Nick Timothy MP outlines his new 'Freedom of Expression' bill
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He was once one of Britain’s most powerful unelected people – but even though he is now out of government as an MP on the Opposition benches, Nick Timothy believes he now has “easily the better job”. In 2017, as joint chief of staff to Theresa May in Downing Street, he played a crucial role in advising the prime minister at the heart of power as she grappled with Britain’s exit from the EU.
Yet despite his high-flying role in which he was dubbed Baroness May’s “political brain”, it is not a period he talks about much today. The Conservatives won the 2017 election but lost their majority in what some labelled “the worst campaign in living memory”. Baroness May memorably had to U-turn on a controversial “dementia tax” to charge elderly people for social care.
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As author of the 2017 manifesto, Mr Timothy took responsibility for its entire content and resigned, along with Fiona Hill, with whom he shared the job.
But whereas many former No 10 chiefs of staff use their invaluable top-level experience in the private sector, Mr Timothy has made an unlikely comeback to the bearpit of Westminster politics at an arguably even more tumultuous time.
Nick Timothy says the Conservatives must show 'contrition' to win back voters' trust (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster/Daily Express)
Taking Matt Hancock’s former West Suffolk seat in the Tory bloodbath of the 2024 election, he is one of just 121 Conservative MPs at a time when the party’s very existence is said to be under mortal threat.
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Speaking to the Express, he said the Tories must “sort ourselves out, make ourselves appealing again, and show we’ve got the ideas for the country” in order to win back power.
Asked whether he prefers being an MP to being chief of staff, Mr Timothy said “this is easily the better job” – but that it is tinged with frustration that the Tories are not in office.
“Obviously, from the party’s perspective, then we were in power and now we’re not, and the political system’s quite binary. That’s a very frustrating thing,” he said.
“The country is in a very difficult situation, a combination of very long-term economic weaknesses and some quite fast changes that we’ve seen in the world from a geopolitical and an economic perspective.
“Labour don’t know what to do about those things and they’re making it worse with the decisions they’re making.”
‘We let the country down’
Despite this, the Conservatives were third in the latest YouGov opinion poll on 17%, behind both Labour and Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform UK.
Asked about the Tories’ predicament, Mr Timothy said: “I think we should be totally honest about the things we think we got right and wrong over our time in power.
“In the last five years in particular, we let the country down. And I’m totally unembarrassed about saying that. Unless we’re open about that fact, then I don’t think the country’s going to want to hear from us anyway.
“We lost the election incredibly heavily. It’s our worst-ever defeat in history, because the country judged that we’d let them down in those final five years in office.
“They were right. We let them down. We’ve had to acknowledge that. We’ve had to change and clearly, that is not going to mean that we recover overnight.
“We’ve got to work really hard, we’ve got to show people that there is contrition, and an understanding of how and why things went wrong, which means that they can put their trust in us in the future.”
Nick Timothy pictured in 2017 with Fiona Hill when they were joint chiefs of staff to Theresa May (Image: Getty Images)
Asked whether the Tories should apologise for Boris Johnson and Liz Truss’s time in office, Mr Timothy said: “My personal view is Liz Truss was irresponsible and took risks with people’s mortgages in a way that no Conservative ever should. And I thought what she did was a disgrace.
“And I think the Boris wave of immigration after Brexit is also a disgrace. And I’m not going to defend either of those things.”
Ms Truss increased public borrowing to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, sparking a market meltdown and a sharp rise in interest rates that pushed up mortgage bills.
Net migration soared from 184,000 in 2019, when Mr Johnson took office, to 764,000 in 2022, the year he left No 10 – with large numbers coming from countries such as China, India and Nigeria.
While many think the Tories should move to the Right to see off a surge in support for Mr Farage, Mr Timothy said: “Reform’s relative success in the polls is a symptom of our failure and I don’t want to spend time talking about them. I want us to spend time getting ourselves right.
“If we sort ourselves out and if we can convince the public that we are different, we get it, we have a plan for the future, then other parties won’t matter so much – but it’s on us.
“We caused this problem. We caused our own failure. We’ve got to take responsibility for the recovery ourselves.”
Mr Timothy defended embattled current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch amid speculation she could be forced out less than a year after taking over.
“When she was campaigning for the leadership, she made clear that this wasn’t going to be a kind of rapid-fire approach to leadership,” he said.
“She said we’re going to go back to the fundamentals and we’re going to build up from there – and that’s what she’s doing.
“So I don’t think we should be surprised that we haven’t suddenly recovered to 40-odd points at the polls, because that’s not how life works and it’s not reflective of her strategy anyway.
“One of the things we always need to remember about politics is it’s a team game, and we all have a responsibility in doing the work – not just behind the scenes, but constantly communicating with people, staying in touch with the country.”
‘Broken’ economic model
Mr Timothy says the Tories now have a responsibility to “think really deeply and to plan about how we are going to change the economy”.
He argues that the UK’s economic model is “broken” and “over-dependent on high-end financial and business services”.
“Fundamentally, you can’t go on consuming and importing more than you produce and you export year after year in the way that we do,” he said.
He highlighted that Britain has “run a massive trade deficit every year outside the pandemic from 1998 onwards”, adding: “We’re not making and doing and selling enough of what the world needs or what we ourselves need.
“We’ve become addicted to foreign cash. We euphemistically call it investment – and sometimes it is investment, and the kind of investment we should welcome. And sometimes it’s just foreign sovereign wealth funds buying up land or buying up property in the cities.
“We’ve got to get off that, and I think the answer lies in trying to industrialise the economy. But to do that, you need massive changes right across the board of policy.”
Mr Timothy believes the economy is “massively over-regulated”. He wants to see tax system reforms and changes to energy policy because of “completely uncompetitive” prices.
Nick Timothy believes the UK needs to fundamentally rethink its economic model (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster/Daily Express)
But he slammed Labour for “not addressing” the country’s economic woes, adding: “They’re doing what Labour always do and just increase spending and hope for the best and not think about tomorrow.
“If you look at them on economic policy, what they’re doing now compared to what they said they would do before the election – two completely different things.”
He added that Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves “can’t even get their story straight” about the Government’s vast increases in public spending.
“They simultaneously say it’s because of the fictional black hole that the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] said didn’t exist, or they say it was because we had to take decisions about public sector pay, or it was because we had to increase spending on this particular public service,” he said.
“They can’t get their story straight because the whole thing was fundamentally dishonest and bad for the economy.”
Bouncing back
Despite previously working in the background as an adviser, Mr Timothy has very much been on the front foot in communicating what he sees as the Government’s failings.
He has taken a leading role in campaigning against what he sees as a backdoor blasphemy law after Turkish asylum seeker Hamit Coskun was convicted of a public order offence for burning the Koran while shouting “f*** Islam”.
He said convictions like that were “wrong-headed because we have free speech in this country and we are supposed to be able to articulate our criticism and even mockery of religions if that’s what we want to do”.
He is introducing a new law that would change the Public Order Act to ensure people would have the right to criticise and insult other people’s beliefs and religions without fear of prosecution.
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If the Tories are looking for advice on how to bounce back after defeat, perhaps they do not need to look far. Mr Timothy has been there and got the T-shirt, so to speak.
Maybe it is why, eight years after leaving Downing Street, he can speak so clearly about what the party needs to do next.
While he makes a point of focusing on the future instead of dwelling on the past, he recalled: “The 2017 election went wrong. We talked about some of the mistakes that we as a team collectively made and some of things that I was involved in, and I took responsibility for that at the time.
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“But speaking personally, I think I’m a much better politician now having experienced the serious consequences of a failure like that.
“You learn a lot from that in terms of getting the policy right, getting the decisions right. So, I’m not saying I’m glad it happened, but it’s contributed to who I am and what I do.”
Maybe learning from the serious consequences of their own failure in the 2024 election could help the Tories make a comeback, too.
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