with ex–offenders and young people, including Only Connect, founded them and run them and then as you’ll hear, pass them over. Before that he was a speechwriter and various other roles for the Conservative Party and in think tanks. And before that he did a bit of journalism. We spoke about, because I couldn’t resist a little bit about growing up as the son of Prue Leith. His conservatism, which sounds like it’s gone back a long way. And is very influenced by a thinker called Edmund Burke. His conversion to Christianity in his 20s from a completely not religiously inclined family. And why he thinks running a charity is much, much harder than being an MP, which was music to my ears, and I imagine to many others who’ve been involved with trying to work in a charity sector. Little bit of housekeeping, we recorded this interview, our Danny was driving because MPs finding time to do long leisurely podcasts is a challenge. So, you’ll occasionally hear a faint ticking noise. You don’t need to worry, don’t be anxious, it’s not a bomb, it is an indicator on his car. Is that a really dark joke? I didn’t mean it to be a dark joke. The ticking in the recording is an indicator. I really hope you enjoy listening.
Danny, I asked every guest, and I hope they’ve all had some notice to reflect on what is sacred to them. And this is something that doesn’t have to be necessarily religious. It’s really just trying to get to the deep values and principles that you’re at least attempting to live by. And one of the clues to it is sometimes if someone offered us a lot of money to give up on that principle, or to act against this thing, we would feel very conflicted. We would have that kind of instinctive ick reaction to that.
Danny
All right. So, it’s a great question. What do we worship? And where do we get our sense of value from? I’ll try and answer it in a non–spiritual way to begin with at least. And this is my politics as well, which is what I think matters in the world is our relationships. And I have quite a, what I think is an Aristotelian idea that we derive our identity from our connections and from our context. And that gives us our sense of self rather than being as it were, formed, unique, and whole and entire, and then influencing the world around us. It flows from the outside in. And so, what I hold sacred is the, and this is actually reflects in Jonathan Haidt’s work if you know, the book, The Righteous Mind, which talks about the moral foundations that all people everywhere have. And one of his, the moral foundations he identifies is, what is sacred. And I think what is sacred is the people around us, and which is why culture matters so much. But then, if you also asked, you know, ‘what would I really not want to give up?’ and, perhaps paradoxically, given what I’ve just said, what I would hate to give up is solitude and time alone. Reading mostly. And I love the rare moments in my life when I am on my own. Whether it’s in the car, or I managed to get time with a book. And, actually, I’m an introvert I think, so I think solitude is very, very precious.
Elizabeth
How do you think those values, maybe, perhaps the first one, but the second as well, have shaped your life? Have, kind of, influenced your big decisions?
Danny
Well, my, I suppose the biggest sort of career decision I’ve ever made was to leave politics in my late 20s. I guess when I was around 30, having worked in newspapers and, and politics in Westminster, think tanks, Conservative Party, and to go off and work with my wife [Emma], running a charity that we’d set up that I thought when we set it up would sort of take care of itself. And I could just kind of help manage it, as it were, around the edges of my day job. But it took over as these things do, and I made it my day job. I was really, you know, personally invested and engaged in what we were doing. It’s working, it works with prisoners, and with ex–prisoners. But the sort of philosophy that I just tried to express was reflected in my view that actually, it was one thing to be sitting in Westminster talking about social change, and the kind of society we want. Actually, change only happens, and the society we want only comes about if people actually put their hands to it. And the, I felt very strongly that it wasn’t enough to, I was writing David Cameron’s speeches at the time. And I thought this is so far from the actual reality of what we’re even talking about, you know, it was the early days of the ‘big society’ agenda. I thought, is there something wrong here that I’m sitting here writing about it when I actually could and should be doing it? And I guess it was the relationships that I had with a group of ex–prisoners, and with our volunteers and the team and obviously, with Emma. That made me realise this matters more than getting the national policy framework, right. When, anyway, we were in opposition. So I wasn’t even in a position to influence the real policy framework, it was all very abstract.
Elizabeth
Thanks, we will definitely come back to only connect that charity and the those kinds of twin threads of politics and the third sector, the charity sector that so framed your career. But first, I want to just get a sense of where you’ve come from, what you’ve been formed by, and I’d love you to just say a little bit about your childhood, and particularly any big ideas, philosophical, political, religious, that you think have helped make you the man you are today.
Danny
Well, my childhood was very comfortable and secure. And my parents made money in a certification company and did very well. So I had a very privileged upbringing in Oxfordshire, went to boarding school, and always had a sense of security behind me, both family wise, you know, what my parents and my sister and I are always very safe, secure unit. And, obviously, materially as well. The biggest sort of philosophical, or kind of intellectual influence on me, I guess, was, naturally enough, my parents worldview, which was very honorable, but materialist, not in the sense of being about money, but completely non–spiritual. So, they were kind of my parents with sort of post war generation, you know 50s and 60s, when I think there was a great reaction against intellectual extremism, and a sense of the possibilities of the future. As long as people didn’t let crazy ideas run away with them. And so well, for whatever reasons, both my parents were atheists. My mother is still with us. She’s still an atheist, sadly. And both really believed in the potential of humanity to get things right if we just organised ourselves well. And they brought me up to have a strong sense of social duty and commitment, obligation, honesty, and rationality, reason, a respect for evidence and science and what can be proved. And, I guess that is the, you know, that’s very much part of what I believe too, but I in my 20s changed my worldview and now I have a different perspective from them. But I guess they always have influenced me to respect the sort of Western tradition, I guess, of reason and honesty and social obligations.
Elizabeth
And your mum is obviously Prue Leith, who is now extremely famous for bakeoff. But having read a bit about her, it sounds like she also had quite a public profile in your childhood. And it astonishes me how much she got done, really, you know, business and restaurants and columns and television profile. How much were you aware as a child of this, kind of, public bit of your mum?
Danny
Yep. Pretty aware, because, you know, sort of, it was very, it was part of our childhood, my mum being on TV, and because she’s in cooking, catering, the whole business of work was quite intermingled with, sort of, family life and with private life, so she would work in the evenings, but then she’d be at home in the day, she would do, often do TV recording from home. There would be, you know, she was in the business, she was writing about home, cooking at home and cooking for children and so on. So it wasn’t if her work was some strange thing that you know, your parents did it in a faraway office in an industry you didn’t understand.
Elizabeth
Yeah. And you were sent to Eton, which I think has quite a two dimensional brand associated with it in the public eye. What was your experience of it like?
Danny
I didn’t enjoy it much at the beginning. Because it’s a big place, and my, I didn’t have friends and family who’d been you know, it wasn’t in my parents and grandparents, you know, generations of Etonians of generations of Etonians behind me to know the culture so I understand it. And I was a shy little boy. So, it took a couple of years before I was happy, but I was in the end and the great thing about it, and everyone boasts about their school if they liked it, but what I think is good about Eton is it makes, it really brings out the individual. It honours individuality, and you are encouraged to find your own path. And there’s always obviously these great opportunities for you to take part in activities. So, I think by the time I was 15 or so, when other boys also begin to recognise individuality rather than being the sort of appalling kind of herd mentality of the early teens, I enjoyed it and, you know, I respect the place I got a lot out of it, and will always be grateful for what it did for me.
Elizabeth
You went to university and fairly soon, it seems, conservatism and politics became a kind of live interest to you. What was the draw there? What did you fall in love with?
Danny
Well, I had always been interested in politics since I was at school, I don’t really know why, but, and I was always a conservative.
Elizabeth
You didn’t have a youthful left wing period as so many people seem to have
Danny
No, I didn’t. I think I was a horrible little Thatcherite, in the late 80s. And then in university, I did a bit of bit of student politics, not much. But what really, I think shaped my ultimate, my, ultimately has shaped my politics more than anything was when I was at Edinburgh University. I, my undergrad. I finished a magazine that I’d set up. I interviewed Conor Cruise O’Brien. Irish intellectual, historian, politician, who was over for a visit and his, in preparation for that interview, I read his biography of Edmund Burke. It’s called The Great Melody. And that was my introduction to Burke and that more than anything, I think that, and then obviously I went on I did a Post–Grad DPhil studying Burke in detail. And what Burke gave me was a framework for what I felt already, which was that the rather thin doctrine of Thatcherism, or of what had been, you know, come to be seen as Thatcherism, which is, which is a caricature, which is just, you know, free markets, personal freedom, and sort of Darwinian idea that, you know, everything will be best if we just leave everybody alone to fight it out among themselves. That that was a very thin and unsatisfactory account of how we work and what makes us tick. And that a society that is prosperous, will actually be built on a much more, much richer texture of social relationships and obligations. And we have duties to each other, as well as to our ancestors And our descendants. And to the people around us that go beyond these, this purely private or selfish idea of liberal individualism. And yet, we shouldn’t trust big government either, because that isn’t the way to manage these relationships. So, so, Burke, in the 1770s/80s/90s, articulated this set of ideas so beautifully and so well, that I was hooked. And that, so I became a Burkean. And that’s the kind of Tory I am now. And after, while I was still at Oxford doing the post grad I got involved with doing journalism and and ended up doing political commentary and journalism for a bit then then go on to think tanks and so on.
Elizabeth
And you were eventually a speech writer, and I feel like speech writers are the sort of unseen cogs in the machine of politics. The only real association I have is, is with Toby from the West Wing, who’s the kind of fictional archetype of a political speech writer. What was the best and worst thing about being a speech writer? And can you just give us a sense of sense of the actual job?
Danny
It’s a very unsatisfactory one. I mean, there’s a great there’s a sort of privilege, I guess, in being in the room with the with the politicians who are going to be making decisions or, or not my case, because we were in opposition, trying to influence them. The more important the speech, the worse the speech writing processes, because it has to go through so many different hands and different voices trying to interfere. And actually, what ends up happening, because the way that the media cycle is that the speech is really only the sort of vehicle for a couple of sound bites, which is what matters. And they, the sound bites are often written, possibly by somebody else, by the speech maker, the politician or their strategist or comms person, you know, the night before, and then briefed out to the media. And then the politician has to then recite this long speech to an audience of people who, frankly, are only interested in this soundbite anyway, after the news has been announced after it’s been in the papers. So it’s all a very strange, and, as I say, unsatisfactory arrangement. And as a literary form, I think we’ve, you know, we don’t make great speeches anymore for lots of strange reasons.
Elizabeth
I was trying to think of last one I read or what, in full, and I can’t.
Danny
Yeah, well, I think great speeches are, no, well, I mean, I think the best speeches, and the other problem with it, you know, the, the politicians themselves are much better when they speak without a script, or just with some notes that they’ve written themselves. Or if they’ve really written the speech, and then properly learnt it, you know? So, you know, I wrote, you know, had a big hand in David Cameron’s 2006 Party Conference speech, which was the one he delivered without any notes. It was when Gordon Brown was just about to call an election, but then we sort of scared him off, and, by, with a great party conference, and, that speech that David gave was very much his work. I mean, I’d had a hand in it. Steve Hilton had had a bigger hand in it. But David really, and he learnt it, and he recited it as if it were properly off the cuff. As it kind of half was, you know, it was really him. So the less the, the speech writer, the better. And so I think ultimately it’s a bit of a bogus profession. And, you know, as a politician myself now I would not want to be giving speeches written by other people. Even if you had Toby Ziegler writing them. I mean, oh, that said you need to get obviously get great, I also think the American tradition is different, they have a tradition of oratory. Which you obviously get was Obama, particularly, but George Bush as well gave great some great speeches. And there’s something about, I think it was written in the West Wing talking about altitude speeches, “make it higher”. Which in the UK, we don’t do altitude, you know, people think it’s ridiculous. If you try and do
Elizabeth
We get cynical quite fast, don’t we.
Danny
Yeah, soaring rhetoric doesn’t seem to play in the British context. Although when you, then you hear Zelensky quoting Churchill, you realise, you know, we have got a tradition of oratory.
Elizabeth
And you alluded to this big change that happened in your 20s, of not, no longer calling yourself an atheist? How did that come about?
Danny
Oh, that’s a very simple story. My, this girl Emma, who I met, and was going out with. She started praying for me, and we a lot of conversation, I’d always been interested, I’d never been an anti Christian, I’d always found it interesting and important. And actually, as I was first I working for in Westminster in a think tank, I’d gone to meet Tim Montgomery, and Peter Franklin, who were running the Conservative Christian Fellowship out of a basement room in Conservative Central Office, and been, and I remember a really long intense conversation with them about faith and politics. But for me as a non–believer, but fully recognising how important it is, and are valuable and how and, and I think I recognised even then how our politics – conservatism, but other traditions as well are rooted in Christianity, and they don’t make a lot of sense without recognising that. So, I was I was sort of halfway there intellectually. And then I then, and then, Emma praying for me, and me getting more and more interested. And then the change happened between starting Mere Christianity by CS Lewis and finishing it. I don’t know quite how or at what point but I started that book thinking, I’m interested in this from a non–believing perspective, and finishing it, thinking, I believe. And all I can say, as, you know, I’m no better as a person now than then. But I have a sense of purpose. And, selfishly, I’m a lot happier in myself.
Elizabeth
How much do you think that awakening, that spiritual change in you, was related to the starting of Only Connect, and I’d love to just hear a little bit more, I guess, about the passion behind that or the drive to work with ex–prisoners and that particular group.
Danny
Well that, again, I’d always been interested for some reason I can’t really account for in prisons, you know, justice policy. And when Emma, so I met Emma through friends, and she was a teacher, and but also, since university have been volunteering with various prison charities, working in the arts. So she’s a, she was a drama teacher, English and Drama, and she did a lot of theatre projects and arts projects with prisoners as a volunteer and then in fact worked for the BBC doing to literacy workshops in prisons as well, using theatre techniques. And we are, she wanted to carry off that BBC content. No, she didn’t want to go back to teaching she wanted to do the prison work full time. And I said, let’s, I’ll help you set a charity up too….so we can raise some money you can be employed, that’s the what you can do. And I will, I’ll do that do the back office, you know, do the admin and the fundraising and so on. And famously said to her, we’ll set it up, and then it will more or less run itself. And which is not how anybody who’s been involved with charities, knows things work. They’re incredibly demanding. But, so I guess I slightly kind of stumbled into it, I felt a slippery slope into the into the full–time work, I started because I was interested, I had this sense, as I said to you, that being privileged and interested in social policy wasn’t really enough, if you had no direct experience of the world you’re trying to work in. It just became a compulsive way these things do took over. It’s just so hard running a charity. So hard, things are so difficult. Any charity. And then you’re working in this really dysfunctional space of the prison system, and probation system. And you’re working with some people who are pretty dysfunctional. Which includes the volunteers, by the way. I mean, everyone involved, you know, from me, and ever down. You know, you bring your, it’s a messy business, charity work, and, you’re working with messy people. And nothing is straightforward. So it’s really, really challenging work.
Elizabeth
How did your background, as, forgive me that I’m really interested in how we connect across the tribes that people ascribe us to and the boxes that we get put in. And there’s an assumption, I think that the charity sector space is very left leaning and progressive. And you were working with a lot of young people, many of whom, who had had very tough backgrounds, from all different language groups, from all different races. And you were coming in as someone who, you know, presents as the old Etonian that you are in terms of that kind of shorthand that we do to each other of putting it in putting each other in boxes. What did you learn about navigating those differences? The way we handle privilege or under privilege. What was that like?
Danny
Yeah, there’s a lot there. But, you know, it’s mostly middle class, white people who worry about that those issues in my experience. And, and also, ultimately, a relationship is, is a relationship. And once you’ve got to know, somebody you see beyond the presenting characteristics of class and colour and background. So, I mean, I think there’s a, there’s a massive distrust among people in prison of anybody who coming in from the sort of, the straight world, the official world, whether they’re charity or statutory. I mean, there’s a definite advantage saying your charity, you’re doing it, because you want to not because you have, and you don’t have any power over them. But still, that distinction isn’t that strong, and anybody who is coming in from a sort of professional, middle–class world to provide whether, you know, provide help is distrusted. And that has to be worked on and got through. And it’s never totally dispelled. So it is tricky, issues around power. But issues of kind of class and background, I think those don’t really apply. So, it’s not that, I think dealing with the client group as it were isn’t particularly tricky or an issue. The, but you’re right about the colleagues, I mean, the people working in the sector, in the charity sector. Yeah, I mean, you know, 90% left leaning, which is regrettable. And there’s lots of interesting reasons for that. I always regret it because I think that actually, charity, it isn’t a great word but social action. Sense of obligation to the people around you. Rolling your sleeves up and getting stuck in. Not relying on Government to fix social problems. To me, these are quite conservative principles. And it’s a shame that our politics is such that so many charity leaders particularly, and, frontline workers distrust my party. And that’s, that’s our fault. It’s my fault as much as my party’s fault as much as anything. It doesn’t seem right.
Elizabeth
I just want to pick up a thread from your conversion to bring in here, which was a quote that I came across that you said that I’d just love you to say more about, because I find it very intriguing. You said “conservatism without Christianity is just snobbery and spivvery”, which you may or may not still agree with, I don’t know. But unpack what you were grasping towards there for me.
Danny
Oh, yeah, no, I do. It was quite provocative. It’s bit offensive, because there’s loads of conservatives who aren’t Christians, but I do. As I said, I think all our politics derives from Christianity, I agree with Tom Holland, on that. Yeah, that doesn’t make sense if you don’t recognise the Christian roots, obviously applies to liberalism, socialism, as well as to conservatism. But conservatism does have a particular as it were, this is just my perspective, you know, all credit to people, there are many great conservatives who don’t believe. But it doesn’t make sense to me otherwise. And I fear that if you don’t have a, the reason I suppose I would say, I said that, is that Christianity, as all politics should be, but really, really is rooted in a notion of fallibility, we are fallen. And if you don’t accept that we’re fallen, then the articles of conservatism which are on one hand, about the recognition of tradition, and settlement, and convention. If you don’t realise that we need that because we are fallen, and we are likely to make mistakes if we just respect our ancestors, then all you’re doing is having a kind of snobbish attachment to the past and the way things are. So, to be to be a traditionalist without being a Christian, who recognises human fallibility, feels to me just like snobbery. And likewise, if you’re a conservative, just as a conservative without believing fallibility, if you’re a conservative who believes in free markets, as I do and we should, and in enterprise, and in the rightful yearning and search for prosperity, and material improvement. If you do that without Christianity without recognising our obligations to others, to society and to the planet. And if you don’t have a moral framework around your belief in enterprise, then you’re just a spiv, who’s just trying to just on the make.
Elizabeth
I have to look it up, actually, Danny, can you just define spivvery for us?
Danny
Well, spiv was a, maybe it’s an out of date word now, it used to be very common, it just meant a sort of immoral. Someone who’s on the make someone who’s just trying to, quite flashy, just pleasing money for its own sake, totally materialistic, selfish, and a bit of a cheat as well, you know, not being honest, in their dealings. So, you know, we believe in in enterprise and letting people make money, we really believe in that. But if you if you don’t have a moral framework around that, then your conservatism is just, it’s just spivvery. So yeah, I think conservatism without Christianity is at risk of being just snobbery and spivvery.
Elizabeth
Thank you. And after quite a long time of wrestling through those challenges, you’ve described of leading in the charity sector, politics called you back. What were the threads were you pulling on when you decided to go from the grassroots back to the kind of eagle’s eye view of helping shape policy?
Danny
Yeah, well, I think I always thought I would I was just surprised at how long it took and you know, I spent the best part of 10 years away in which I did, you know, I probably the best work I’ll do because although wasn’t always successful, particularly with the prisoners work, because after setting up Only Connect, and that now carries on and I share that charity now. I set up a project working with children and young people trying to prevent kids getting into trouble that would lead them to prison later. And that work carries on as well. And it’s been very successful because I handed that over quite quickly to a brilliant woman who runs it now, Louise Mitchell. And I got to the point where in both cases, I was able to hand the charities on to more capable chief executives. And, and it was around Brexit time, just after Brexit, I just became, found myself, having been interested 10 years earlier, much more in the grassroots, the actual work itself, I became increasingly interested in the bigger picture and the national story and what kind of country we want to be post–Brexit. So, but my vision of obviously nothing, you know, you never really changed your mind. My vision remained and remains that we need a more social, more local, more organic, more relatable, relational politics. And that’s what I think Brexit really was a yearning for. It wasn’t just about breaking grip of Brussels, it was about breaking the grip of London and kind of global finance as well and creating a more, a more sustainable and more relational society. So, I found myself getting involved again, and ended up working, when Matt Hancock was culture secretary, before he became Health Secretary, I went into work in that department, the culture demand for culture, because that looks after civil society, and I was the Government’s civil society advisor for a year or two. And I wrote a strategy for the Government, which I was very proud to do, in 2018, I think, setting out how Government will support civil society, so charity and faith groups and community groups. And then when Boris became PM, I was asked to go into number 10 with him. And there we go.
Elizabeth
And you, now, I find it fascinating that you talk about leading a charity as a hard job given that you’re now an MP, which I know from being in and around Westminster a bit is just utterly relentless. And you know, you’re very kindly squeezing us in talking in on a car journey. But aside from the sheer kind of hours and pressure of being an MP, I worry that the way we set up our politics is just adversarial, all the way down. And we even you know, up, including the architecture of the building, in which you work, where you’re going to face each other, like armies lined up for battle. And we’ve had the deaths of two MPs in the last few years. What is your experience of what certainly feels from the outside like a very divided and very divisive and very fractious political life? How does it affect you? How do you navigate it?
Danny
Well, actually, I don’t think the problem is in Parliament at all. I mean, you’re right. It’s confrontational and adversarial vy nature. I mean, you might not know that the reason for that is that the House of Commons, in the old days before the Parliament, burnt down in 1834, was was based in St. Stephen’s chapel, the Chapel of the Palace of Westminster. And because it’s a collegiate foundation, Westminster, the pews face each other, like in the college chapel, rather than facing forward like in a parish church. So very naturally, people took the two sides of the aisle. But I think that reflects the sort of binary nature of our minds we want there to be good guys and bad guys for and against. And it, and what, I think it is valuable because it enfranchises the public, the public get to see two people arguing, always taking opposite views, that enables the public to make a choice. And the result of it, I think, is actually through the dialectic process, which is often argumentative by nature and confused, but we make progress this way through this binary fight. So, I don’t I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Nor do I think there’s a problem, well, not a, not an enormous one in the culture of MPs. And as you know, Elizabeth, you know, people from either side, talk very civilly to each other, actually have friendships, certainly collaborate on issues that affect their constituents and on policy. And even when you get people yelling at each other across the despatch box, opposite front benches, they then go out and behind the speaker’s chair they have a good chat and call each other by their first names, and actually are human beings to each other. So, I think, the parliamentary end isn’t the problem. The problem is social media online. And it’s a cultural war, you know, which is meaningful, it’s a real thing. You know, there is there is a religion, we’re in a religious war over what it is to be human. And that is agitating society in the West, in a way that really is comparable to the 17th century. And we just hope it doesn’t lead to the same sort of actual conflict, physical conflict, but we are, we are, there’s some really profound arguments going on in our culture, and that goes into social media, and then we get a whole lot of abuse online and people writing to us very offensively and aggressively as well. But actually, Parliament is a great barrier against the personal abuse, because you’re among colleagues, you’ve got a staff team, you’ve got doorkeepers, once you get inside there, even though yes, it’s the cockpit of conflict, politically, it’s actually a quite a safe sanctuary. And personally, I’m fine with it. So, I can’t speak for others, I think other people might find it more distressing. I’m also in a lovely safe seat where more or less, everyone’s nice to me. Not everybody, but you know, I have a nice time in my constituency, as well as in Westminster. So, I really have nothing to complain about, on a personal level.
Elizabeth
What have you learnt about what helps us whether it’s with your colleagues in Parliament, whether it’s when you do encounter someone in public who really does think Tory MPs are all scum, or disagrees with you deeply on a point of principle? What are the skills and habits that we all can be growing in to, I guess, be part of the solution rather than part of the problem for that quite distressing slide that you’ve noted?
Danny
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m sort of blessed or cursed with the, I always, I mean, this sounds arrogant, I always think the other person’s got a point. Even though I have, I think I do have strong convictions. I’m not, I’m not absolutely convinced I’m right. I might well be wrong about Brexit, and about trans rights, and about social policy, you know, and all sorts of things that I feel very strongly about and really wish that, you know, want a certain things to happen. And in the culture war I mentioned, I think that, you know, one side has got to win it, there isn’t, there isn’t going to be some compromise. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t respect and accommodate the other side. One thing, I mean, if you ask practically what I do, I, something I learnt working with prisoners and ex–offenders who often get, you know, pretty irate and emotional, and angry and feel this real injustice done against them in the world, is you just got to honour their feelings, even if you don’t agree with their arguments. And tell them to calm down and to be more rational doesn’t help, you’ve got to honour the emotion of the person you’re talking to and recognize that, again, you know, they might, what they, what they’re saying might not really be what they’re feeling, they’re trying to communicate something else. And you’ve got to try and work out what that is, and give it some respect. So…
Elizabeth
How do you do that? In practice? What does it mean, to honour their feelings in the moment?
Danny
Well, I mean, I don’t have to do this very much in politics, but often with people, basically, if someone’s shouting at you, the thing to do is not to speak in a really calm voice say, “it’s okay, calm down”. Because all that does is devalue their feeling. You’re basically saying, it’s invalid, to have the emotion you’re having. So, what you actually have to do is to go up to their level and say, I recognise what you’re saying, I hear you. I also know that’s really annoying. You had to, you actually almost have to shout back at them, mirror, their feeling back at them. So they know that they’ve been heard. So, I think in politics, if somebody is really, has a real sense of the injustice or something, you had to kind of recognise that they’ve got a point, even if it’s just their emotional response. So, on you know, the moment we’re having a big argument in politics about the refugees from Ukraine. I don’t think it’s enough just to give us sort of, people you know, some people are very angry that the UK hasn’t done enough yet. I think as of this week we’re about to start doing some really great things. But people have been arguing for two weeks that we aren’t moving, aren’t doing enough. And I think just to give a sort of rational, practical, fact–based response to that is inappropriate. You have to recognise that people have a real sense of the injustice of what’s happening with the refugees and how unfair it is that we’re all comfortable here while there are people who are cold and traumatised in Eastern Europe and who should be here. So, you have to honour the emotion of the situation as much as engage rationally with the practicalities.
Elizabeth
That is very helpful. I think I’m just going to leave it on that really helpful thing and say Danny Kruger, thank you so much for speaking to me on The Sacred.
Danny
My great pleasure.
Elizabeth
Wow, what a thoughtful and lovely man Danny comes across as. Maybe it’s my generation. And my agenda. This is a bit distressing. But I’m always slightly surprised when I come across people who seem to be genuinely not at all tortured it might be that I am. I don’t I don’t feel tortured. To be frank. To be clear. I generally feel quite peaceful. But we do overthink and over analyse. And I think a lot of people do. And Danny just has the kind of steadiness, non–anxious presence of someone who doesn’t seem at all tortured, which is just it’s quite calming to be around frankly. I really liked his vision of this Burkean compassionate conservatism, which I’ve spoken to other people about, this framing of a conservatism that is not about a libertarian sense of like the deepest moral harm you can do to someone is infringe on their freedoms, which is, I think, the kind of best version of libertarianism there are libertarians who are very morally thought through and see it as the only way of preventing the harm we do to each other when we impinge on each other’s freedoms at all. Whether through kind of excessive government or taxation, or whatever it is. I’m reminded that the Conservative Party, at least in the UK holds together two very different wings, at least two, one of which is that libertarian, sometimes gets called, gets called neoliberal impulse and one of them is this more Burkean. Sometimes it’s been framed as compassionate conservatism. But it’s really about rootedness, small group allegiances, it’s not really individualistic, it sometimes gets called to sort of red toryism and blue labour, which is the kind of equivalent on the left, they all kind of float around these ideas that actually it’s our, it’s our communities and our commitments and our responsibilities to each other, where we find dignity and where we flourish. And Danny explains that really, really well. It’s always interesting to hear about someone becoming a Christian in their 20s from, you know, not from that background, and it interests me that obviously, it was about a personal relationship, as so many of these things are. We meet people who we feel drawn to, and we want to be like, who offer us an insight into a different way of living that’s appealing, but also that it was partly about the ideas, the sense that Christianity helped give some intellectual undergirding to some of the things he felt instinctively about what politics should be like. And then hearing him quite pointedly actually criticise conservatism when it’s not underpinned by Christianity as snobbery and spivvery. And I think he’s really got a strong sense of some of the worries that certainly people of my generation and younger, express about conservatism that it can be really about selfishness, and was really interesting hearing him reflect on that. Finally, it’s really liberated me hearing how boring being a speechwriter is, and that it’s a slightly pointless job, because I do think maybe it was one of the many, many things I thought I could have done with my life. And now I don’t regret that anymore. So thanks, Danny. Thank you for listening.
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