Can you really vote your way to a good society - or does it have to be built house by house, street by street?
Dr James Vitali - Head of Political Economy at Policy Exchange, a Sandhurst-trained army reservist, local councillor, and author of The Ownership Society: How Bourgeois Values Can Save Britain - talks about the Dorset church at the heart of his childhood, what military service taught him about sacrifice and leadership, and why he believes Britain's real crisis is moral, not economic.
In this conversation we also explored:
• Growing up between Navy deployments, and the community that stepped in
• "Servant leadership" and why politics keeps failing to practise it
• Home ownership, responsibility, and not being able to buy
• Thatcher, Tocqueville, and where conservatism lost the plot
• The human cost of localism - and what to do with the suffering in between
🎙️ Listen to The Sacred: linktr.ee/sacredpodcast
📖 Follow Elizabeth Oldfield: www.elizabetholdfield.com/
💡 The Sacred is produced by Theos Think Tank in partnership with Comment Magazine, and with support from The Jerusalem Trust and Open Society Foundations
👉 Read James' book, The Ownership Society: How Bourgeois Values Can Save Britain https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-ownership-society-how-bourgeois-values-can-save-britain--9781509569526
👇 Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples. Comment your reflections below, we read them all.
Chapters:
00:00 – Intro: meeting James Vitali
01:56 – What is sacred to you?
04:13 – A rooted military childhood in Dorset
10:32 – Faith, and how it shapes his politics
15:27 – Sandhurst and learning servant leadership
18:37 – Why politics became technical instead of moral
20:43 – Thatcher's legacy and "no such thing as society"
29:24 – Almshouses and the Vale Pantry: ownership in action
32:24 – The Ownership Society: why "bourgeois values"?
37:30 – A state that isn't neutral: "statecraft is soulcraft"
44:12 – Elizabeth's own story, and why ownership matters to the soul
53:07 – Closing reflections: "biography over beliefs"
COPYRIGHT: "Video Cat Jazz" - Pär Hagström (Licensed by Epidemic Sound) & "Beyond the Veil" (feat. Khamir Music) by Simon Wester (Licensed by Musicbed).
