DR JAMES ORR, an associate professor in the philosophy of religion at the University of Cambridge, has been appointed head of policy for the political party Reform UK.
He was named on Tuesday this week at an event in Church House, Westminster, when the party 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, another former Conservative MP who defected to Reform UK last year, and a practising Christian, will be Head of PrepGov — preparing for government. “Working alongside Danny Kruger in his role. . . I will help to build the most serious policy operation in British politics — and give our Shadow Cabinet the support they will need to govern,” Dr Orr told The Spectator. “Britain needs new ideas. Britain needs Reform.”
Dr Orr was appointed a senior adviser to Mr Farage last October and chairs the advisory board of an emerging think tank, the Centre for a Better Britain, which champions the idea that “a Better Britain is a nation that embraces its history, identity and culture” (Features, 6 February).
Speaking to GB News last year, Dr Orr said that it was “plausible” that Britain might become a Muslim-majority, or Muslim-plurality, country by the end 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 did not take those rights “as seriously as we do”, referring to Pakistan and Afghanistan, that had, he said, “backward moral cultures”.
In an interview with Politics Home last year, he was critical of “transnational, rootless, cosmopolitan ideologies that wholly repudiate the kind of national spirit, or spirit of collective endeavour, that could hold a nation of many ethnicities together”.
Dr Orr is married to the Revd Helen Orr, a priest in 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 point of polling.