Conservatives want more prosperity and happiness for the many. We believe that greater freedom, lower tax rates, and more enterprise is the best way to bring that about. We do not want an ever bigger state taxing too much, driving people into dependence, and forcing people to conform.
In the second half of the last century, Europe conducted a great experiment. Eastern Europe with Russia adopted the single currency of the rouble, widespread nationalisation, a customs union, social housing, and education based on conformity, with approved state thoughts and technology pioneered in government labs.
Western Europe allowed more free enterprise, variety of thought, widespread private ownership of homes and businesses, and substantial competition in everything from technology to service provision.
The West was the clear winner, achieving far higher living standards and greater happiness and freedoms for citizens; we won the technological war (after early successes for the USSR with space travel) when the USA put a man on the moon and announced the Star Wars anti-missile system.
The disfiguring wall dividing the two Berlins was put in by the communists to keep their people in against their will. Whilst Westerners were free to go east if the East allowed them, the USSR ended up having to shoot people to deter more from trying to flee their state controlled society.
In this century, however, there has been a notable failure to follow up on the great successes of freedom, free enterprise, and democracy.
It is true the USA has exploited its success to drive the amazing digital revolution and take the top slots in the global corporate world, creating the main players in software, mobile computing, online retailing, social media, and downloaded entertainment.Ā Yet there is now a drift in the UK, the USA and the EU away from the idea that free peoples can achieve great things, towards a view that state planning, higher taxes, and more subsidies, bans, and rules are necessary to success.
AsĀ Paul Goodman has warnedĀ when setting up the ConservativeHome study of how we can manage with less government, the current big-government trends threaten us with higher taxes, poorer people, and worse public services.
The search for ideas to help strengthen families, foster better education. and allow more well-paid jobs is an essential task.
We cannot afford great free healthcare and more generous welfare for those who cannot obtain a good job without growing the economy and raising productivity; both those aims require us to help more people into well-paid work where, aided by new technology, the pay reflects productivity.
And it is true that young people who come from loving and supportive homes have more chance of doing well than those who suffer from a lack of adult care and respect for them; that people who gain good skills and qualifications from education will get the better-paid jobs.
Of theĀ threeĀ areasĀ coveredĀ by the Reducing Demand for Government series, education saw the most radical ideas advanced. There is a general wish to see the free school revolution completed, with more schools becoming academies. Those academies should pursue excellence, offering more out of hours activities with a richer range of options, foster greater parental engagement, and offer better pay and staffing arrangements.
The implication is people want more parental and pupil choice, and a system where in most places there is a genuine choice of school. This will lead to more parental engagement and more gentle competitive pressure to achieve higher standards and a broader range of activities, including public speaking (now called oracy), music, and sports.
Places should be paid for by the state but chosen by parents and pupils; they become the clients who can go elsewhere if the school disappoints.
There is also a wish to see some expansion of grammar schools, with the provision of new ones where communities want them. There is much pent up demand for grammar places, and tensions where there are boundaries between grammar provision and no grammar provision. Grammar schools remain a good way to educate the more academically-minded. and allow children from all backgrounds to compete more successfully against pupils from the best-endowed private schools.
On jobs, contributors shared the Governmentās concern about dubious degrees that do not lead easily to well-paid careers. Now many are educated to the age of 21 it is important the last three years (usually paid for by a loan) are well used, with an eye to employment success.
There is enthusiasm for plans to reform welfare further to make sure that, in all cases, working is worthwhile, and to provide financial and other support to those who have difficulties in adapting to a normal working regime. Others wished to remove the ready supply of cheap labour from abroad, which the Treasury thinks is an aid to growth.
Suffice to say, that belief is wrong ā and not just because it relies on looking at output rather than output per head. The Treasury also fails toĀ take into account the big costs entailed by the extra (subsidised homes), surgeries, hospitals, schools, and utility provision needed to cater to the inflow, or the impact on productivity of persevering with low-paid jobs instead of investing in people and machine power so real incomes rise.
One wide-ranging contribution proposed fewer prison and fewer pills, more childcare close to home, and more at-home care. This could help social progress, with more people freed to work and fewer dependent on state institutions.
A carbon border tax, on the other hand, would just add to the inflation and inefficiencies which emissions taxes already impose, whilst the idea that we need to devolve more power to elected mayors misses the point: that we want government to get out of the way of enterprise, not impose more taxes on us to pay for more government direction.
Planning reform is always popular and probably necessary, as the current system does impose huge costs and delays.
The ideas for stronger families all had merit; most took the form of offering better tax breaks or more subsidies to ease the pressures on family budgets.
It would indeed to be good to leave families with more of their own money to spend, and supplement those who cannot for understandable reasons get the better paid jobs to pay the bills. Conservatives should favour more by way of tax cuts, cementing the link between work and better living standards.
There is also a case for greater fairness in tax between the couple where both go to work and the couple where one stays at home to look after the children whilst they are young.
However, as both the wish to improve education and to offer more help to families require more public spending, not less, these plans only make sense if government is willing to be tougher in other areas. Here are a few ways it could do so.
Stop the Bank of England selling more bonds at large losses, as the Treasury could do. Place a freeze on Civil Service and quango recruitment to start to reverse the plunge in public sector productivity in recent years (whilst allowing additional recruitment of teachers, medics and uniformed personnel).
Delay the state costs of carbon capture and storage schemes until world competition and the private sector have come up with cheaper and better answers, and suspend, now most who want one have one, the free roll out of smart meters. Reduce grants for anti-vehicle schemes.
Move more Civil Service staff out of expensive central London offices, and get some property savings from the new pattern of part-homeworking. Stop local authorities borrowing to buy property and other investments that they do not need for their own activities.
Sell the remaining shares in Nat West and privatise Channel 4. Stop issuing so much index-linked debt, and shift to borrowing more for longer periods to get the debt costs down a bit.
There are many more ways of taking a good few billions out of current budgets. We need only ministers with the will to do it.
August 12, 2023
Education is in a very sorry state. It is often not understood that the private sector offers a wide range of schools, adapted to get the best out of children with varying levels of talent in particular areas, and to do the best for children with particular problems. They are not all academic hothouses designed to produce Oxbridge entrants, though those that are are very good at it, as are the ones who make the best of less talented children, or those with particular aptitude for sport or music etc. School specialisation should be encouraged.
State schools have disappeared down a rabbit hole with a woke curriculum, significantly dumbed down compared with a few decades ago. Provision for specialisations has been in decline as well. Competition from the private sector is of limited effectiveness, since only a minority can afford the fees. Restoring rigour and choice to the state sector should be a priority. It also would greatly increase the productivity of the education system if the pace of the old curriculum were restored. There would be no need to send children to university to learn what their parents learned in school: they could be earning and contributing to society instead if they did not have the talent for proper degree level study. Leaving school after the GCSE level or at A level and moving into vocational training and sandwich courses would also be a great improvement.
The problem is what to do with the teaching establishment that has become invested in dumb and inappropriate education, indoctrinating children in much the same way as Young Pioneers in the Soviet Union.
August 12, 2023
No one knows what jobs there will be.. Kids need to be educated for work and to be able to cope when they have to change careers in their lives. The curriculum still seems to educate for the Empire. But no one is “indoctrinating” pupils in anything other than “dont be a violent bully”.
August 12, 2023
The curriculum is āfor the empireā all right – woke! Anti-Btitish! Distorted and impinges in the responsibilities that belong to parents alone.
Also thereās now a āmarket in educationā.
Our schools and universities are intended to educate our children alone.
August 12, 2023
Agree – and schools have just become a feeder for universities
August 12, 2023
The market in education is a money-making racket. Schools now, as well as universities.
There is unwanted instruction and prohibitions by the new ‘morality’ teachers. You can be disciplined now for stating that there are only men and women, for example.
Meanwhile, traditional Christian principles are no longer studied and sometimes suppressed in case of upsetting minorities.
August 12, 2023
The curriculum is overburdened with unnecessary detail and frankly useless information. “Woke” just means not bullying. They need to love learning and to be equipped for changes in career. They dont need to be put under so much pressure their mental health is harmed.
August 13, 2023
‘Woke’ itself is bullying. If you don’t agree with the current fashionable view, you will be punished. Like all fashions it will subside, but not before many young lives have been ruined with this insidious indoctrination and the country’s freedoms reduced.
August 13, 2023
graham as in ‘you ‘ll get cancelled’.
August 12, 2023
No indoctrination apart from the “climate crisis;” the LGBT-alphabet soup and the accompanying porn instructions; and all things “woke.”
August 12, 2023
Fancy a visit to Oxford Street?
August 12, 2023
One state secondary school I know was pretty good, decent maths and science, was a grammar in the old days and kept it’s standards high despite being forced into being a comprehensive. Last few years it has become an “arts specialist school” and the real underlying reason is the quality of maths and science education has dropped off a cliff face. No notable improvement in arts education. Such a shame. Their website is full of politically correct woke nonsense, and nothing about actual teaching or education, just the usual fake equality nonsense.
August 12, 2023
Proof of your fear that the east has moved west is that Germany has reported a 25% increase in bankruptcies. When Germany goes, the EU goes unless it brings in the army and builds a wall ā¦.
August 12, 2023
The crime syndicate that runs the US blew up Germany’s cheap gas supply. Europe will continue going down the pan by taking its marching instructions from
a country that uses its NATO occupation force to better its own interests at the expense of its satrapies. They may even drag us into a war with Russia.
August 12, 2023
Not all the Crime Families of the USAās fault, but of course Trump could not wait yo withdraw US troops from everywhere including Europe. If the USA wants peace it knows a what to do – but of course most have lost confidence of the electoral counting system.
However the 25% German elected Greens have punched above their weight. They closed down all the nuclear power stations. It was Green Baerbock who said āI donāt care what my German voters wantā – I want yo destroy Russia. āItās not Russias oil and gas, it belongs to us allā šš¤£ then she demanded a 360 degree volte face š¤Ŗ
August 12, 2023
Gas is a vital feedstock for the chemical industry not just a source of cheap power when it doesn’t come from the USA.
August 13, 2023
Annalena will be delighted. For complete deindustrialization the chemical industry needs to be destroyed.
August 12, 2023
How I envy those Eastern Europeans.
They had a relatively untainted world to flee to.
We are truly captive, mired in communism with no place to go.
They had a glimmer of hopeā¦we have none.
August 12, 2023
As Douglas Murray wrote in his book “The Strange Death of Europe” – many if not most of the “minorities” who have been invited to migrate to Europe in recent decades, refer to their native countries as “home.” Their countries haven’t been changed beyond all recognition by a massive, unwanted, influx of people from very different cultures who refuse to assimilate. They have “a home” to return to, should they so choose.
The native European people’s “homes” have been permanently changed and largely ruined by the massive influx, and they have no alternative “home” to go to.
Europe is being destroyed before our eyes.
August 12, 2023
+++
Absolutely agree!
The vast amounts of air travel between here and wherever are like bus routes.
Here to collect the benefit cheque, get teeth done, buy up property.
Back home for weddings, political activity, various medical procedures, general celebration of culture etc.( they still have theirs) with a suitcase full of money.
Our lovely leaders do not know the half of it.
Or maybe they hate us so muchā¦..
August 12, 2023
Deliberately by the legacies who only care about minority and woke issues, ignoring the rights and needs of the English.
August 12, 2023
Spot on
August 12, 2023
A less costly state wouldn’t waste as much money as this one has done and continues to do.
August 12, 2023
As far as I can see, working from home means that no work gets done.
Selling off govt. buildings surely points to support for 15 minute prisons?
No doubt in the expectation that all jobs will go to AI ( following the Agenda?)
I wish for every MP the experience I had yesterday over a wrongly delivered parcel.
In the face of large companies making blatant mistakes we now have no rights whatsoever.
We will be stuck in our ill-served ghettos and have to put up with whatever treatment is dished out to us!
August 12, 2023
Not the most inspiring list of issues and solutions I have heard John?
Where was your focus when it comes to the prime concerns of most people.
1. Immigration with its ongoing chao and costs.
2, Ongoing barriers to freedom still being imposed on us by the EU.
3, Woke demands such as gender education in schools.
4. ESG, EDI and other pointless initiatives destroying investment freedoms.
6. The ongoing war on motorists ULEZ, LTNs, 20 MPH zones. Bus lanes, Traffic light crossings. etc.
7. The insane taxation policies that are driving a not worth working culture.
8. The insane so called Green energy policies destroying our landscapes and our wind animal habitat.
9. Ghettoization and no go areas in our major cities.
10. The hollowing out of our armed forces and systems
Those are just a few of the real issues to focus on as the political representatives we have to choose from, mover further and further Left, including the Tory Party.
Reply The article was about the stated issue and a response to Conservative Homes ideas. I have covered important topics like migration in other blogs.
August 12, 2023
I agree Rod.
This article is an example of “just fiddling while Rome burns.”
August 12, 2023
Yes John, I am aware of your generally sensible stance on the matters I have listed.
You will have noticed I did not list
a, The UKs ongoing loss of fishing rights in our own territorial waters
b. The damage being wedded to the ECHR is causing causing at the Home Office.
c. The loss of Northern Ireland from the UK.
d. The continuing threat to our judicial system the EAW presents along with ongoing subservience to the ECJ.
It is a mess. If only we had the Labour lot to blame for the past 13 years…..
August 12, 2023
all good points
August 12, 2023
@Rod +1
Cancel, Ban and Import is the only direction this Conservative Government has. The refusal to manage. The economy is not a factor.
August 12, 2023
Where was the mention of public alienation to the State assisted propaganda machine called the BBC?
August 12, 2023
Did you forget about Net Zero and how that is destroying Western society John?
August 12, 2023
@Rod
That was always the objective nurtured by those that go their own way for World Domination. We have and have had a Quizzing Conservative Government that is complicit in this venture still punishing the UK
August 12, 2023
Ian, I think the term ‘Quisling’ government is very apt. I particularly like the Americanisation of the spelling Quizz or puzzlement being the obvious interpretation. How on earth did we end up with a failed Home Secretary, then becoming a failed PM? Her record on migration, or failure to control it more accurately, was explained by her signing the UK up to the UN Protocol for assisting Migration. in Dec 2018. Her entire time was spent keeping the UK locked into the Globalist wet dream AKA the EU, plus open borders.
What we are suffering today is all down to Theresa May.
August 12, 2023
but the crocodile tears on ejection was an acting triumph!
August 12, 2023
If she was faking the tears ….maybe she was faking brexit and everything else
August 12, 2023
Good morning.
None of that which our kind host can be done until we tackle the Elephant in the room, and that is the State. It has become our master and not our servant, and until this is recognised and then tackled we will forever be in decay.
August 12, 2023
Spot on. Our local council arbitrarily implements the law.. when I complained o=about a certain issue that their legal department confirmed was illegal – they said ābut forget the law, whatās the issueā.
The issue is that we donāt live under the Rule of Law anymore.
August 12, 2023
@Mark B agreed
August 12, 2023
So is that REALLY the true reason as to why govt. is in such a rush and fury to import and pamper the entire world?
Does it really believe that the economy is a stand alone entity?
Surely the economy should be for, by, with and of the settled inhabitants.
( It would be a bit stuffed without us..which woke firms seem to forget)
Not something to be casually destroyed by ludicrous dogma.
Oh thoughā¦I daresay the sweepings are exceeding good?
August 12, 2023
Planning reformā¦.
Have you seen the appalling shanty towns that are being allowed to rise up from pleasant, crime free housing estates?
August 12, 2023
The blog states ‘Conservatives want….’ but the reality is ‘Some Conservatives want…..’ and those some do not in practice include the present government who basically only follow the civil service who (unlike many of the electorate) don’t want these things. There needs to be a palace revolution to install a genuinely Conservative government to replace this civil service social-democrat oriented government by installing a new Prime Minister now,
well before the next general election instead of after Sunak has lost it with a programme (let alone a record of failure even on his 5 loudly proclaimed aims) that appeals to next to nobody unlike a genuinely Conservative programme as outlined in the blog.
Those Conservative M.P.s who believe in the populist, genuinely Conservative direction and policies outlined in this blog must summon the courage when Parliament resumes to force a confidence challenge to Sunak within the Conservative parliamentary party and hopefully replace his civil service government with a genuinely Conservative government as outlined in this blog. It is no change, no chance again!
August 12, 2023
Geoffrey Berg,
Your analysis is correct. However it is too late to change now. The Conservative Party has already lost the next election.
August 12, 2023
I donāt think it is too late to change, like you say weāve already lost the next election especially if Sunak and Hunt are still in place, so we have nothing to lose by getting rid of them but it would have to be quick. Thereās still over a year to go to replace them with a Conservative PM, Chancellor and cabinet but problem is there probably isnāt enough true Conservative MPs in the parliamentary party to take over. Maybe itās better to wipe out the fake Conservative Party altogether and start again.
How different things might be looking now had a coup not been performed on Truss. At least she believed in a high growth low tax economy, something socialist Hunt and Sunak clearly donāt.
August 12, 2023
“We’ve” Jools? That suggests you are still going to vote Tory in the next election. I’m afraid the Tories, like Labour and the Libs have lost my vote. Regarding your comments about Truss. I totally agree.
August 12, 2023
No John, Iām going to vote Reform unless something dramatic and Conservative happens before the next GE.
August 12, 2023
‘Maybe itās better to wipe out the fake Conservative Party altogether and start again.’
Agreed. They can go the way of The Whigs. However, I don’t believe a ‘wipe out’ can take place until after an election. It would then remove one option for careerist, chancer politicians.
The Labour party are very weak.k Keith Starmer is just papering over the cracks. Tony Blair might think he can be the back seat driver but I doubt Labour will last that long.
There is no downside to letting them take power for a short while. Things will get worse before they get better.
August 12, 2023
There probably aren’t enough genuinely Conservative M.Ps to form a majority of Conservative M.P.s but there are a great many careerist Conservative M.Ps who might augment them and have just to be persuaded of what is obvious to most people that Sunak is an irredeemable loser and so they might as well go with a change of leader and a change of policy to offer them some chance against a far from popular and a far from unbeatable Starmer.
August 12, 2023
Nah, theyāve lost the next 3 elections at least. Labour will spend two terms fixing āthe Tory messā and, as long as they donāt screw up as they did in the run up to the āGlobal Banking Crisisā, theyāll become the natural party of government – bias as the did from 1997 to 2005. If it werenāt for the banking crisis Labour would still be in power and the Tory Party would be a relic. The Tories will do well to win 100 seats next year – the constituency organisations will fall apart over the first few terms in opposition and the Party wii wither away.
August 12, 2023
I have said many times there is a vacuum at the heart of the Conservative party where there ought to be a philosophy of conservative government on which a coherent set of policies in the national interest is built. This is why it is ineffectual in government and lacks the political will to effect any meaningful change or to stand up to the EU. Instead it adopts headline inititives with no substance behind them in the hope of foolling enough people for long enough to win the next general election. The Party has no core beliefs other than it should be in office. What the country needs is entirely secondary to that aim.
August 12, 2023
An excellent article, Sir John. If there was a party offering these policies I would certainly vote for it.
August 12, 2023
Exactly – – it seems, all too often, our host provides clear eyed analysis and occasional brilliant solutions that strangely elude the higher reaches of his party.
With no party espousing conservative values, who will we vote for?
August 12, 2023
+1
I will not vote – at least. If the Tory really getup my nose during the campaign – Iāll vote against.
Have you noticed Boris complaining that Sunak is not sorting out British independence from the EU – if only Boris had had some power at some point – we would have been all right!š¤¬
August 12, 2023
Boris was busy with his green revolution
August 13, 2023
And procreating.
August 12, 2023
The article outlines what a Conservative Party view used to represent. It does not mirror current government thinking.
I donāt see any real desire to improve education. A party run by public school, Oxbridge types only pay lip service to this. Academies are a racket that give money-making opportunities to corporations with no obvious benefits to pupils.
Grammar schools were an excellent idea for pupils who attended but there is too much hostility to them to go get back to a situation where they catered for twenty per cent of the population.
August 12, 2023
Academies were a sledge hammer to crack a nut.
Most schools don’t need to be independent of councils, many councils were running their schools fine but the state needed a means to free some from the shackles of poor LEAs.
What has happened is that most schools are now doing what they used to do but the economies of scale have disappeared.
August 12, 2023
How do academies work with agenda21 and 15 mins cities ….everyone doing a school run with half the school children travelling west across town while the other half travelling east ?
August 12, 2023
For me and I trust very many, your last paragraph is the key to implementing the great changes that are needed.
Stop the waste that hemorrhages out of every sector department of government. The more you save of our money the less taxes we have to pay.
It is not just the will to do it. Have the people entrusted with the task of planning and implementing it have the necessary skills and experience?
It is yet another elephant in the room the quality, suitability of our MPs .
August 12, 2023
If you replace the national religion with wokery and if you rubbish our noble Empire and our generous and successful history, then what do you expect?
Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, Cecil Rhodes and the American Civil War were driven by Christians. Christians who thought they were called to abolish the evil of slavery.
August 12, 2023
The American Civil War was about who governed the individual States, slavery being the pretext for an expansion of the Federal government’s powers. Lincoln did not pledge to abolish slavery.
August 12, 2023
The American Civil war was fought against (and for) taxation not slavery. The taxers won.
August 12, 2023
Unfortunately Christianity has been used to bring about the downfall we presently see all around us.
And I think on purpose in a very nasty disingenuous way.
( āYou want your religionā¦follow ( only the New Testament) to the absolute letter then!ā)
All religions, including the ones prevalent at the moment are just forms of control.
Every scrap of nonsense we see now can be traced back at least to non conformists in the late 18th century.
Muchly fuelled by hefty doses of laudanum.
August 12, 2023
I could not find the article on Conservative Home. I expect the replies from the Lib Dem / Gaukeist types over there will be very different.
There is a daft article about Lee Anderson though.
August 12, 2023
Conservative Home is no home for Conservatives.
August 12, 2023
I agree mick.
August 12, 2023
“Conservatives want ……”
But the Not-a-Conservative-Party doesn’t.
And that’s the problem which needs addressing – by the electorate – because the Not-a-Conservative-Party won’t do any of it.
August 12, 2023
For a politician who espouses a smaller State it worries me that John never, ever condemns the rise of State authoritarianism using digital tech and critical theory progressive ideology that seeks to warp and sexualise young children through education. It’s almost as if he as he always seems to do veers away from any condemnation of the grip of the Left that now controls the State over so many areas of life including racialisation of the UK and gender ideology. All is being drive by THE STATE
The attack on private commerce using the poison of ESG and equity and justice ideology will without question finally hand the keys to the Left over all of the private sector and if Labour come to power their new business regulations will be woke control over all business. It will be then game over for a free society as our entire being will be open to threats to access to impose enforcement to a fascist dogma
So John and his colleagues must confront the cancer of ESG and lobby for laws to ban Net Zero, woke and other cancerous ideologies that lay the foundations of either totalitarianism or a public fightback that will splinter our nation down the middle
thansk for the article but it as ever it goes nowhere near far enough
We need less politicians and more Thatchers to expose the poisonous Left
August 12, 2023
I read of massive increase in public sector employment over recent years. Why? We were advised of plans for a 90k reduction in numbers – why has that not happened? Unless the current government actually does rather than just says, it will deserve to loose power at the next GE. We have seen a 60+ majority fail to deliver meaningful BREXIT, preside over record levels of immigration etc, is it any wonder that voters are turning against it?
August 12, 2023
Will
The mentality seems to be, “we need to reduce the size of the civil service. Okay, so how many people do we need to employ, to achieve this!?”
August 12, 2023
Whatever they say in their manifesto …think the opposite
August 12, 2023
same with Sunak five pledges
August 12, 2023
They need to increase the workforce to make up for the drop in productivity due to working from home.
August 12, 2023
Yet again I totally agree with all you have said. It is all common sense & achievable. However the reason none of this can be achieved is that our political & banking system. Has become lazy & bloated. There is no political will to do any of these positive actions. Because they are addicted now to being told what to do. Initially by EU for decades & now replaced by the ever controlling Globalists, the WEF! Until our political class accept THEY work for the people not the other way round. Nothing will change. The destruction that over zealous handling of Covid & now the lack of will to sort the planned illegal migrant invasion. Just proves the UK is now being run by a highly devolved, diverse political class. Who no longer deliver for the British citizen. But for their own cultures & races. Until cohesion is recovered through tough actions to reverse this loss of control of our laws & our culture. Great Britain will decline into oblivion!
August 12, 2023
“Conservatives want more prosperity and happiness for the many.”
I see no evidence of that. I do see policies that benefit large corporations and their ultra rich owners. I see policies that harm ordinary people whilst giving yet more power to the bloated state.
Since the only things government produces are regulations and services that degrade every year the last thing we want is for it to be more productive. We need less government.
August 12, 2023
You say “we need only ministers with the will to do it” Yes – but they are not there anymore – anyone who was any good was sidelined by Boris and Truss – so we are left with second best.
August 12, 2023
We’re left with what the UN WEF wanted !
August 12, 2023
You preach Conservatism to a Conservative electorate as if to indicate that there are still a few Conservatives left in the consocialist party. Thank you for that, but I fear the consocialists are a lost cause, with only a cigarette paper between them and Labour, a party with no compass or with one containing so much deviation as to be useless.
It is your party in the Commons that needs lessons in Conservatism and in dealing with the various forms of social terrorism, be it the banks, civil service, or just stop oil. My judgement is that your parliamentary party is now beyond recovery. Approaching an election there is no grass roots mechanism that ensures that only real Conservatives become candidates. The thought of the present cabal perpetuating themselves for a further five years is beyond contemplation. You know where real Conservatism lies, follow the path of Ann Widdicombe.
August 12, 2023
Yes Agricola, it’s no good the local Vicar preaching the 10 Commandments to his loyal parishioners, if his Bishop (back in Westminster) is caught worshiping Mamon. š
August 12, 2023
Why has Ann wielded more power outside Parliament?
Reply She hasnāt. She cannot try and amend a new law, vote down a proposal or put the case to Ministers in debate
August 12, 2023
I don’t see any evidence of any amendment of laws that the tory voter wanted ….NI, fisheries, taxtation, EU retained laws, immigration etc etc
August 12, 2023
You have to recognize that they saw off the May proposals 5 times (twice the vote was cancelled because they knew they would lose). It was those in Parliament who achieved that and much else including the Brexit referendum and the fair question.
Nobody in UKIP was able to make any contribution.
We need we work k out how to get those we want in Parliament past the Party Machine.
August 13, 2023
They did ‘saw off’ Mays proposals only later to vote for them under a rebadged Boris proposal
August 12, 2023
“We need only ministers with the will to do it” – rather than this current shower. Is not that the truth!
August 12, 2023
John
You may be a Conservative with typical Conservative ideas and values, but I am afraid your Party no longer is.
Governments and Local Authorities are now no more than huge complicated and expensive centres for the confiscation and redistribution of the peoples wealth, to such a degree that many now feel it simply is not with the bother of working to try to improve your own lot any more.
Given the current tax rates and the huge range of taxes those who do work get less to spend on themselves, than the State actually takes from them, good grief they even take a huge slice of what you have left after you die, and have even put in rules that tax anything you want to give away.
What is the incentive to invest and risk you own money by starting a business, or investing further in an established one that wishes to grow, if the returns are going to be so meagre, and the risk is 100% down to the individual.
August 12, 2023
Which current tax rates in particular Alan?
I know everyone has a downer on the Tories now, I canāt stand Sunak and the new clique but they did reduce taxes for everyone earning less than Ā£35k by increasing the personal allowance on national insurance by Ā£3000 and didnāt get any credit for that. Does anyone really think taxes with drop with a change of government? Seriously?
Does anyone really think Labour would have spent less on the covid lockdown of the economy, business that their unions were crying out for more of? The SNP and Labour in Wales went further than the England. They just get England to bail them out.
They did increase spending on the NHS considerably since 2016 and get no credit for that. We are told spending has reduced on everything, it canāt have even in āreal termsā what has it gone up on.
The Tories held down interest rates to new historic lows for 12 years 2010-2022 (with the savers and pensioners paying the price for that) but go no credit from the Countries indebted for that! They are strung up for interest returning to normal levels as the world governments have done.
Iām thinking how the hell do we have time to protect ourselves from what is coming next because the Tories just donāt want to apply the true costs of all these socialist ideals weāve adopted to everyone especially the retired, but Labour will, no hesitation.
August 12, 2023
I wish I could agree with you that the Conservative party as a whole shares the very desirable objectives that you set out so cogently, but the plain truth is that they are not the objectives or vision of the great bulk of the membersof the
Conservative Parliamentary Party. They are united with Labour, the Liberal democrats and most of the Nationalist parties in considering them almost anathema.
August 12, 2023
William, You say the Conservatives are linked with Labour etc. I think, unbeknown to the majority of us – the UK is linked to numerous global enterprises. So all are being instructed from above government level. The mayor of London for example, is the leader of the global mayor’s organisation, a network of mayors – C40.
The banking groups work with B Corporation, a part of the B Global Network . B Lab UK is the UK branch of this. There is B Corp Climate Collective which is linked with ESG. All global. The Free Speech Union have researched this and here are their findings.
https://freespeechunion.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Woke-Ltd_Final2.pdf
My point is, that all the while we are linked so intricately with global networks – the government’s hands are tied.
How many other aspects of our society are part of global networks?
August 12, 2023
ā¦ā¦ I imagine that the recent tragic death of a 10 year old girl is in Sir Johns patch.( Etc ed)
Reply The tragedy was in Woking Surrey. I live in Wokingham Berks.
August 12, 2023
Oh dear Frances, did you think you were on X (twitter). I think youād find it much more to your liking there.
August 12, 2023
I believe that there is more to education than academia. The people who build and create are not hooked on to canons of past perceptions. They are people with ideas and see things with fresh ideas, they are people who feel when things are not right. Einstein as a theoretical physicist was quoted as saying* Logic can get you from A-Z , imagination can get you everywhere.” and “intelligence is the ability to change .”
August 12, 2023
I agree Margaret and it is being snuffed out with risk free education.
August 12, 2023
margaret
+1
August 12, 2023
There’s a very interesting article in The Daily Sceptic today on the subject of the Cabinet Office “Consultation” regarding the Government’s plans for expanded Digital Identity.
It wasn’t highly publicised, but still got over 66,000 responses (including mine) and the vast majority were against the plans by very large majorities (70% or higher). 20% of the responses were excluded by the Cabinet Office since they were far too inconvenient to be counted.
The Government is, of course, ignoring the response to their “Consultation” ….. just like Khan did with his ULEZ “Consultation.”
Apparently data security is highly important to the Government. You’d think even Sunak would blush at that one, in the week when details of the entire complement of Northern Ireland’s Police Service has just been released online for anyone to see.
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/08/11/public-opposed-to-u-k-governments-digital-identity-expansion-plans/
August 12, 2023
I read an article yesterday, (I can’t find it now) but this stated that there are five steps to the net zero nonsense. All are already in law! When was that done?
August 12, 2023
The all Party Climate Change Committee under the Climate Change Act. They have 5 year plans to implement their net zero policy. It continues regardless of who’s elected. You won’t hear much about it as it would be hugely unpopular. So if anyone votes for the legacies you are going back to the stone age. Be warned and spread the word EVERYWHERE. The MSM wont touch it.
August 12, 2023
Correct. The only way to overturn it is to vote for a Government which is prepared to do just that.
And that isn’t one of the Westminster Uni-Party’s Red, Blue or Yellow branches.
August 12, 2023
Donna
I respond to all government consultations but this one about digital identity – I was unaware of! From what you’ve described, no wonder it was not widely broadcast.
It’s probably already in law for a certain date!
August 12, 2023
To bypass voters Governments sign away our sovereignty to non-elected global entities and then wring their hands because they can’t get out of these agreements.
Just analyse what this statement means: Member States of the World Health Organization agreed to develop a legally binding agreement designed to protect the world from future pandemics.
It means you won’t be able to travel without a valid vaccination certificate for any future disease they decide needs controlling; it means vast sums of money being funneled into the WHO coffers to provide third-world health care on a par with Western countries.
We are sleepwalking into a dystopian future.
We should have a law in this country that prohibits any government from ceding sovereignty to any non-elected organisation.
August 12, 2023
Government view computing as dependable and miraculous. You would think that they might have learned from experience by this time.
Whatever they legislate and computerise can be overturned and undone, the more harsh it is and therefore the more valuable the overturning, the more likely it will be done. For every lock there is a key.
They know not what they do.
August 12, 2023
Agree
2004 NHS computer network Ā£25bn overspend, 2013 NHS IT Records System Ā£10bn abandoned, 2021 NHS T&T Ā£35bn wasted etc etc
August 13, 2023
Yep – saw there was another āmajor breachā FO computer system. Russia of course – because they donāt have enough on their hands atm. Much more likely to be India. Wait until the Treasury system is breached – HMRC – on and on and lots of money to be made from simply altering records from āunpaidā to āpaidā.
I used to write the test Data at CDC. I donāt think the Govt IT Dept. does test data i.e. data designed to try to break the system.
August 12, 2023
The cult of woke is just a new name for communism and our institutions ā Parliament, the Civil Service, quangos, the judiciary, educational establishment etc. – have all been taken over by communists emanating from our universities filled with 120,000 Chinese āstudentsā.
We are consequently moving rapidly towards the old USSR system with the state owning and controlling everything, the cancelling of freedom of speech and enforced diversity replacing meritocracy. All designed to end democracy, freedom and enterprise and consequently prosperity.
The Net Zero Strategy, a solution to a problem that does exist, will be the final nail in the coffin.
August 12, 2023
That would be a nice start, but would the blob and the civil service allow them to do it?
August 12, 2023
Put a 50% tax on Chinese EVās, the CCP is openly executing a strategy of destruction of Western EV production by dumping their own at huge discount but increasing prices when native production is destroyed.
They also have a strangle hold on the components for batteries and some types of chips which will decrease our ability to produce EVās
This highlights the folly of Borisā idiotic decree for limiting petrol and diesel car production to 2030.
August 12, 2023
Isnāt the fundament problem that some people get ahead of themselves, they think the World can be put on the right track if things were only done their way. That then Morphs into the State thinking that as they know best it is up to them personally to Control every minutiae of everyone’s life. They then get the Bureaucrats involved and things get personally interpreted once more. All the while those that actually physically do the work get pushed and pulled in every direction ā so nothing is achieved. What we finish up with is a Society full of āBanāsā, Coercion, and Cancel that then all becomes about Control and fear of the People. An unproductive Bureaucrat nightmare were nothing is achieved.
August 12, 2023
@Ian B
Yesterday we had a Minister getting a sound-bite out there of the UK must change to battery EVās by 2030. Which in essence means Chinese EVās. His explanation was that the UKās funding of an Indian Company with no experience that is then subcontracting ownership of the project to the Chinese is good for Britain. For getting to mention that the component to be used as with the end product has King Coal as its driver at its source in China. This project is an assembly project from Chinese components only, The presumption of BEVās is that new from polluting sources is better than the old petrol driven vehicles. That’s were the āDimā meddling comes in, all petrol vehicles can also run on Hydrogen. Hydrogen is created by the same process as the electricity to charge a BEV.
His assumption was we should ditch all and everything else, turn to importing and lose an entire workforce. It is starting to feel that this Conservative Government is being controlled by Beijing. It is clear COP26 and similar are.
August 12, 2023
Maybe Media Hype
“Chinese electric car giant declares war on Western rivals
BYD chief calls on countryās auto manufacturers to ādemolishā competition”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/08/11/chinese-electric-car-giant-byd-declares-war-western-rivals/
“a more productive and less costly state” Sir John, you have identified the problem, but this Conservative Governments ā Punish, Ban, Cancel and Import, all at the extreme detriment to the UK economy is part and parcel of their refusal to manage even the basics.
This Conservative Government removes choice so removes competition. This Conservative Governments adoption of the Laws and Rules from the unelected foreign Bureaucrats that set out to punish the UK says it all. Were is the UKās own Legislator, were is the UKās own elected Government, where its laws and rules that are only those that democracy deems as needed and have a UK context.
āa more productive and less costly stateā will only be possible when a UK Government steps up to āmanageā the UK for the UK and a Parliament recognises that they were democratically elected, paid and empowered to be the UKās sole Legislators. It is parliament that needs to become Sovereign and return itself to the principles of English Law ā we currently have a Parliament that gives the appearance of having succumbed to unelected unaccountable Foreign Dictatorship.
There is a difference between getting on with friends and neighbours, as opposed to you giving them you wallet and them ātellingā you what you can do with its contents
August 12, 2023
…..to feel that this Government is being controlled by Beijing. Ask Jeremy Hunt.
August 12, 2023
According to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliamentās recently published (redacted) report on China, in June 2019, BEIS signed the UKāChina Clean Energy Partnership, which allowed collaboration on transitioning to greener sources of energy.
This āclean energy partnershipā with China to assist our ātransition to greener sources of energyā really surprised me as :
1) Whilst China is building ever more coal fired power stations at great speed, and hence hold no belief that CO2 emissions are causing any climate change, they are at the very heart of our Government and Civil Service promoting our unilateral transition to expensive, unreliable and intermittent renewables, all supplied by China, and which will destroy our economy.
2) Furthermore, if it was considered strategically unsafe to allow Huawei to supply all our telecommunications equipment, why is it not considered unsafe for all our energy infrastructure ā wind turbines, solar panels and the minerals, if not the actual devices themselves, for motors, generators, batteries and cabling to all be controlled by China, a country described by our security services as āhostileā?
You couldnāt make it up!
August 12, 2023
Can you believe we vote these people in ?
August 12, 2023
@Ian B
You could also reason that the UK Conservative Government take on State day to day involvement in projects is similar to its stance on the ECHR. They are so hooked up on what Sir John pointed out was the Napoleonic process of Law and Order, that have lost all concept of what is termed and followed elsewhere in the World ā English Law. In the former it is unelected unaccountable State Bureaucrats that get to grant permissions and rights, which can only be given by removing them in the first place ā everything is illegal unless the privileges are granted by you unelected Dictator. Under English Law everything is legal unless a Democratically elected accountable Parliament has taken them away ā even then those that we vote to represent us can amend and repeal those Laws ā that’s called Democracy.
Turn that same thinking towards the Industry and Commerce, the UKās wealth creation, and you see the Napoleonic way of thinking. The Legislators in our Democratically Elected Parliament think they are the ones doing all the work, when in reality they are the ones restraining and holding the Country back.
August 12, 2023
āā Though the vessel was reportedly rescued around 5 miles from the coast of Sangatte, near Calais, many of those rescued were taken to Dover afterwards.āā GB News this morning
Why are we taking illegal immigrants from French territorial waters to the UK ??? This needs an urgent question in the house
August 12, 2023
Precisely. We should have only entered French waters and rescued these criminal migrants if the French Government agreed they could be returned to France.
August 12, 2023
or transported them straight to a French harbour ….which is closest than a English harbour ? They where only 5 miles from the French coast and 15 miles from the English coast …in French territorial waters
August 12, 2023
Sir John,
Your last sentence raises the question: Why exactly will Conservative Ministers not do these things?
August 12, 2023
Because the Conservative Party and the Labor Party are agents and fixers for Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum!
August 12, 2023
“Move more Civil Service staff out of expensive central London offices, and get some property savings from the new pattern of part-homeworking.”
“We need only ministers with the will to do it.”
Yet the evidence is that some ministers would rather walk round London offices leaving snarky notes on desks. I don’t see a lot of “will to do it” in such attitudes.
August 12, 2023
The first job is a review of all the quangos, think tanks and charities that have been created in recent years. They skew the policies of Government far too much. I was shocked to see how many WEF members are embedded in these organisations. Listen to the people not these hypocritical left wing champagne socialists who try to dictate how we live are lives.
August 12, 2023
Schools should be run on the Butler idea after the 2nd World War. It catered for all types of formal education but was dropped when the looney lefties of the 1960s started taking over. On moving Civil Service out of London why has the Birmingham project just been dropped (out of sight of the general public by all accounts) because of working from home. Levelling up should mean levelling up or one of your core manifesto claims has again been missed.
August 12, 2023
Re education I wholeheartedly agree. It wasnāt broken so why did they interfere except to turn education into indoctrination. Any free thinkers and stunned into silence early. Nipped in the bud.
August 12, 2023
Agreed Lynn
I went to a bog standard Secondary Modern, got a very relevant education that made me ready for the outside World, and to earn a living and look after myself, if you then wanted to progress further that was down to the individual’s choice, typically with the technical college route, which hundreds of thousands chose, including myself.
Not a single person left our school without gaining a job, of course benefits were more difficult to come by if not impossible then.
August 13, 2023
True, in the 50s & 60s people would have said ‘ what benefits?’
It was get on your bike, or go hungry. We had a work to get on culture.
Then we had Family Allowances for 6, 8 how many kids? Dole….
Then Job seekers, then various bail-outs.
Now its a sickie, more holidays, stay in bed day, finally ‘work from home’.
Back to the dark old days of union withdrawal of labour for unaffordable pay rates.
August 12, 2023
LB, LA,
Because of Anthony Crosland a virulently anti grammar school Labour politician.
Once grammar schools were mostly changed to comprehensive standards dropped and better teachers may have decided to quit the profession.
August 12, 2023
All of the points Sir John mentions in his post today are exactly what the Conservative- or any Government ought to pursue . The country needs a complete re-alignment now and I would certainly support an approach with his priorities . Post WW2 it was natural that a common approach was established to stop forces of aggression dominating again unfortunately it was not altogether a success . Germany benefitted substantially from USA economic support while other parts of Europe – and the world , were left to their own efforts ; we – for one honoured our debts to the USA . We should now be free from all outside constraints that we have not fully agreed to and our democracy should stand as an example to the world .
August 12, 2023
Germany and Japan…..yet we paid USA for every last bullet.
August 12, 2023
and we lost merchant shipping taking food to Russia and Stalin. You have to question what the point is in having allies.
August 13, 2023
The point is that without Russia bleeding Germany on the big second front we might not have won. My father was on the Russian run, has a medal for that torture from the Russian who called it āthe lifelineā.
August 13, 2023
and I should have had a grandfather, but for being killed stretcher-bearing in WW1, to ‘save’ the French. Still his widow eventually got his MM. Justice?
August 12, 2023
“Conservatives want more prosperity and happiness for the many.”
Sorry, Sir John, but what you do speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you say! There is no evidence that your first sentence applies to this Government. I wonder if you are the only conservative MP left.
Your analysis and observations are correct, but as the comments indicate, the Government is doing the exact opposite. Do the PM, and Chancellor have a conservative bone in their bodies? On all the evidence, the answer is NO! What hope do we have for the future of the UK when both Government and Opposition are united in making everyone’s life worse?
August 12, 2023
Home Office data as at 11th August
Illegal criminal immigrants ā 343
Illegal small boats ā 6
Returned to France – 0
August 13, 2023
GC – And yesterday, Sat 12 Aug, when we saw tragedy in the Channel, the UK still recorded 509 arrivals in 10 boats. That is a total of 1608 people / 30 boats crossed & accepted into the UK in three days Aug 10,11,12.
August 13, 2023
and no one saw them !!!!!
August 12, 2023
Our country that took centuries to build is lost, the moral strength, the respect of its people, the honour, the capabilities and its identity. Sir John does not seem capable of recognising the true subversion that has and is taking place and openly address that.
Society, education, the judiciary, the economy and sovereignty is now contolled and is allowed to be controlled by people who will never regognise anything he says and of course their aim is to destroy it.
It has been allowed by his party and he is part of the destruction because he stays with it whatever destruction it brings and allows to be brought on us.
No ministers dare protect us from those whose open purpose is to destroy our beliefs. Those who become ministers clearly become part of the problem.
August 12, 2023
‘Ridiculous, these policies will not work’. I can hear those words bandied around Whitehall and Westminster after they read this new SJ blog. Scarily, it is they who have been ridiculous with their failed “modelling” and way off, hopeless forecasting, all to the heavy detriment of British citizens. And they still fail to see their mistakes and correct them!
If we are to stop the rot within our country, these economic rotters must be culled and replaced with persons who are capable of performing AND will do so to save OUR country.
A clear warning to us and to iffy Government begins in para 2 above. The establishment (And subsequent failure and breakdown of the USSR) has been repeated within the formation of the EU.
As night follows day, the EU will surely follow the same demise of the defunct USSR. Unless they revert to true conservative policies which lowers taxes and reduces Government and red tape in favour of economic growth within the private sector.
It is exactly what German Minister Ludwig Erhard did to propel Germany, defeated and destructed in WW2 to be post war kings of Europe. Woefully, post war GB stalled, thanks to Atlee’s dated socialist policies ruining the country and consequently we remained on food rationing some 4 years after Germany abolished them. Why did we learn nothing from that German “miracle”? Why did we not follow our own economic miracle from the true blue Thatcher years? What happened to us? A lean to the left by ALL?
Today’s pseudo Tory Government resembles a Lib Dem one following economically debilitating socialist “dreams”. We must have change for the better or again become the sick man of Europe, or worse.
August 12, 2023
+many
August 12, 2023
Tory net-zero ‘less productive & more costly’
”The UKās only fracked horizontal shale gas wells must be decommissioned, the industry regulator (government quango The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) said today.”
https://drillordrop.com/2023/08/09/breaking-cuadrilla-ordered-to-abandon-lancashire-fracked-wells/
August 12, 2023
What do you mean āthreaten usā?! We have the highest taxes since WW2, appallingly poor public services and half the country needing two or three jobs in your wonderful, capitalist gig economy. āTis no threat, Mr, Redwood – you have delivered the threat already.
August 12, 2023
Course you can. You use our money to provide hotels and free health care for anyone who rocks up – our money is no issue at all – it seems.
August 12, 2023
You must be chuckling away to yourself as you write this. You believe I lower tax rates while charging higher tax rates. You believe in more enterprise yet create less enterprise by raising corporation tax and destroying the self employed with IR35. As for forcing people to confirm, youāve stood by while education indoctrinates the young and universities refuse a platform to anyone who does not conform to the woke religion.
Mr, Redwood – please stop writing this stuff. Itās insulting. You must realise we know your government does the exact opposite of what you say it stands for.
August 13, 2023
Redwood said āconservatives believeā¦.ā Not that the Government believes. Read more carefully there is much between the lines. Redwood never tells a lie and calls it as he sees it. You can decide whether you agree with him or not. Mostly I do, now and then I have a different perspective. But thatās political debate and argument – our birthright!
August 12, 2023
“happiness for the many. We believe that greater freedom, lower tax rates, and more enterprise is the best way to bring that about. We do not want an ever bigger state taxing too much, driving people into dependence, and forcing people to conform.”
It’s becoming ever more obvious you are a lone voice, unfortunately you are outnumbered and ignored.
Sadly your efforts are like peeing in the sea to warm it up as we no longer have a true Conservative party worth voting for.
August 12, 2023
“Places should be paid for by the state but chosen by parents and pupils; they become the clients who can go elsewhere if the school disappoints.”
Why not apply that principle to healthcare? It is the kind of fundamental restructuring that is essential if the NHS is ever to improve. Australia and other countries do it. Why can’t the UK? It is very hard for anyone outside the UK to understand why the Brits so love their NHS that reform is politically impossible. The likely explanation is that because it is free at the point of delivery and funded by the minority of people who are net contributors to the state (see ONS figures) most people are content with mediocre service because others are paying for it.
However I disagree that any state service should be entirely free. It will be abused and not valued if entirely free. People who pay value what they are buying and take a greater interest in it. It should be affordable. Most people in UK don’t have the faintest idea how much their medications and treatments, hospital care etc that they receive actually costs. They should get the bill each time with a statement of costs and how their treatment is funded, even if they don’t directly pay for all of it themselves. Even better if the patient has the choice of whether to send the bill to their insurer or the taxpayer. Awareness of the likely costs should be part of the process of deciding on what treatment to undertake, by whom and where.
Patient choice is essential and requires awareness of costs and an affordable contribution by the patient.
August 13, 2023
Agree that “free” will be abused and regarded like air or water without any cost attached delusions and demanded by right. This creates over-demand overload on public services and further raises costs of provision on finite resources.
Multiple calls on paramedics and ambulance services by repeat failures to either take medicines, eat healthily and take required minimal exercise goes on believe it just like missed appointments and costs multiple hundreds Ā£Ā£Ā£.
Of course unless you are presented personally with the bill / invoice as in an expensive restaurant or hotel for the actual cost you will not believe the reality from the illusion.
Only when Brits go abroad and need a doctor or hospital do they get a shock and Travel Health insurance is expensive and often un-insurable by comparison. Being an island instead of having a land border with other countries (apart from Ireland) further sides this illusion.
August 12, 2023
I don’t know a single Tory voter who intends to do so at the next general election. The men-in-boats mean you face wipe out. Tens of Tory MPs will be left. So what’s the point in this blog anymore ?
Reply You do not have to spend time writing things that have nothing to do with the issues I am proposing we discuss. Why do you bother?
August 13, 2023
reply to reply. I understand your frustration with us at times. However it pales into insignificance compared to the frustration felt at your Government.
August 13, 2023
The comments on this topic are a pretty good summary of what was once the state of ” Great Britain” has now become, mirroring the ugly reality of the stealthy rise of a bureaucratic nanny state with too many puny MPs who have zero experience and ability to run a small business, never mind anything bigger.
After voting for Brexit independence it is obvious that we are not in control of our country’s future under the current antiquated system that cannot deliver a sensible solution. Only the Reform Party is talking sense.
After the disastrous SNP poison legacy in Scotland it seems the Labour Party will fill the vacuum and become the default overall majority according to Andrew Neil. Starmer advised by back seat driver Tony Blair will make it even worse.
The Conservative Party has never turned up arguably since 1997.
August 15, 2023
Just brilliant. Real Conservatism.