Tory stars of the future make their mark with references to Locke, Lincoln and the A11

Jacob Rees-Mogg, pictured campaigning unsuccessfully in Glenrothes in Scotland in 1997, has won praise for his Commons maiden speech. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Nick Boles, an influential Tory thinker over the past decade who has just been elected as MP for Grantham and Stamford, has a delightful piece in the Times today about life as a new MP.

Boles says the main topic of conversation among new MPs is the question of when they are going to make their maiden speeches. Boles gives an insight as to why his maiden speech will be more nerve wracking for him:

When I had cancer a few years ago, radiotherapy zapped my saliva glands and my mouth gets very dry. Will the Speaker let me take a bottle of water into the chamber? Or should I acquire a little hip flask and take a secret swig before I stand to speak? And what will my constituents say if they think they've seen me knocking back cherry brandy at 3 o'clock in the afternoon?

A record 232 new MPs – out of a total of 650 – were elected in the general election. This means that every debate at the moment is dominated by maiden speeches of new MPs who are, by tradition, heard in respectful silence as they praise their predecessor, speak warmly about their constituency and give a taste of their political oulook.

Maiden speeches are often overlooked at the time. But they make fascinating reading if an MP later turns into a star. Gordon Brown spoke in 1983 of how social deprivation in his native Kirkcaldy had brought him into politics.

Tony Blair made this declaration in his maiden speech on 6 July 1983:

I am a Socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, Socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for co-operation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for equality, not because it wants people to be the same but because only through equality in our economic circumstances can our individuality develop properly. British democracy rests ultimately on the shared perception by all the people that they participate in the benefits of the common weal.

Given the way in which Blair later trampled over the traditions of the Labour party, his maiden speech may have given a misleading picture of where he was heading. But his declaration that his Socialism was practical, rather than theoretical, and that equality should not mean people are the same gave a mild taste of his later thinking.

Wind forward 27 years. There were some fascinating maiden speeches from new Tory MPs in last night's Queen's speech debate on the constitution and home affairs. Here are three:

• Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new Conservative MP for North East Somerset, won praise for a self effacing and erudite speech. The son of the former Times editor opened by saying:

It is a great honour for my family for me to be elected for North East Somerset. My father – or my noble kinsman, Lord Rees-Mogg, as I am now meant to call him – told me that between him, myself and my sister, we have tried seven times with one victory. I fear that if we were a football team, people would be calling for the manager to be removed.

Rees-Mogg had this to say about the coalition when he mentioned a series of distinguished sons of Somerset:

The final figure I am going to mention in this great pantheon of wonderful figures from God's own part of God's own county is John Locke. Brought up in Belluton – this really is a sop to the Whig coalition that we now have – this philosopher of the Whigs was in many ways the founder of the constitution that we now have, one that has as its essence the fact that power comes from the people up to the legislature, which is there to supervise the Executive. Members will all know that the argument at the time was about the divine right of kings and some may now think that we have another form of divine right of the Executive. Locke made it clear that the duty of the legislature was to check and to stop the Executive exceeding the powers, the rights and the authority that it had from time immemorial.

• Matt Hancock, George Osborne's former chief of staff who is now MP for West Suffolk, spoke just before Rees-Mogg. Hancock, a former Bank of England economist who lavished praise on his predecessor, Richard Spring, has clearly studied David Cameron's old Guardian Unlimited diary. The future prime minister advised new MPs to focus on local issues.

This is what Cameron wrote on 2 May 2002, the day he first put a question to Tony Blair at prime minister's questions:

Local issues...are by far the most boring for everyone else to listen to, easily the most effective. Unlike national papers, local ones actually report in some detail what members of parliament do. A short question can be followed up with a press release, an endless round of local TV and radio interviews and a prolonged burst of local stardom.

And this is what the most likely candidate from the 2010 intake to be a future Tory chancellor said:

As well as the most beautiful, West Suffolk is one of the largest constituencies in England, and that large area is united by the poor transport links that we find throughout it. The A11, which serves the whole of Norfolk, desperately needs the final nine miles to be dualled to provide better transport and a better economy to the whole east of England. At the most northerly point of the constituency, Brandon is a peaceful market town, but that peace is destroyed as the holiday traffic runs up the high street. Members will not be surprised that as a new MP, I support the fully locally funded proposal to bring a bypass to Brandon. However, they can imagine my horror when, in preparing for this speech, I read the maiden speech of my predecessor 18 years ago and found that he, too, had argued that there was a desperate need for a bypass for Brandon. I hope that it will not take a whole 18 years to bring it about.

• Margot James, the successful entrepreneur who is now Tory MP for Stourbridge, was able to touch on more national issues as she offered strong support for the government's fiscal deficit reduction plan:

The Prime Minister is saying today that there is much pain on the way. I feel very strongly that the people of Stourbridge will face up to the very difficult decisions that the Government and local authorities are going to have to take in coming years. The people of the black country and Stourbridge hold on to certain basic truths that are not just old-fashioned notions that can simply be cast aside-for example, that one should never borrow what one cannot pay back, that we should not foster a culture in which people are led to expect something for nothing, and that, in the more elegant prose of Abraham Lincoln: "You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."

Boles, Rees-Mogg, Hancock and James: these are four names to watch. But new MPs dread being singled out for attention early on.