FT on James Orr: Cambridge theologian building Reform UK’s intellectual scaffolding

An investigation by our partners at the Financial Times profiles James Orr, a Cambridge theologian turned Reform UK's head of policy, tracing how a 2003 religious conversion led him from Oxford academia into the heart of transatlantic Christian nationalism. Orr has cultivated close ties to Peter Thiel, JD Vance, and Hungary's Viktor Orbán, using his Cambridge position and riverside "compound" — home to student lodgers — to build networks now feeding Reform's policy pipeline. The FT interviewed over 40 sources and details university complaints against Orr, funding links to Orbán-aligned groups, and concerns from critics like Rowan Williams about Christianity being co-opted for hardline nationalist politics..By Helen Warrell.It was New Year’s Day 2003, on a black run in the mountains above Verbier, that James Orr had his religious awakening. He was 25 years old — tall, flaxen-haired and hungover from a raucous New Year’s Eve party the night before. He and his sister were hurtling down a storm-ravaged gully in heavy cloud when he shouted at her to stop.Peering through the mist, the pair realised they were on the roof of a chalet, barely a ski’s length from a sheer drop on to jagged rocks. They scrambled down a drainpipe and landed in the snow. When the cloud broke, it revealed an 8ft wooden crucifix propping up the house.Orr’s sister was astonished by his instinct. She asked him how he’d sensed the danger. He was unable to explain it, but a connection was forming in his fogged mind. The night before, he had drunkenly uttered a sceptical prayer, challenging God to reveal himself. He had woken to a room pierced with sunlight, the rays rebounding off the snow outside his window. And now, 10 hours later — here was a sign.Over the next six weeks, Orr was presented with further signals of God’s existence which he found too compelling to ignore. At home in London, he began to shun many of his old habits, losing the desire to smoke or drink. He became obsessed with the New Testament and the quest for the historical Jesus. He found his way to the evangelistic Alpha course at Holy Trinity Brompton, an Anglican church in a wealthy part of west London, and quit his career in corporate law to study theology. “I’d stumbled on a deep truth about the human condition and about the reality of the divine,” he later said on Surprising Rebirth, a podcast about faith.Two decades on from that revelation, the impact of what Orr calls his “private experiential journey” has propelled him to the highest levels of academia and politics. Orr is now an associate professor at Cambridge and has risen to prominence in Reform UK, the nationalist party led by Nigel Farage whose groundswell of support has shattered the two main parties’ hold on British politics. He has ties to influential political figures, from the far-right Hungarian politician Viktor Orbán to the US vice-president JD Vance, who has referred to Orr as his “British sherpa”. He is a close associate of tech billionaire Peter Thiel.This February, he was appointed Reform’s head of policy. His religious sensibilities, such as the idea that married parents should be given priority access to social housing, are firmly imprinted in Reform’s policies: a blueprint for a new British right. He champions traditional gender roles, opposes abortion including in cases of rape, regards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “regional Slavic conflict” and calls immigration the “most existential threat facing our nation since the Norman invasion”..Read more:.The Economist: Reform UK is reassembling Boris Johnson’s electoral coalition.At Cambridge, he scouts like-minded students to work in a future Reform government and his family home is a Christian community, which his wife has described as an alternative Cambridge college — a refuge from the liberal academy. It forms the intellectual seat of the Reform project and of Orr’s brand of Christian nationalism, a label he rejects as an American import.“Too many people in public life do not realise how much faith — Christian or otherwise — matters to millions of people in Britain,” Orr told the FT. “I think that makes it harder for people in positions of power to understand them as well as they should.”In a party known for combustible personalities, maintaining a relatively low public profile keeps Orr’s stock high. Behind the scenes, however, his protégés are politically active. To understand his academic approach, political role and ideological alliances, the Financial Times spoke to more than 40 people, including university staff, students and acquaintances in Cambridge, Westminster and overseas. Most spoke on condition of anonymity; many expressed concern that publicly criticising Orr might damage their careers. Orr declined to be interviewed for this story, but responded in detail to questions put to him via email.As Donald Trump’s early enthusiasm for Farage has cooled, Orr’s connections to the Maga movement, Silicon Valley funders and European populist leaders have become all the more important to Reform. One party insider said, “I’ve always thought that Farage was getting James’s contact book as much as his policy insight.”.Building that contact book has taken years of work. But one evening in November 2018 stands out as a milestone. Orr was by then forging a new path following a Masters and PhD in the philosophy of religion. He had married and settled in Cambridge with a temporary teaching post at the Faculty of Divinity, attempting to find “rational, respectable scaffolding” to buttress his faith, he told the Australian Christian College’s Inspiration Project podcast.That night, there was a public debate between the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and Roger Scruton, the British conservative philosopher and Orr’s ideological lodestone. A dinner was held afterwards in a private members’ club. One of the attendees was Charles Vaughan, chief of staff at Thiel Capital, the California-based investment company, according to a person familiar with the guest list. Vaughan’s broad aim, this person said, was to build a network of conservative influence at Cambridge and other elite universities.Orr had spent four years in a coveted postdoctoral theology role at Christ Church college, Oxford, where he’d felt increasingly politically isolated. He claimed to be the only Brexiter in the college’s senior common room.This sense of detachment crystallised on his return to Cambridge, where the polarising effects of Brexit had coincided with heated debates on identity, immigration and free speech. The university’s proactive recognition of the rights of transgender people was another flashpoint, alienating a conservative minority. Orr set about marshalling a rebellion. He planned to establish a legal defence fund for any academic who was threatened by refusing to submit to “woke” ideology. “Things are going to become very unpleasant indeed in the next 20 years,” he wrote to a colleague. “It’s crucial that those outside the asylum begin to organise.”It was unclear whether Vaughan was acting on Thiel’s behalf when he attended the dinner in 2018, but soon afterwards, Thiel offered £10,000 for use by the Divinity Faculty to Cambridge in America, a non-profit organisation that supports the university’s work, according to people with knowledge of the donation. Cambridge confirmed that a gift was made to Cambridge in America via DonorsTrust but said the money was returned because, contrary to university policy, the non-profit fund would not reveal the name of the underlying donor. (Thiel’s foundation has donated more than $10mn to DonorsTrust since 2020.) Cambridge said that neither Thiel Capital nor Peter Thiel had ever made a donation directly to the university. Thiel did not respond to a request for comment. Vaughan could not be reached for comment..A row involving another of the dinner guests was about to erupt. Peterson, who was known for his opposition to the rights of transgender people and description of climate change science as an “anti-capitalist masquerade”, applied for a two-month visiting fellowship at Cambridge’s divinity faculty. When the faculty agreed, there were protests from students and staff and the invitation was rescinded.Outraged, Orr joined Arif Ahmed, a fellow critic of “cancel culture”, in rallying a group of academics to challenge the university’s freedom of speech code. Their amendment — replacing the mandate that academics must “respect” everyone’s views with a new wording that they must merely “tolerate” them — was successful.It was during this turbulent period that the divinity faculty advertised for an associate professorship. In a competitive field, Orr was appointed. After years of job insecurity, he had the status of a tenured post. Pressing his advantage, he invited Peterson back to Cambridge for a fortnight of speaking engagements in November 2021. The visit confirmed Orr’s status as an insurgent rightwing force within the university. It also softened the ground for more change. Two years later, under Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, Ahmed was appointed as the UK’s first ever “free-speech tsar”, with a mandate to police deplatforming across British universities.One longtime critic of Orr described the result as “a Cambridge-based revolution”. “Penetrating the university and forcing a change in its free speech rules was an astonishing success by James,” they said.Over the years that followed, Thiel and Orr built a friendship based on their shared interest in the intersection between philosophy and Christianity. Thiel has spoken at a number of private seminars organised by Orr, and at a debate at the Cambridge Union in May 2024. He also visited the Orrs’ home. Thiel’s recent world tour of lectures on what he terms the Antichrist — a tyrannical global bureaucracy that squashes technological freedom — featured appearances in San Francisco, Rome and Cambridge. Orr organised and compèred the Cambridge appearances in January, a series of invitation-only lectures he called the “highlight of our academic year”. “Thiel is a walking antidote to the modern multiversity,” he wrote on X.Orr also built relationships with other prominent Maga figures, including Vance, a former Thiel employee whose Senate run was backed by a $15mn donation from the billionaire. Vance visited Orr’s home with his wife, Usha, and their children, and Orr attended a barbecue hosted by Vance in the Cotswolds last year. The Orrs also fostered friendships with the next generation of Maga personalities including the late conservative commentator Charlie Kirk and Jon Morgan, a Cambridge MPhil graduate who now works in the office of the vice-president..In Europe, too, Orr nurtured links with populist governments. He was drawn to the traditionalist Christian ethics of Scruton, an ardent ally and ideological backer of former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. Orr admires Orbán’s vision of a Christian Europe and has called him “the calibre of statesman we saw in the 19th century: a Castlereagh, a Metternich, a Bismarck, a Palmerston”.Orr’s next step was to join an organisation bringing Christian speakers into the heart of British universities. His role convening symposia for Trinity Forum Europe (TFE), a discussion group promoting Christian scholarship in higher education institutions, became integral to his political project. Orr explained to an ally that he wanted the Cambridge branch of TFE to be a safe space in which like-minded people could air their views on the “craziness” of woke policies. He was paid a salary of £42,000 a year for the final three years of his involvement with TFE, according to people familiar with the arrangement.Guest speakers included Charles Murray, the race scientist, and Amy Wax, a US scholar who has questioned the academic capabilities of Black students, according to term cards seen by the FT. Yet while the speakers’ reputations were often inflammatory, under Orr’s chairmanship the talks themselves were almost bland. “James seemed to have a strategy of inviting horrifying people, but he’d get them to talk about really innocuous things,” said one attendee. “So while they were platformed, what they were saying was not controversial at all.”Orr’s relationship with TFE ended in summer 2025. Jonathan Aitken, the former Conservative minister who later trained for the priesthood, was executive director of the group at the time. He described the academic as a great convener of people and “very agreeable”, but not a team player. “He never got badly out of line. We were not at all angry with him, but there were tensions,” Aitken told the FT. “I think there was a feeling that he was becoming more political.” Aitken added that Orr has been “on a somewhat lonely voyage. Trinity Forum . . . may well have been used a bit as a springboard for some of his future political thoughts.” Orr told the FT he had decided unilaterally to resign from TFE, “against the repeatedly expressed wishes of every member of the board”. He added, “I will never regret inviting public intellectuals to take part in respectful and lawful dialogue,” especially if that “cut against the many and various orthodoxies stifling the intellectual culture in Cambridge”.By the time Orr left TFE, his ascent within Reform was under way. Initially a Conservative who supported Boris Johnson to deliver Brexit, he was appalled by a rise in immigration and pivoted to Farage. The Reform leader, who has never claimed to be a role model for Anglican values himself, understands the benefits of a policy chief who can appeal to Reform’s large constituency of practising Christians. Orr’s Cambridge role lends intellectual credibility to the Reform project.His approach, said the Reform party insider, is to deliver exactly what his political masters ask. “Nigel loves the fact that James gets things done,” the insider said. “You might say, I suppose, that he’s a yes man.”.Read more:.Reform UK's leader dodged the count, not the questions over his finances.While Farage pits himself in opposition to the Westminster elite, Orr’s upbringing and early life could hardly have been closer to its traditions. Raised in Brussels, Orr boarded at Winchester College, studied classics at Oxford and followed his father into corporate law via Freshfields. At university, he attended parties held by The Assassins club and The Piers Gaveston Society, a hedonistic group named after a medieval aristocrat who was the rumoured lover of Edward II.Soon after his conversion, he met and married Helen Barrington-Ward, a Cambridge graduate, aspiring pop singer and daughter of the eminent bishop Simon Barrington-Ward. Upon meeting Orr, Helen decided, as she wrote on her Substack, to “turn [her] devotions to him rather than the band . . . to family and home building”.Having secured a permanent position at Cambridge, Orr initially seemed to relish his role in the faculty. He would turn up to lectures in a suit, his pale blond hair swept back high over his temples. His delivery was performative and engaging, even if the content — heavy on classical roots of philosophy, replete with references in Ancient Greek — often diverged from the expected topic. He was courteous to students and encouraged debate.Orr, who is not a member of any college, entertains guests and students at his £1.8mn riverside home on the outskirts of Cambridge, which he described on the Inspiration Project podcast as “a compound” comprising his office, as well as shepherds’ huts, an art studio, a swimming pool and a boathouse converted into bungalows.“James and his wife are incredible hosts,” said one academic contemporary. “Their attitude was, come over . . . just be part of our family. It’s almost unnerving hospitality.” For more formal occasions, the catering is unfailingly generous. “James likes the good life,” they said. “It was a case of, we must have canapés. People must be well dressed, things have to be lavish, no expense spared.”To the Orrs, the property is more than a place to entertain. It is a haven for rightwing Christians who feel marginalised — “refugees from the revolution”, as James calls them. Helen, who since her marriage has trained as an Anglican priest, envisages their home as a monastic proto-college outside the liberal-leaning environment of the university, and has appointed herself its “college mother”. The group has developed themed “college scarf colours”, a crest, motto and printed rugby shirts, and “plans to make ties, cufflinks and blankets”, she writes on her blog.Rod Dreher, an Orbán-aligned US conservative scholar who has stayed with the Orrs on several occasions, wrote on his blog that Helen had shown him plans that would “formalis[e] the organisation . . . as a centre of conservative (and conservative Christian) formation and networking — in part depending on the intellectual and cultural resources of Cambridge university”..Last year, the Orrs launched a £2mn fundraising campaign for a new cultural centre near the family home, to be known as Scruton House (a tribute to Scruton, who died in 2020), and a wider overhaul of the properties used by the community. The campaign was subsequently scaled back to £500,000, then taken down having raised little more than £21,000. Dreher urged his followers to donate to the project, which he described as “a coffee shop for intellectual conservatism, including religiously informed thought and practice”. According to one person with knowledge of the arrangement, Orr also sought funds from the Ben Delo Foundation, a charity run by the eponymous cryptocurrency entrepreneur and Reform UK donor. Orr denied that his community had ever received funding “of any kind” from the foundation.The Orrs live with their teenage children — a son, Godfrey, who recently stood unsuccessfully to be a Reform councillor in North Cambridge, and a daughter. The outbuildings and at least two other flats on the same road, which are owned by the family, are home to a select group of postgraduate students from a range of faculties including divinity. In a podcast interview in December 2024, Orr described having “10 students living with us. They’re mainly PhD students or postdoctoral fellows.” He explained that they always gather for Sunday lunch and often for dinner. “That’s amazingly stimulating,” he said. “They’re . . . the cream of their generation in their respective subjects.”The residents pay rent and do chores. Helen has fashioned a small chapel from a shipping container, in which she holds morning prayers.The housing of students raises potential conflicts of interest. Over the past academic year, there were three divinity scholars lodging at the Orrs’ community, according to several people familiar with the living arrangements. One is a postgraduate student who is directly supervised by Orr. Cambridge’s staff and student relationship policy stipulated that its employees are “strongly discouraged” from entering into close personal relationships with students. Any relationship which involves “any form of dependence, whether emotional, practical, financial or otherwise”, must be declared.A former senior member of the university administration, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the FT that while Cambridge staff might have historically leased a spare room to an individual student in a different discipline, the sort of communal arrangement described at the Orr residence gives rise to “significant safeguarding concerns”. “Certainly if he [Orr] was a supervisor of that student [living at his home] that I think would be, pretty clearly, crossing a line into unacceptable behaviour,” the person said. “It’s partly because of conflict of interest, but also the risk of a relationship being abused.”Orr rejected this characterisation as “false”, and firmly denied that there was anything “unusual or sinister” about the situation. He told the FT that when he referred to 10 student residents on the podcast it was “never intended as a claim that 10 individuals lived in a single occupancy”. He rejected the idea that hosting students was inappropriate or a violation of university rules and insisted that every past and present university resident had been declared to his employer, from whom he had “received repeated assurances . . . that the arrangements are perfectly in order”.The family welcomed people from “all political and religious persuasions”, he said, and never sought to influence them or interfere with their lives. Cambridge said Orr had followed university procedures relating to students living at his house, and was in compliance with the staff and students relationship policy. It did not answer specific questions about the student living at the residence who was being directly supervised by Orr.However, Joshua Heath, a Cambridge research fellow in Christian theology and philosophy, suggests Orr could be using his financial and intellectual capital to attract “ideologically pliable” students. The academic — who has long been an internal critic of the faculty — worries that these arrangements prey on the vulnerabilities of graduate students who are looking to get into a precarious job market. “It is a community of vulnerable people who all believe that James, in one way or another, can offer them some kind of security,” he says. “I think that is dangerous.”.Read more:.The Economist: For all new UK PM’s big talk, hits ground strolling.For some in Orr’s circle, the experience of abundant hospitality and old-fashioned courteousness has turned sour. Earlier this year, Cambridge university’s Office of Student Conduct, Complaints and Appeals (OSCCA) partially upheld a grievance of academic negligence and bullying behaviour made by a theology PhD student who left the university in January 2025 without completing their doctorate as a result of their experience with Orr.Following an investigation and subsequent appeal seen by the FT, the university was ordered to pay £5,000 of compensation to the student in lieu of tuition fees and for distress caused. The Faculty of Divinity was told to apologise in writing and the OSCCA investigator implied in their report that Orr would be subject to disciplinary proceedings.Among the complaints upheld by the investigator are that Orr allegedly made belittling remarks to the student, and had demanded an “excessive” and “unreasonable” amount of written work in an effort to refine a thesis proposal. The report also criticised “at worst inappropriate and at best thoughtless comments made [by Orr] in the equally inappropriate context of [Orr’s] own home”. This was in reference to a dinner that the student, who comes from a Christian, conservative background, had attended at Orr’s house.In the letter of apology, Richard Rex, chair of the divinity faculty’s board, acknowledged that the student’s experience with Orr had been “distressing” and “disruptive”, and had not met the university’s expectations of providing a “supportive and positive learning environment”. Rex added that the faculty had taken “appropriate action” against Orr “in line with the seriousness of the complaint findings”.Orr was interviewed by the OSCCA investigator and his responses included in their report summary. However, Orr said he was unaware of the complaint findings or the compensation.He said he was “at a loss to know what any responsible supervisor could have done differently”. He did not believe the student’s account was a “fair characterisation” of the conversation which led to the investigator’s criticism of his remarks. Orr said that “no disciplinary action of any kind” had been taken against him as a result of the investigation and its findings. He added that the quantity of drafting he required for the thesis proposal “merely reflects the number of attempts we made together. It was not a cruel or unusual demand.” The university said it takes complaints seriously, and that in this case, “recommendations were made and . . . appropriate action was taken”. It did not comment on further questions about why Orr appeared to be unaware of the findings.It was not the first time that criticism of Orr had been levelled by a student. In 2022, another student made a complaint to the faculty about his behaviour, alleging that at a gathering of about a dozen students in a pub following the MPhil induction day in October 2021, she was the “focus of an unusual amount of attention” in conversations with Orr which made her feel “uncomfortable”. The student, who has now left Cambridge, told the FT that during the evening, she had spoken to Orr of her ambition to apply to Cambridge for a PhD, and he seemed to suggest that admission to the doctoral programme was within his gift. The student said she felt unsettled by the interaction, but did not complain at the time because of his influential position. She subsequently attended events convened by Orr, linked to their shared conservative Christian values. Three months later, Orr invited the student to his home and informed her that the faculty had decided she would not be awarded a PhD place.She said she had been under the impression that the offer of a place on the doctoral programme was a “foregone conclusion”. She met a senior member of the faculty in June 2022 to make a complaint about her experiences with Orr..In a letter to the student, seen by the FT, the faculty member wrote that the complaint about uncomfortable behaviour and meetings at Orr’s home fell under the university’s “procedures for inappropriate student and staff behaviour”. The faculty member promised that the then head of faculty, Professor Jim Aitken, would “speak to Dr Orr about his behaviour: to remind him of the importance of not meeting students with whom he has a professional relationship in his home”. Aitken would also speak about “the importance of giving transparent and honest advice about graduate applications”, the letter read. Aitken died in 2023.The faculty member also suggested in a letter that the student pursue a formal complaint with OSCCA about another part of her grievance — an alleged lack of supervision received. She told the FT she had decided not to do so, fearing this might jeopardise her chances of an academic career at Cambridge.Orr strongly denied he had ever behaved inappropriately towards a student. “I have never conducted myself in a manner which could reasonably be considered as causing any student in my company to feel uncomfortable,” he said. He said that during the evening in the pub, he took part in general conversation around the table and invited students to ask him about the course. He added he would “never” have claimed admission to the doctoral programme was “in [his] gift” and that such a claim would have been “absurd”. No individual has the authority to admit a PhD candidate, he said.Orr said he was never informed that a complaint had been made and said he did not receive any warnings about his conduct. He did not accept the allegation of a lack of supervision.The FT has been told about more widespread concern from students that Orr is struggling to combine his academic work with his Reform role and overseas lecturing commitments. He is also a faculty member at Jordan Peterson’s online Academy and a fellow at the private US liberal arts institution Ralston College, which is funded by GB News and Spectator owner Paul Marshall. One of his most significant faculty roles at Cambridge is as chair of undergraduate exams. In June this year, he arrived late and appeared not on top of his brief to the online exam board meeting for a final marking review, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. That week Orr was attending the ARC conference, the annual gathering of British, European and American conservative Christians. Orr told the FT that he joined the call a few minutes late because of a technical issue. “I chaired the examination process thoroughly and properly,” he said.Orr has been open about the fast turnaround needed to refine Reform policies to meet news deadlines. “It’s a Friday afternoon, it’s got to be out for presser on Tuesday morning,” he explained in an interview with The Telegraph in May. “We need to cost it. We need to do the legal analysis. We need to work out how much political capital would need to be spent.”Mary Harrington, a writer at UnHerd and one of Orr’s ideological allies, introduced Orr on a podcast earlier this year by describing his career, stating that his move into politics had “almost entirely devoured [him]”. Orr said her comments were a “very accurate” introduction.Orr told the FT his political work had “never interfered” with the performance of his university duties and said he had discharged all of his responsibilities in accordance with “and indeed beyond” his obligations. He said his role in Reform had been approved by his employer before he accepted it. The university said it had “no reason to believe that Dr Orr’s external roles have adversely affected his performance of his contractual duties”. “All external roles have been declared as per the University’s conflict of interest policy,” it added.However, the former senior member of the university administration, who spoke to the FT anonymously, said, “If an academic is not doing their job properly, I would regard that as an incredibly serious issue.” “It is possible to set up arrangements to enable [other work],” they said. .Late last July, deeply tanned and beaming, Orr was on stage in the one-time Hungarian capital of Esztergom. Dapper in his summer uniform of navy shirt, double-breasted navy jacket with brass buttons and dazzling white chinos, he was addressing the crowd of European and American Christian nationalists at Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Feszt, the annual jamboree of Orbán’s pet think-tank.“It’s so good to be with you all!” Orr cried, on an open-air stage in the shadow of Esztergom’s giant basilica. In dialogue with his friend, MCC director Balazs Orbán (no relation to the former prime minister), he praised Trump’s trade war and accused Britain of being infected with “Ukraine Brain”. Here, with Alice Weidel, leader of Germany’s far-right AfD party, Thiel and other rightwing US allies, was assembled Orr’s network of political influencers.The connections have provided vital funding for his own initiatives. Ever since Scruton’s death, his influence has been central to Orr’s project. Orr is a director at the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation (RSLF) and, in early 2022, established an invitation-only discussion group for conservative Christian students in Scruton’s honour.The group, known as the Cambridge Scrutonian Society, was founded at Orr’s request by two of his postgraduate protégés, Jack Haughton and Mateusz Dziuda, according to WhatsApp messages seen by the FT. Its purpose, as outlined to prospective members by Haughton, is to “promote first-rate conservative thought”. “We plan to invite three speakers a term . . . to be followed by dinners of various formality (which will be free), with socials (such as wine tastings),” Haughton wrote, adding that those who had been invited were considered to “have an appropriate temperament”. Orr told the FT that the idea for the group was his, but that he has never had any involvement in running it.Since the society was founded, the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation has received £512,500 from the Mathias Corvinus Collegium — almost all of its income, according to accounts filed by the UK charity. The Cambridge Scrutonian Society is, in turn, supported financially by the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation, according to the same accounts. A grant application from the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation to the Mathias Corvinus Collegium seen by the FT, declares that, “The Scrutonian Societies model is intended to spread throughout the United Kingdom and Europe.” This confirms the Cambridge Scrutonian Society’s significance as the template for further conservative societies across a far larger university network. The application, which was passed to the FT by officials in the new Hungarian government, adds that the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation would develop a “detailed plan . . . to effectively influence British cultural institutions”.While the society was established long before Orr had any formal role in Reform, it has taken on new significance as his political activities gathered pace. Orr has described Cambridge as a useful recruiting ground for Reform, boasting last autumn in an interview with The Telegraph that he had met “hundreds” of highly able students he thought would make suitable allies. He has also, according to The Spectator magazine, been tasked by the party with “building a pipeline” to bring talent to staff a future Reform administration.The London branch of the Cambridge Scrutonian Society hosts speakers at The Sanctuary — the Westminster office of Ben Delo, the co-founder of the crypto trading platform BitMex who was pardoned last year by US President Donald Trump after pleading guilty to federal banking crimes. A framed copy of the pardon hangs in the building in which the society meets. At its events, students mix with academics, clergy and politicians. One of the current members is Balazs Orbán’s former chief of staff, Dóra Szűcs, who has been conducting a PhD under Orr’s supervision since 2024. Szűcs, who previously served as a foreign service officer for the Hungarian ministry of foreign affairs and trade, appears to have no qualifications in divinity or the philosophy of religion, according to the publicly available information.Divinity PhD admissions are managed by a faculty committee on the recommendation of academics, including Orr. If an application has been signed off by two faculty members, the committee will normally approve it, assuming the applicant meets the relevant criteria.Heath questioned why a candidate who seemed to be “politically connected” to Orr had been admitted despite an apparent lack of relevant qualifications. Orr was involved in admitting Szűcs to the PhD programme and did not confirm whether he had declared any connection during this process. He acknowledged meeting her twice before she applied — “briefly, in a large group” — in 2021, and again in 2024, to discuss her proposed research, as he does with all his PhD candidates.He also said he met Orbán once prior to her application, but said he did not discuss her or her planned PhD. “It would be . . . untrue to imply I was on close personal terms with either person at the time of the application. It would not have crossed the mind of any reasonable person in my position to think so,” Orr told the FT.Orr had been speaking at Mathias Corvinus Collegium events since at least 2022, when Szűcs was still its international director, according to her LinkedIn page. Orbán had been chair of the board of trustees since 2020. Szűcs told the FT that she had applied through the standard channels and that in considering her application, the university “had access to [her] full application materials, including [her] academic background, relevant experience, and qualifications.”Orbán did not respond to the FT’s requests for comment. In a statement, Cambridge said that no one individual was ever responsible for assessing and admitting a student for postgraduate study. “More than one academic is involved in the interview process, and if an offer is recommended it also goes to the degree committee for final approval.”.Read more:.Nigel Farage and Prince Harry share a common enemy: the free press.One cold evening in December 2021, some 50 guests were gathered drinking mulled cider and sparkling wine around a fire pit at Orr’s home for a party. The attendees included students, three carloads of academics from Oxford and friends visiting from the US. A heavy mist rose from the river.At the sound of a gong, the conversation died and Orr began speaking. “As is our custom at these Advent parties, these winter garden parties, we end the proceedings with a little revue.” He asked the crowd if anyone could supply “a little poem, a little joke, a little anecdote, a song”. First to step forward was a postgraduate Cambridge philosopher who announced he would read from the concluding chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This was greeted with cheering and whistles of approval. Helen then led the crowd in a rendition of the carol “In the Bleak Midwinter”, urging the crowd to consider the significance, in the words of the hymn, of giving your heart to something, “whether it is God, or what you’re doing”.For Orr, God and work are a twinned vocation. Through his influence, Reform UK, which has always dealt in the politics of nostalgia, has turned a Christian lens on its offer of British traditionalism. It is no coincidence that in the same week Orr was appointed head of policy, Reform announced it would “protect Britain’s Christian heritage” by stopping churches being converted to mosques, enacting mass deportations of illegal migrants and enticing British expats to return. To some critics, this sounded like the entry of US-style Christian nationalism into Westminster.Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, warned against such a co-option of Christianity into politics. “I worry . . . that the Christian ‘brand’ becomes compromised if it’s seen, as so often in the US, as allied to political agendas and ambitions,” he said. “It concerns me greatly that bits of the British right reach for this transatlantic rhetoric and repertoire of Christian nationalist ideas so as to ally themselves with some sort of global movement, even if they don’t fully sign up to the American version.”Williams, who was master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and supervised divinity students, also expressed discomfort at politics infiltrating the academic environment. “I’m always concerned if vulnerable young scholars get the message that they need to line up with a specific ideological approach — of any kind — in order to secure their future.”As Orr’s policy team gears up ahead of the Reform party conference this week, the academic will face his first major engagement with members. Gawain Towler, a Reform official, outlined the challenge for Orr and his team. In a Substack post, he described Reform as “changing gear, from the party that wins the argument on the news to the party that can win it on the spreadsheet”. But the full scale of Orr’s policy ambition remains something of an enigma.On the sidelines of the Hungarian festival last year, however, Orr did hint at a possible future when asked how Reform would “save” the UK. His answer recalled the vengeful sieges of Nebuchadnezzar, the Old Testament king. “If you look around the institutional landscape of Britain at the moment there’s very little that looks worth conserving,” Orr said. “I believe in Britain and I believe in its future and I believe in its people and its institutions, but my goodness there needs to be a lot of clearing out, a lot of burning down and a lot of reconstruction, a lot of restoration.”.© 2026 The Financial Times Ltd..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

FT on James Orr: Cambridge theologian building Reform UK’s intellectual scaffolding

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