Martin Kettle
Who is the most powerful man in British politics? Philip Hammond maybe? First husband Philip May? No. The real answer is a beer-drinking Aston Villa fan, the “red Tory” thinker with the biggest beard in British politics since the days of Lord Salisbury and Keir Hardie. Nick Timothy has been at Theresa May’s side for much of the past decade, and seeing as she keeps her own cards so close to her chest, knowing where he stands is likely to be as good a guide as any to where a new May government will go. He is her policy thinker, her speechwriter and is ruthlessly loyal. He is indispensable in driving the priorities that for a long time made May an outsider in a party where the two competing worldviews are Thatcherite possessive individualism and Cameronian metropolitan liberalism—both of which Timothy and May reject.