PROFESSOR James Orr, associate professor of philosophy of faith on the University of Cambridge, has been appointed head of policy for Reform UK.
He was named on Tuesday this week at an event in Church House, Westminster, when the political party’s leader, Nigel Farage, unveiled the members of his “shadow cabinet”. It includes two former Conservative Secretaries of State: Robert Jenrick as “Chancellor-in-waiting”, and Suella Braverman as shadow education secretary.
Danny Kruger, one other former Conservative MP who defected to Reform UK last 12 months, and a practising Christian, can be Head of PrepGov — preparing for presidency. “Working alongside Danny Kruger in his role. . .I’ll help to construct probably the most serious policy operation in British politics —and provides our Shadow Cabinet the support they are going to need to control,” Dr Orr told the Spectator. “Britain needs latest ideas. Britain needs Reform.”
Dr Orr was appointed a senior advisor to Mr Farage in October last 12 months and chairs the advisory board of an emerging think tank called the Centre for a Better Britain, which champions the concept that “a Better Britain is a nation that embraces its history, identity and culture” (Features, 6 February).
Speaking to GB News last 12 months, Professor Orr said that it was “plausible” that Britain might grow to be a Muslim-majority, or Muslim-plurality, country by the top of the century, with consequences for freedom of speech, religion, and conscience. The solution, he suggested, was to “arrest and preferably reverse mass unvetted immigration” from those parts of the world that didn’t take those rights “as seriously as we do”, referring to Pakistan and Afghanistan, which have “backward moral cultures”.
In an interview with Politics Home last 12 months, he was critical of “transnational, rootless, cosmopolitan ideologies that wholly repudiate the type of national spirit, or spirit of collective endeavour, that would hold a nation of many ethnicities together”.
Professor Orr is married to the Revd Helen Orr, a priest within the diocese of Ely.
Polling by More in Common last month projected a majority of 112 for Reform, if a General Election had been held at the purpose of polling.
