20 December 2024. Willian Atkinson for The Telegraph.
As one of Britain’s leading centre-right intellectuals, the distinguished priest will greatly improve the lightweight tory benches
Few would suggest Kemi Badenoch had has a perfect start as Leader of the Conservative Party.
Faltering PMQs matched with a half-hearted immigration mea culpa and a one-woman war on sandwiches have left quite a few Tories with a feeling of buyer’s remorse. But sending Nigel Biggar to the House of Lords is Badenoch’s best decision of her leadership so far. Through a long and distinguished career as an Anglican priest, theologian, and ethicist, culminating in Oxford’s Regius Professorship of Moral and Pastoral Theology, Biggar has established himself as the late Roger Scruton’s heir as Britain’s leading centre-Right intellectual.
The Conservative Party was far too slow in getting Scruton his knighthood and far too quick in dropping him as an adviser when he fell victim to a New Statesman hatchet job. It is thus refreshing that Badenoch has moved with such alacrity to award the recently-retired Biggar a long overdue peerage ….
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