An influential literature in comparative political economy focuses on the role of (changing) ideas in (changing) policy and institutions. In this paper we explore how politicians in Germany and the UK talk reflectively and in private about their economic ideas. From over 40 semi-structured interviews, three distinct dimensions of variation emerge. First, politicians talk readily about their placement on the economic “left” or “right”, but this signals their normative commitments to equality or (market) freedom rather than a coherent economic ideology. Second, politicians vary in the degree to which they are ideological (by Sartori’s definition) as opposed to pragmatic. Finally, they differ in the positive theories they believe about cause-and-effect relationships. Though not independent of their normative views, these are conceptually distinct, especially among the more pragmatic. There are interesting patterns in the joint distributions of these characteristics: those on the left tend to be more ideological, and the ordoliberal theoretical paradigm is rarely combined with high levels of pragmatism. Differentiating the “moving parts” of economic ideas provides important insights into the scope for new re-combinations, and their empirical probability, at a time when the dominant economic paradigm of the past thirty years is under increasing strain.