Freeman is not well-known beyond Westminster, but in conversations with senior Conservatives since the general election about the future of the party, his name is cited repeatedly as a key player in shaping what comes next. Over the last month, BuzzFeed News has interviewed Freeman at length, spoke to numerous people connected to the party, and obtained documents relating to Freeman's policy role that have not previously been reported. Together, the material provides a revealing insight into the political manoeuvres and philosophical debates taking place behind the scenes in a ruling party that, having expected to win a landslide victory on 8 June, is now deeply divided, intellectually desolated, lacking talented leaders and desperately searching for a winning strategy.

For a decade, Freeman has been arguing in speeches, opinion articles, and long private memos to 10 Downing Street that the Tories are threatened by a dangerous, volatile shift in politics. In his assessment, a succession of perceived failures by governments to pay attention to the bread-and-butter concerns of ordinary people, from the Iraq war to immigration, gestated a profound sense of resentment at “unaccountable elites”. Brexit was the loudest, most traumatic howl of rage by an electorate fed up with being taken for granted. The Tories are out of tune with the insurgent mood and urgently need to adapt, Freeman argued.

“[We are] an analogue party for a digital age,” Freeman said in one memo to Downing Street seen by BuzzFeed News.

As chair of Downing Street’s policy board, which May set up to provide big-picture advice on domestic policy, Freeman argued that the party needed to reach out to the young, the working class, northerners, public sector workers, and ethnic minorities and explode the damaging perception that the party only cares about big business and the “nostalgic 1950s retiree vote”. As it turned out, like so many in the party, Freeman was left out of the loop by May’s team and sidelined during the election campaign. He didn’t even see the policy manifesto before it was published.

Watching the results come in on election night, three months ago, Freeman thought, This changes everything. The Conservatives ignored the lessons of Brexit. They underestimated the backlash against the political class. They grew complacent about capitalism, failing to make free markets work for everybody. They didn’t make the case for austerity. They acted as if they don’t care about public services. They turned Brexit into a cultural war. They allowed a generation of young people to be priced out of the housing market. And if they don't quickly pivot, Freeman figured, Corbyn will be the next prime minister. So he decided to do something. Bypassing the party’s weakened high command, Freeman began putting into action a blueprint he had presented to May's advisers months earlier, before the election, for a “historic reboot”of the party. The ideas festival would be the first phase.

And so here he is, driving in his Volkswagen after dropping his kids off, still partly in holiday mode but mostly thinking about all the work he's got to do organise the festival before the Tories’ official party conference next month. There's a team of 20 people working on it; WhatsApp messages and Google Docs have been flying around as they scout for venues and arrange speakers. Donors have pledged about £20,000 to pay for the event. He won't identify them specifically, but the money is coming from personal business contacts who are worried about Corbyn.

Freeman – cheerful, earnest, 5 feet 11 inches tall, bald, with rectangular Timberland glasses – doesn’t exactly look like the future face of a modern Conservative party. Nor on paper does he seem an obvious saviour. Educated at an exclusive boarding school and Cambridge University, he worked as a farming lobbyist and then in the venture capital business raising money for biotechnology startups for 15 years before becoming an MP in a safe rural seat. His experience in government is limited to two years as life sciences minister under David Cameron. Other MPs have more inspiring CVs.

And some of Freeman’s views are out of sync with those of the millennials he’s keen to attract: He voted against same-sex marriage, arguing that heterosexual marriages are “the basic building block of family and society”. He vehemently disagrees with the ban on fox hunting. And the low-tax, low-regulation “entrepreneurial” brand of capitalism he champions as the solution to the country’s economic problems would be objectionable to many young voters.

Talk to Freeman’s allies, though, and they say he’s one of the few Tory MPs who really seem to grasp the depths of the party’s predicament. “At the moment, he’s the loudest and clearest rallying point in the Commons for taking on some of these big questions,” says Andrew Cooper, a pollster and former adviser to Cameron. Tom Tugendhat, one of the rising stars in the Tories’ 2015 parliamentary intake, says: “He’s a really imaginative guy, with fantastic ideas. He’s exactly the sort of person you need to be coming up with original ideas about how the party should be answering some of the really difficult questions it’s facing.”

Some Tories are sceptical, rolling their eyes when Freeman’s name is mentioned. For all his talk about the party’s challenges, those people say, they’ve seen little evidence that he has any idea how to entice under-40s from Labour. “He likes to talk,” says one policy expert. Put that to Freeman’s allies, though, and they’ll argue that he’s putting his neck on the line to try to force the party to change. With the Conservatives preparing for their annual conference in Manchester next month, a wrenching debate is coming about the future of the Conservatives and who should lead it. And by quietly building a base of centre-right, pro-free-enterprise, soft Brexit modernisers, supporters say, Freeman is positioning himself to be an influential voice in that argument – and maybe an outside contender for the leadership.