𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

There is a decent chance that James Orr will shape the future of both Britain and the United States. The Cambridge theologian is a close friend of Vice President JD Vance and he is now head of policy at Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. If Mr Farage becomes Prime Minister in the general election expected in 2029 and Mr Vance succeeds Donald Trump as president the same year, this former Winchester schoolmate of Rishi Sunak will have a direct line into both Downing Street and the Oval Office.

We meet in Reform UK’s skyscraper headquarters which towers above the Houses of Parliament. He relishes the challenge of preparing policies for a Farage government.

Swapping the gentle life of a Cambridge academic to play a leading role in Reform’s battle for the soul and future of the UK might look like an unusual move for the 47-year-old. The Balliol Classics graduate had once toiled at top law firms but left his legal career behind to delve into philosophy at Cambridge and Oxford, establishing expertise in “early movements in German phenomenology” – a subject unlikely to come up on Question Time. Yes, he is excited by ideas – but also by the chance to turn ideas into action.

The looming May 7 elections, he predicts, will be “historic” with the Conservatives ravaged in traditional heartlands and virtually wiped out in Scotland and Wales. He expects this will have major consequences in the run-up to the next general election.

“I think people will realise on May 8, however they voted on May 7, that we’re really the only game in town if you want to get Starmer out. If you want to keep Starmer in, vote Tory; if you want a chance of getting him out, vote Reform.”

He revels in the camaraderie at the Reform HQ. This is a rare location where he is not the odd man out.

Mr Orr spent part of his childhood in Brussels – “the belly of the beast” – but at around the age of 12 or 13 he became a committed Brexiteer. During his time at Oxford, he says: “I think I was the only out-of-the-closet Brexiteer in the entirety of Christ Church… But among the groundsmen and the porters and the gardeners and the people who made our beds every morning, I couldn’t find a single Remainer.”

He found he was “politically apart in a quite a radical way on almost every issue from almost all my colleagues”. This has not changed.

“I’m a bit of an oddball in this particular elite ecosystem,” he says. But when he drives about 10 miles to a village outside Cambridge for church on a Sunday morning he finds “all my views are completely normal – in fact I’m a bit of a kind of squishy-centrist to some of the people I meet out there”.

He admits that university life has been quite a “solitary existence” with supposed academic colleagues reluctant to be seen in public with him. But when he steps through the doors of the Reform headquarters he is surrounded by comrades.

“What’s been great working here is just being part of a team,” he says.

He describes Mr Farage as “deadly serious about what the country needs” but “just fun to be around”.

He is “absolutely” sure that a Prime Minister Farage and a President Vance would together be a force for good in the world. Mr Orr struck up a friendship with Mr Vance before the American entered politics. He was deeply moved by the future MAGA superstar’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which documented the crises which afflicted his family in Kentucky.

“I remember going for a long walk with him and we chatted about various things and I thought, ‘Gosh, this guy – he could be in Congress one day.”

Mr Orr insists the Vice-President loves Europe – though he is in no way a fan of the European Union.

“You can love football and hate FIFA,” he says. “In fact, you can hate FIFA because you love football. And in the case of the Vice President, he doesn’t like the European Union and democratically unaccountable technocratic supranational entities that are, as it were, centralising power unaccountably in Europe because he loves Europe.”

While at Winchester he never guessed fellow pupil Rishi Sunak would one day live in Number 10.

“No, I didn’t,” he says. “Although I do remember being very impressed with him. I mean, he was universally liked.”

They also “overlapped at Oxford” but Mr Sunak looked destined for a career in banking.

Britain now needs a very different type of politician in charge, he argues, saying it is “about time for somebody with Nigel Farage’s charisma, political judgment, resolution, determination and, frankly, love of his country” to be in Downing Street.

He and fellow Reform activists are “working our socks off” to get a majority in the House of Commons so they can push through controversial policies, and he is braced for “battles” with the civil service and the House of Lords.

He expects there are “parts of our agenda that would be very popular with the country at large, but extremely unpopular in SW1 and among the ruling classes”.

Flashpoints would include withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, the scrapping of the Human Rights Act and the repeal and replacement of the Equality Act. These moves are considered essential for the scale of change Reform wants to bring to the asylum and immigration system in the UK. If such measures are taken, he is “absolutely” sure that small boats crossings in the Channel can be halted over the five-year course of a parliament.

This lawyer turned theologian turned politico is keeping a close eye on the Sir Keir Starmer’s attempts to “reset” Britain’s relations with the European Union. with the UK poised to “align” with regulations born in Brussels. It is feared the EU will insist on the insertion of so-called “Farage clauses” into future deals, which would require the UK to pay hefty sums if a future government pulled out of agreements.

“We’ve made it very clear already that if there are going to be any such clauses, we will disregard them and we will not feel bound by them,” he says. “We will not be paying any fines for upholding the sovereignty of Parliament.”

What of Mr Orr’s ambitions? Will he seek a seat in the Commons? Does he hope to champion Reform policies in the Lords? Will he focus on academia – or enter the church?

The last suggestion triggers a strong reaction. He says he is only clinging on to the Church of England by his “fingernails” and rules that option out.

“I think virtually every political position I hold is aggressively repudiated by almost every single bishop in the Church of England. It’s just a very left-wing culture.”

Kicking against the notion he wants to turn Britain into a theocracy, he says he was “opposed to abortion long before” he became a Christian in his twenties, adding: “If I became an atheist tomorrow almost all of my moral positions would be left unchanged.”

A full-time return to university life has clear attractions.

“I’m very happy in Cambridge,” he says. “I love my academic job, I love teaching my students, I love studying philosophy, I love writing. So I’d be very happy if Nigel wanted me to just head off into the sunset.”

But he adds: “If he wanted me to do something else, I would do that.”