Friedman's great-niece to target youthful apathy

When Jessica Lever addresses the sea of greying heads at the Tory conference today, the 17-year-old A-level student will offer a vision of hope for a party that is trying desperately to shake off its image as a wounded dinosaur.

When Jessica Lever addresses the sea of greying heads at the Tory conference today, the 17-year-old A-level student will offer a vision of hope for a party that is trying desperately to shake off its image as a wounded dinosaur.

The great-niece of the economist Milton Friedman not only has impeccable lineage, but the party hopes her two-minute speech will be seen as a "rallying cry" for young people to get involved in politics, preferably Conservative politics. Apathy, according to Ms Lever, is the curse of the modern age. "In the common-room at school, a lot of people just sit around complaining all the time and I just say to them 'What's the point of complaining if you're not going to do something about it?'.

"A lot of them have no interest at all. They say 'Like, sorry who's the Prime Minister?' But since the word got out that I'm doing this speech some people have come up and said they are Conservatives too, so I'm making a start."

Ms Lever's interest in politics began after studying her great uncle's book Capitalism and Freedom, aged just 14 . "It was about laissez-faire, freedom of choice, freedom from the nanny state, which are things I really believe in, and that is what the Conservative Party stands for, so I decided to join," she says.

Ms Lever will sit her A-levels around the time of the next election and hopes to go on to Oxford University to read politics, philosophy and economics. "If I do make it as an MP, I would like to work in the Treasury. My aspiration is to be the first female Chancellor of the Exchequer," she says. Coincidentally, her great-uncle's godson is the shadow Chancellor, Oliver Letwin, who also wants the job.

Politics runs through this young woman's veins. Not only has she been blessed as having "great expectations" by Baroness Thatcher, she has also taken an active part in the selection of the party's parliamentary candidate in Hampstead and Highgate, where she used to live. Tory enthusiasm over Ms Lever is easily explained. The 2001 election saw the lowest turnout since 1918. Young voters had the least interest of all, with more than six out of 10 in the 18-24 age group not bothering to vote.

At Ms Lever's school yesterday, the high-achieving, partly selective Watford Grammar School for Girls, fellow students in the politics A-level class were clearly pleased for their classmate, even if they didn't share her views. And for the Tories the evidence was that they have a long way to go to woo this young vote. A majority of the class - one third of the final year is studying politics at A Level - said they would vote Labour, while the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were level-pegging.

Chief among their bug-bears was the way politicians failed to answer the questions put to them. They were suspicious of the media. While they unanimously accepted Tony Blair was a "good person", they all expressed reservations on Iraq. According to Jess Attree: "Linking Iraq to al-Q'aida was a mistake and people will have to accept the war if Labour is going to win the next election, but they will have to work out how they are going to get our troops out." All said their fear of terrorism had grown since 11 September and the Iraq war.

But it was education that aroused the greatest passions. AS-levels were a waste of time, and must go, they said, while Mr Blair will perhaps be best remembered as the man who denied them a gap year before university. All are going straight to college to avoid tuition fees.

For the girls' local MP, Labour's Claire Ward, who was elected in 1997 at 24, young peoplesee through the clumsy attempts of politicians to engage them. Ms Ward said: "They are often patronised by politicians. They think they are only interested in 'student issues' such as the environment and animal rights. But they are not. They want to know about the economy, housing, transport. We need a different approach and that means actually talking to young people."

THE 'GODFATHER OF MONETARISM'

As the "godfather of monetarism", the US economist Milton Friedman was a profound influence during the Thatcher years.

Freeing up markets, encouraging enterprise with deregulation and reducing the influence of Government were all Thatcher policies culled from Friedman.

He has links to the current Conservative Party. He was a regular dinner guest of the late Shirley Letwin, father of Oliver, the future shadow chancellor.

Born in New York in 1912, Friedman reacted against high taxation, central planning and Government intervention.

He argued that an economy, and so inflation, could be controlled by money supply, and won the Nobel prize for economics in 1976.

He caused controversy by visiting to Chile in 1975 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, but said he was trying to move Chile towards open market policies.