There is a run of commentary urging the Prime Minister to avoid a lurch to the right. I agree with them that saying so called right wing things in the hope that people will come back from Reform is not going to work.
The government needs to carry through its stated policies of cracking down on illegal migration and making big reductions in legal migration as promised. It needs to cut taxes more and set out a path to lower tax rates after the election. It needs to tackle the productivity collapse in the public services and get more people into better paid work.It needs to actively promote growth.
The commentators should grasp that a lurch to the left is also a very bad idea. The pro EU Conservatives have in the past done Labour type damage to country and party. Edward Heath in office lurched to the left introducing price, wage and dividend controls, presided badly over a strike, put us into the European Community and duly lost the election. John Major pushed us into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. This delivered a boom/ bust disaster as a few of us predicted . It led directly to a colossal electoral defeat when the full damage of this EU policy became obvious. It was only a worse Labour Boom /Bust in 2009 that got Conservatives back into office. Theresa May tacked away from the Brexit she was meant to deliver and devised a bad social care policy.She managed to lose an election, only clinging on with help from the DUP.She lost support of many Conservative MPs for wanting a Labour style sell out to Brussels.
Similar voices to those who lost us those three elections and three Prime Ministers are now urging Rishi Sunak to backtrack on lower taxes and lower migration, encouraging him to cosy up to the EU, regulate more things and be governed by the views of international lawyers. History tells us this is a bad course for Conservative leaders to follow.
May 9, 2024
Good morning.
I am in TOTAL disagreement with our kind host.
Each and every one of those PM and the subsequent elections they fought were lost on the state of the economy, with the exception of the Theresa May MP held. There she held an election she need not have and lost because she simply was not PM material and the electorate knew that. Plus. You had a skilled opposition leader who knew how to motivate both his membership and the electorate, mostly with bribes.
All the others were down to failed economic policies, leadership and a divided party. The UK electorate likes strong but benevolent leaders who can form a government that can actually govern ! Shame the current occupier of Number 10 does not fit that bill.
Reply And their failed economic policies were wholly or partially made in the EU
May 9, 2024
To reply:- indeed and the EU plus John ERM fiasco Major (a man who failed nearly all his O levels & whom Thatcher idiotically appointed as Chancellor) buried her too.
JR says “I agree with them that saying so called right wing things in the hope that people will come back from Reform is not going to work.” well no not if Sunak and the Tories are saying them as we have had 14 years of high and increasing taxes, over large government, incompetent public services, net zero lunacy, over regulation, corrupt crony capitalism, vast government waste, vast low skilled immigration levels … in short left wing deluded socialism.
So who would ever trust the Conservatives to deliver? Labour are essentially the same but even worse still.
May 9, 2024
You last paragraph says it all:- “Similar voices to those who lost us those three elections and three Prime Ministers are now urging Rishi Sunak to backtrack on lower taxes and lower migration, encouraging him to cosy up to the EU, regulate more things and be governed by the views of international lawyers. History tells us this is a bad course for Conservative leaders to follow.”
But two points. 1 Sunak has not even started cutting taxes they are still going up due to frozen allowances, ULEZ, council taxes and endless other back door tax grabs. Let alone cut any of the vast & wasteful often corrupt government expenditure. 2. Sunak is indeed cosying up to the EU, regulating more and following the international lawyers agenda. He will not even ditch the absurd ECHR who even want to tell the Swiss what their energy & CO2 policies should be on the grounds of “right to a family life”.
Ditch net zero, cut tax rates, a bonfire of red tape, drill, frack, mine, halve the size of government, cut out all the loans for duff worthless degrees, high skilled immigration only at sensible levels, stop blocking the roads…free trade on a level playing field between state and private provision in housing, healthcare, energy, transport…
May 9, 2024
+1 LL
May 9, 2024
Easier from an armchair especially with 20/20 hindsight than actually getting elected and having to understand how politics works.
May 9, 2024
It’s astonishing that some of the tax thresholds for earnings and inheritance have not changed since the last century despite inflation in between.
That VAT (on everything we spend) is compounded on the back of inflation too.
Where is all this extra revenue going ?
May 9, 2024
Welfare and immigrants costs.
May 9, 2024
Well said LL , that last paragraph is the correct way to go. I would also form a drug squad with all the powers needed to rid our country of the trash that have arrived into our country and cities.
May 9, 2024
LL, +++++
May 9, 2024
From the Daily Skeptic:-
Echoing the recent shameful episode in the European Court of Human Rights, last week, the High Court ruled that the U.K. Government’s carbon reduction targets were insufficient to comply with the ‘Net Zero Strategy’, as set out by the Government in 2021, and which it is legally obliged to observe as per the Climate Change Act 2008.
Ditch the mad net zero strategy!
May 9, 2024
Read Dan Hannan in Conservative Home, someone who actually knows what he is talking about the complexities etc of politics and hopefully some realism will emerge.
May 9, 2024
Dan Hannan (Modern History) is fairly sensible despite a lack of science, but he is still a believer in the climate emergency or pretends to be at least.
May 9, 2024
Hannon is hysterical and hopeless.
May 9, 2024
What would an ancient time leader have done?
He’d be down on the beaches ( on his trusty steed) doing his main job.
Keeping us safe and repulsing invaders!
No horse, a sturdy stab jacket and, if willing, Boris in tow…plenty of soldiers and police ( if there are any…photographers aplenty…Sunak could do similar…
AND BE SEEN TO CARRY OUT HIS PROMISES!
KERCHING! 100 seat majority.
May 9, 2024
JR, so many of your colleagues do not believe Little Usurper Sunak, I cannot remember so many MPs announcing standing down/running away before an election! 65/66 now that Elphicke crossed the floor and Zahawi standing down! Two gone to Labour in a fortnight, Clarke and Soubry announcing support for Labour and Boles introducing Reeves this week! Yet you try to tell us there is a difference when Cameron’s ministers are openly supporting Labour and Cameron is back leading your team with theLittle Usurper!
Come on, even you cannot believe what you are blogging?
BTW, Reform has conservative policies. Not right wing at all. That comment shows how far left/socialist your party has become. As the Chinese say: a fish is the last to discover the sea!
May 9, 2024
+1
May 9, 2024
After nearly 15 years nothing you say will be believed. Immigration has risen year on year. Taxes have rises to an 80 year high.
The health service and civil service unions are running rings round you. The country is a mess.
You now want to hand over more powers to the Chinese controlled WHO. Why should we trust you.
Fishy wants to sign an FTA with India to ensure an influx if Indians in intra company transfers keep coming to help his family business.
Nothing you say or do will make any difference at this the eleventh hour.
May 9, 2024
Surely correct and we will have to suffer Starmer’s Labour or perhaps they will even ditch Starmer for even worse for 5,10 or 15+ years. Will I ever live to see a decent low tax, competent government? Even Thatcher made huge & basic errors and taxes even then were still far too high.
May 9, 2024
Agreed.
May 9, 2024
+1. Re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
May 9, 2024
If they scrap several taxes before the election – they have refused to sign the WHO Treaty (hurrah!), and they start sending 500 people a day back across the channel to France, I would believe them and vote for them!
Oh – they also need to sack Cameron, he’s on a different planet.
May 9, 2024
Lynne,
You are so right about Lord Greensil Cameron. What on earth is he doing! Has he gone rogue or lost leave of his senses? Since when does the UK want a war with Russia when they are supplying energy to EU and Little Usurper made UK dependent on (about 25%) EU electric! Not happy with his madness he is interfering with Gaza knowing Hamas leaders are in Qatar where UK buys its gas! Perhaps someone needs to explain to him he does not have to behave like Blaire and that Blaire is resoundingly hated around the UK! Good grief these EU one nation types have done enough damage to the country and their socialist party.
May 9, 2024
We bought £2.4 billion gas and oil from Russia in the last year.
May 10, 2024
Cameron is representing the interests of the British Establishment not the British people.The new world Eurasia-led world order headed by Russia(not China,although the latter’s economic heft will propel it) will result in that Establishment being defunded.
GOOD!The dustbin of history awaits!
May 9, 2024
For a week now we have been Importing over 20%of our electricity at very high price. Today wind is producing only 1.55gw
Power cut territory come winter.. and you want our vote.
May 9, 2024
You know something’s wrong when government & politicians prayer for summer
May 9, 2024
IW : “You now want to hand over more powers to the Chinese controlled WHO. Why should we trust you.”
The signing of this WHO Treaty and giving away our sovereignty to the Chinese guarantees we will see very shortly another pandemic. They won’t be able to resist the use of their new powers over us.r
May 9, 2024
At the time of the 1997 election GDP growth was 3.5% and the budget was heading towards balance.
May 9, 2024
yes, but the economic damage had been done. Lost jobs (including mine), business, broken families and even suicides.
Electoral blood was in the water.
May 9, 2024
Sir John: ‘It needs to cut taxes more and set out a path to lower tax rates after the election’.
But it hasn’t for several years, and now it is all too late!
May 9, 2024
Tax cuts aren’t going to pay for net-zero, the failed HS2, BoE bail-out, immigration and continued funding of the EU/UN ….you’re talking like an old-school tory
May 9, 2024
Reply to reply.
You could argue that with John Major but not with the late Lord Callahan (sp). Remember the, Winter of discontent’ ? Or was that an EEC inspired plot.
Sir John. I am happy to blame the EEC/EU for many of our woes, and yes, they deserve it ! But much was of our own doing.
May 9, 2024
If the political class could differentiate between right and wrong it would be a start, unfortunately narcissists believe they dictate what is right – and of course they recognize no higher authority or law, so they tend to have no reverse gear. They also believe that if things are ‘complicated’ it demonstrates their genius and the stupidity of the rest. That’s why John Major played ‘6 dimensional chess’ and President Macron utilises “strategic ambivalence” which looks like stupidity to the rest of us.
Every clever person I have ever known strives and succeeds in simplifying complexity, see John Redwood’s last couple of posts for good examples. Until you can understand what has happened you cannot avoid repeating the mistakes.
So not much hope of change from the Sunak brigade.
May 9, 2024
John Major played ‘6 dimensional chess’ I do not remember that, not sure the man can even add up two, two digit numbers. He still has not said sorry for all the economic vandalism he did with his mad ERM experiment as a precursor to joining the EURO. The countless businesses destroyed, jobs lost, hopes destroyed, house repossessions, suicides, divorces…
May 9, 2024
John Major couldn’t even count on the few peas he pushed around his plate to reach a right answer.
May 9, 2024
They made up the phrase to explain to stupid people like you and I the level of his ‘strategic negotiations’ on scrapping the £ etc.
There is of course no such thing as 6 dimensional chess … and that is a better reflection of the capabilities of the vacuous Major-Balls. Delusional.
May 9, 2024
Yes, it appears that becoming an MP, climbing to cabinet level or even PM, is just a short-term career move on the way to a title and pots of cash on the gravy train of public speaking, directorships and overpaid opinion pieces for cheap publications. Look at the recent crop of MP’s for evidence.
We are cursed with unsuitable politicians who, with few exceptions, are only interested in self serving.
May 9, 2024
Still some good news in the Telegraph:-
“Power tool with tracking device leads police to £500,000 hoard
Seven people arrested as officers discover cache of 1,000 suspected stolen items including caravans, vehicles and a quad bike.”
Well done the police in Kent. In my experience it is almost impossible to get the police to do anything even if you know who did it and where the stolen goods phones, cars, building equipment… are. Technology, the police and criminal justice system should be used to destroy these crime gangs it is not that hard to do. But so rarely does it do so as motorist mugging etc. is so much more profitable.
May 9, 2024
Spot on and living in a bubble surrounded by sycophants who daren’t cross their sponsor means they never get a real world/feel experience. Thatcher in tune with her electorate.
It is quite shocking how Sunak/Ministers statements are at odds with the electors views and especially their boiler plated lacking in humility refusal to ever acknowledge they might have got things wrong.
Look at the shambles that is the Home Office and inward migration, legal and illegal, and then listen to Sunak whose line is constantly that he is succeeding. It beggars belief.
May 9, 2024
All they had to do was implement their manifesto in Full or even gold plate it and they would have been in power for 2-3 elections. However, the rub is they know Labour will continue in exactly the same way so there is no real practical difference between the two as we see with former Tory ministers supporting Labour and MPs crossing the floor. If there were true ideological differences this would not happen.
May 9, 2024
You can’t implement conservative policy because parliament has been neutered. The quangos are full of Blair’s people. Power is hidden away by people who don’t answer to anyone by design.
May 9, 2024
“got Conservatives back into office”…
No, it got Cameron’s non Conservatives into office.
May 9, 2024
Cameron with all his invariably rather dire lefty A list & diversity hires. Plus his climate alarmist, big state, pro EU membership agenda, his cast iron lies, his failure to prepare for Brexit, the disaster of Libya, the abandon ship like a spoiled child, and his Greensill “earnings”.
May 9, 2024
Cameron cut defence spending and cosied up to the pandas- as the Republican senator reminded us. What better person to have in the Foreign Office!! Unbelievable stupidity.
May 9, 2024
Clinging on to a bad PM, such as now, just adds worse. The Conservative Party can’t even begin to get better until the cause of its enduring malady is removed. Meekly waiting solely in hope of some remarkable cure to avoid terminal decline is pathetic.
May 9, 2024
Nothing to lose by ditching Suank no change no chance as they say. Not much chance even with a new PM but cannot be worse can it?
See the David Starkey video:- A Labour Government Should FRIGHTEN Us All. To Save Britain We Must REVERSE Blair’s Revolution.
May 9, 2024
Starkey spot on. It is delusional to think the Tory party doing this. Cameron is the heir to Blaire and his best achievement- gay marriage, which did not have a mandate or in the Queen’s speech. He is a fraud.
May 9, 2024
People just want a conservative government- small state, low tax, an understanding of the value of hard work and honesty, and the protection of our core values we all hold dear. The fact that the conservatives have managed to oversee the takeover of all the levers of state and education by socialists is one of the largest travesties to ever impact our country and I am not sure it will ever recover. I was once an ardent brexiteer but given the absolute disgrace of how the country has been ran I am actually keen for the country to rejoin the EU, only so I can escape the UK more easily and choose to live somewhere better.
May 9, 2024
Indeed if there is a continued refusal to take advantage of the potential of being out of the EU – and under the coming Labour govt an active effort de facto to rejoin, it would probably be better actually to rejoin. There will be a big cost of course. But the best case now is some kind of Norway-style arrangement, in the single market but with no votes.
May 9, 2024
No no no no no! How many times does it need said , The eu must never be given a say of what happens on our shores!
May 9, 2024
In case you hadn’t noticed the EU has a very large say indeed as to what happens on these shores. In order for that not to be the case a UK govt would need to have a very robust attitude – eg to the contrived Irish border issue – and implement divergent policies where those are best for the UK.
But even a Conservative govt with a majority of 70 with a succession of brexit-supporting PMs and cabinets has failed to do this. Shortly we will have a govt where the PM and every member of the govt is an active opponent of brexit. do you think divergence is now likely to happen? that being the case its better to recognise that the brexit vision as outlined eg by Sir John is simply unattainable.
May 9, 2024
My greatest fear is that the tories win again with a 50+ majority …and they continue with net-zero, high taxation, high immigration, with obedience to international bodies
May 9, 2024
🤯
May 9, 2024
Correct – Its not that this government is left or right, its nothing, its done nothing – the French still fish in our waters, the EU control NI, immigration high, taxes high, EU/UN/ECHRs law rules …we’re as poor as the dormouse but we tax to give billions in foreign aid, to fund the EU & UN …and trillions on net-zero, no police, all green, all woke
May 9, 2024
+many.
Obvious points that JRs party will not or cannot address because they chose this course of madness against everything they promised to get an 85 seat majority.
Another two rats leaving the sinking Sunak ship -Elphicke and Zahawi. That makes it about 65/66. Wow, if that is not self destruction I do not know what is. Little Usurper Sunak’s plan is definitely working to wipe out Conservative Party!
May 9, 2024
That’s what you get when HQ selects socialist candidates
May 9, 2024
I think you’ll find Sunak’s majority is now down to 38, down from about 80. Not that it matters what the currrent majority is, because the Tories won’t do anything useful with it.
May 9, 2024
But it has achieved a lot.
The judgement just depends on who you are!
Look at the thousands of illegals it has successfully let in!
Look at the shift to Labour it has achieved…paved the way for a global favourite and never ending left wing politics.
Look at the small businesses it has destroyed.
Fewer cars?
Turned London into a foreign city.
All but abolished the police.
Playing very odd games with foreign policy ( here and elsewhere)
Fewer holidays? Abroad and at home!
Sewers?
The successes are endless.
All going according to plan.
But NOT to our plan or for our good I wholeheartedly agree Glen.
May 9, 2024
Correct ….we also got half of HS2, almost a nuclear power station and bins only collected every two weeks, cycle-lanes no one uses …the list go’s on and on
May 9, 2024
and we still hand over money to our ‘friends’ in the north (Scotland) to fuel undeserved social services.
May 9, 2024
@Simon. Your first sentence is a brilliant summary of what we need (and should have available to us on the ballot so we can vote for it).
Don’t bank on the EU being better though. I just got back from 3 years living and working there (Austria). It still has better services than us but they are rapidly getting down to UK standards under an onslaught of immigration and green policies. Low income people are affected most, but now it’s hurting the middle classes. The resultant rise in the populist (read “sensible”) FPÖ Party is being met by increased attacks on freedom of expression by the EU/globalist elite.
Unfortunately very similar processes are going on across the western world. Unless you go to Hungary, you won’t find salvation in the EU in my opinion.
May 9, 2024
And then leave the rest of us that stay in the UK to pay the massive bills, take part of the 900bn euro debt the EU has taken on after covid so it doesn’t show up on the individual countries debt sheet.
Pay for any EU student that wants to come to the UK’s tuition fees in Scotland and Tuition fee loans, come on John, give us the figure of what % of these students aren’t paying a 1p back in 2024 and how much is outstanding at March 2024.
The savings on the VAT on world imports saved we would lose, so the NHS gets less money and it can’t cope with all the extra money it has had. Why did the Tories axe the 18 week target for operations, it is actions like this that have caused you self-harm John, so why did your party do it and give the Trusts a pass to fail? What was ‘right’ about that decision?
We are told your government has cash strapped local councils, how much less are you paying local councils (accounting for the average 2.83% inflation from 1989 to 2004? trading economics). What is ‘right’ about that?
May 9, 2024
I can’t believe how much money this government has spent …and achieved nothing
May 10, 2024
They achieved educating children up to 18 now instead of 16 and have risen up the pisa rankings in England.
They achieved free test kits for all those paranoid about covid many of whom were using them almost daily, and are probably the most vocal now about test and trace expenses.
They achieved a rise in the NMW and personal allowances both above inflation over the period from 2010. In 2010 the PA was £6475 its not £12,570 – some Countries have no Personal allowance; the nmw/nlw was from age 22 and was £5.80 April 2010, April 2024 its £11.44 from age 21. In 2010, the PA on National insurance was £6475. It is now £12,570 [personally, I think everyone under retirement age should pay NI every £ about 8-10% with no PA].
The PA in Germany = 11,604 euros. In Spain 5,500 euros. In France 11,294 euros. The UK won’t be allowed to give too much more over the average. They already kick off about our VAT threshold being more than double theirs and there are Labour think tanks that want to reduce it to the EU average. You see out, but In, that’s what’s coming.
May 9, 2024
It’s too late to do anything now.
Currently the Tories are not particularly Conservative in policy or outlook. Many MPs are happy that way. They say elections are won from the centre. David Gauke holds sway on the Conservative Home site.
May 9, 2024
Agree Peter, we true Conservatives need to understand elections are not won from the centre but by adopting right wing policies of appeal only to a tiny minority of angry white pensioners, and by promising huge completely unfunded tax cuts. Let us true Conservatives get Ms Truss or maybe Ms Braverman or Mr Farage in charge, and watch how we are rewarded at the next election
May 9, 2024
+1 they soon forget by whom and why they were elected …I want a new PM to say they’ll do what their members/voters want and two fingers to the other side – stop saying we govern for everyone, just govern for the voters that got you in power, if they don’t like you they can vote you out next time
May 9, 2024
Which was the last Conservative government that won a workable majority by campaigning from the centre ? 1992 ? However on a pro-Brexit platform in 2015 ……
May 9, 2024
Whilst appreciatingthe irony, a Tory Party led by Truss or Farage that actually cut immigration, stopped the boats and lowered taxes would win a majority.
May 9, 2024
Yes
May 9, 2024
I never visit Conservative Home.
May 15, 2024
Why is David Gauke on ConHome?
He stood against Tories in 2019 as an independent.
Here’s one of his recent post comments “To a large extent, these were a set of elections that has changed very little. An imminent Tory May meltdown is avoided, we remain on track for a Labour victory in the autumn…..Houchen represents a form of big-state conservatism that many in the party might find attractive. Free market-sceptics, like Nick Timothy and Michael Gove, will point to his success and argue that this is a route back for the Tories after an election defeat….It is impossible to deny that his agenda and style has worked for him in Tees Valley. But there are reasons to be sceptical that this is the right model for the country as a whole.”
A message from him for all the Reformers “Following these elections, there are many voices saying that the Tories are failing to deliver proper conservatism, which is code for saying that the party should move to the right. London is probably the last place in the country to try out that theory but that is what the Tories did with Hall and looked what happened: she did not even succeed in squeezing the Reform vote.”
May 9, 2024
Captured.
May 9, 2024
and Coerced
May 9, 2024
Here is an idea Sir John, why don’t you just return the party to being Conservative?
Forget this right wing left wing distraction.
Why not revisit sound policies based on conservative values. Things like actually having local police solving crime locally. Farmers farming growing food rather than seeking energy subsidies for wind or solar arrays. Defence forces that can defend against foreign invasion including foreign forces landing daily on our shores.
Re-establish a full scale British fishing industry that can help feed the nation and stop imports of basic foods.
Re-establish British manufacturing, once the best in the world and could be again.
Re-establish secure domestic energy, oil gas and coal to enable a rebuilding of our steel industry. Stop importing energy we have under our own lands and seas that just requires extraction.
Remove the Woke from institutions and reintroduce actual education rather than indoctrination.
Maybe get the public sector to do something positive instead of constantly finding reasons to stop things from being done. Start by resurfacing our roads in a way that stops them falling into holes every winter.
Try being Conservative.
Reply What do you think I am trying to do?
May 9, 2024
Well Sir John, as an individual you are clearly trying to do the right thing, sadly at the local party level the message about being Conservative is not getting through.
A local councillor and his/her aide were saying very clearly, the party must go further left and adopt more Green/Woke policies.?
That is how desperate it now is, at the grass roots level of the party.
May 9, 2024
Same message thoughout the country ….the tories want more green
May 9, 2024
R E
Great aspirations and you would think any UK government calling itself conservative would have them all as POLICY.
Reply to reply
We know, but you are thwarted at every turn your socialist, woke, big state, globalist captured non conservative party.
May 9, 2024
Rod, I think the horse has bolted. CCHQ has spent years cultivating sheep candidates, who don’t appear to know what they are in Office for! But they do either vote for socialist claptrap from leader after leader, or don’t even recognize the direction of travel.
May 9, 2024
Rod for PM!!
May 9, 2024
Rod,
We are reshoring UK manufacturing to bring the top and bottom of the supply chain together. The BBC confirmed that more than half of UK manufactures are now restoring – 58% reported logisticsit.com.
Hunts 25% corp tax, agreed by Sunak after the G7 meeting, is cobbling manufacturers. Yet on 8 Jan 2024 — The UK manufacturing industry is viewing the country as a more competitive place to locate their activities compared to 12 months ago. 8 Jan 2024 Manufacturers say UK becoming more competitive as global hub, survey finds, despite high energy costs, worker shortages and political instability.
May 9, 2024
Reply to reply
And succeeding:
1. Brexit
2. BOE losses now mainstream
3. Rejection of the WHO Treaty
This is monumental for a minority group in Parliament to achieve, the leading light of which is our unflappable host.
May 9, 2024
Reply to reply. How many of your fellow Tory MPs feel as you do – as a Conservative?
May 9, 2024
Sir John, sorry but it isn’t working and you are out of time. No ones voting for more of the same or more Tory promises!!
May 9, 2024
Wouldn’t a lurch to the ‘right’ put you somewhere close to where you should be, with some chance of fulfilling the promises to the electorate? You’ve been so busy grovelling to the Guardian readers you’re off course.
All the cries for ditching Sunak have come far too late. He should never have been installed in the first place.
Why was he?
I’ve seen and heard many say he has no charisma. I don’t give a damn about charisma or what any politicians favourite band or brand of trainers are either. That’s student politics which we’ve had from that great charismatic leader Blair onward, and look at the damage it has done.
There’s little point changing a leader only to replace them with one that does exactly the same as the last one, only with more flair.
Policies, trying to deliver on those policies that got you elected ( with a massive majority there is little excuse) and here’s a novelty, how about actually giving a fig for this nation and its people first, and stop letting the left wing media and pressure groups dictate terms.
May 9, 2024
No charisma and all his policies are wrong too so just like Starmer then!
May 9, 2024
If we are denied a centre right option and only offered socialism then don’t be surprised when people vote for more radical politicians. The Thatcherite Milei is doing well in Argentina.
May 9, 2024
What is the point of getting up early, writing a well-researched reply to one of the biased, inaccurate or otherwise arguable points frequently raised here – only to have them moderated because they conflict with your views?
The Conservatives are a broad church and history tells us that it is the implementation of far-right policies – with which a significant proportion of the electorate disagrees – that causes problems for the party.
Reply What far right policies do you complain about
May 9, 2024
The most obvious far right stance currently in this country concerns the pro-Palestinian Hamas supporting fringe. These are Arab supremacists who want to ethnically cleanse Israel of Jews. Yet the left wing socialists want to climb into bed with them. They really have gone full circle.
May 9, 2024
I might be the only one around but I think that when the General Election is finally called and all the cards are put on the table by all political parties people will vote on common sense and policies which so far the Labour/lib-dems don’t have any, we are on the mend slowly I know but if labour were to get there hands on this country we will be in a crisis for a long time
May 9, 2024
Contrary to what you suggest, Mr Sunak is spending more and more time retreating into his bunker and refusing to face reality. Applying customs checks on EU imports surely shows his true colours, as will his government’s signing of the WHO ‘treaty’. He will be remembered as the Tory PM who embedded national decline.
May 9, 2024
Every problem we face is created by o made worse by the state. Follow Argentina’s example and slash government at every level and we will experience a boom unlike anything since the industrial revolution.
May 9, 2024
given the thousands of students at our universities who are openly pro Hamas, and protesting as such, why have none been arrested for supporting a terror organisation?
why are we still printing student visas in such numbers for students with these views, and their families, entering the country.
views like this are not “far right” they are the questions every decent person is asking up and down the country.
May 9, 2024
ig :
I’m sure our unviversities are in no way influenced by the presence of 150,000 high fee paying Chinese “students”.
May 9, 2024
None of whom are spies or will take our IT, technology advantage back to advance Chinese world control. When will our politicos catch up with us out here in the real world? Always benefiting foreign causes before the English people.
May 9, 2024
A lot of discussion on this site seems to assume that Sunak and his colleagues are in control of what they are doing. I don’t think so. What I see is a bunch of stage performers given directions and following a script written for them. The key agendas of our time – mass migration, media censorship, net zero, gender subversion, public health, digital currency – are being imposed at a supranational level well above Sunak’s pay grade. His job is to help those agendas forward, or at least not to stand in their way. That will be Starmer’s job too, as and when he’s elected. The only difference is that instead of a PM playing pat-a-cake with the Channel migrants, we’ll have one who won’t even bother to do that. We’re given a few years grace by Sunak before a couple of senseless net zero policies are imposed, but Starmer won’t even give us that. Gove’s fake rhetoric of last year that councils can take more of their own decisions will be stripped away, and their noses will be firmly kept to the grindstone of authorising hundreds of thousands more houses, where builders find them profitable. That’s what awaits. I might even vote Conservative.
May 9, 2024
As on 7 May, still no mention of the N.H.S., which has sunk to a very low level, as a priority.
May 9, 2024
The Conservatives are scared to even mention NHS reform. Only Labour can mention it.
May 9, 2024
I agree with your view. In order to start getting things right, the UK needs to recognise that it has made two fundamental strategic errors over the last few decades, namely:
i) the Financial Conduct Authority has gradually introduced a regime which has resulted in a risk averse culture permeating the UK capital markets. This is resulting in the London Stock Exchange being shunned by the companies which are existing or potential great wealth creators. Other than over the short term, being risk averse is a very high risk strategy.
ii) the UK has high levels of immigration for which it has not planned in terms of the resources required to accommodate the inflow. This stance has been a wealth destroyer rather than a wealth creator from the standpoint of existing UK inhabitants.
The good news is that the UK still develops great enabling technologies with the potential for solving global B2B problems and delivering step change productivity improvement for customers.
May 9, 2024
Sir JR, your second paragraph is what we were promised at the last election and it didn’t happen. No one will believe that it will happen should the Conservatives get re-elected. Which is why you won’t get re-elected. Instead we will have a Labour government, the red half of the uni-party.
May 9, 2024
Exactly. It has been proved beyond doubt based on actual experience that the next Conservative election manifesto is entirely worthless and should be ignored or, if it is used at all, to record the exact opposite of what the Conservatives would do if elected.
May 9, 2024
Yes, never mind this “lurching” (left or right) nonsense, you just needed to deliver on your 2019 manifesto.
Let me paraphrase the opening section for you.
“A Conservative Government will get Brexit done, keep taxes low and bring debt down…. we won’t gamble with taxpayers’ money or this country’s economic future..{as} .. Businesses and investors would flee these shores. That’s not a risk our country can afford”
It was very simple – you just had to focus(and deliver) on what was promised. Obviously, there were many disruptions that blew things off course but you should have kept coming back to these basics. Half hearted attempts to correct things this late in the day, like suddenly waking up to the size of legal migration and back-tracking a little on Net Zero are too little and far too late I’m afraid.
May 9, 2024
“…saying so called right wing things in the hope that people will come back from Reform is not going to work.”
Indeed. It is not sufficient to say them. It is necessary to do them.
May 9, 2024
If Sunak is convinced that his plan is working …I’d question, who’s doing the convincing ?
May 9, 2024
Paul McKenna?
May 9, 2024
“backtracking on lower taxes and lower migration, cosying up to the EU, regulating more things and being governed by the views of international lawyers” are all things that Starmer will undoubtedly follow if he gets the keys to No 10.
To these I would add failing to reduce out of work benefits to force people back into work, reducing net inward migration to below 100,000 and stopping the boats.
Why are we having to wait 10-12 weeks for the first flights to leave ?
As soon as the flights start, we should be detaining every economic migrant who arrives at Dover and putting them on the first aircraft. The only real deterrent is for everyone arriving on a small boat to know that they will be in Rwanda within 48 hours. We can sort out the backlog later.
It should be obvious that this is the only thing that will stop the boats within a week. Allowing more to arrive and allowing them to stay, even for a month or two, will not stop them coming because they will be told they can simply disappear into the black economy.
May 9, 2024
On ‘similar voices’ urging Rishi to backtrack, what does it say about his beliefs and judgement that they’re within earshot?
May 9, 2024
When an MP supposedly to the right of the Conservative Parliamentary Party like Natalie Elphicke can waltz straight into the Labour Party I would say a large lurch to the right is exactly what is needed to provide some sort of difference between the two main parties and to align the Parliamentary party with the membership.
May 9, 2024
I quite agree; a sudden lurch in either direction would simply confirm the lack of trust in this Government. The item of which there is no sign at all, apart from the desire to end NHI, which itself was rowed back on in yesterday’s PMQs, is a path to lower, and importantly, simpler taxation. There is great scope for setting out an agenda for this, but l despair of seeing it happen.
May 9, 2024
In an ideal world politics should not be about “Left” and “Right” (eternally divisive) but about what’s “Right” for the country and its people.
The electorate no longer trust Parliament to do what’s right. The general view is out of the 650 incumbents in the house, those MPs with sensible views which DO align more with the needs of the country seem too few to be able to make a difference.
Time and time again, during an election, whatever the voters are told the party MPs will do in government proves a let down. So though i agree with you on what’s needed, am not confident it can come to pass without a major shake-up of the majority of current MPs from all parties.
Would love to be proved wrong.
May 9, 2024
Sir John
Its not about lurching left or right, although the policies and actions to date couldn’t further left than they are now without going full-on Marxists.
All the is needed is to manage what the Conservatives in Government with a massive majority have been empowered and paid to do – simply manage what is at hand. Manage the uncontrolled spending, manage the run-away growth of the State.
Stop the prancing around playing to the media on personal ego trip. The UK is not a Presidential State is a Parliamentary State – Parliament is there to simply serve.
May 9, 2024
We have ultra-high taxation for the simple reason the Conservative Government refuses it job of managing spend, the economy. All the UK’s woes have their roots in the failure to manage and create an economy. Everything else is possible if in the first place there was a focus on wealth creation, tax should not rely on contriving ways to trap more people to pay more from their diminishing pot. Tax should only increase due to increase in earnings, the wealth of the Country. This is the single reason why it is right to call this Conservative Government a Socialist Government, they are gerrymandering, distorting, playing games with peoples lives just because they don’t know how to manage
May 9, 2024
The Tories must be removed as a functioning organisation. They have had 14 years under clear instructions from their core voters – the last four with an 80 seat majority and outside of the EU (a decision to hold a referendum which had to be forced on them by their own voters.)
They have gone against their voters repeatedly and often 180 degrees away from them (net zero, law and order, welfare, mass immigration … and on and on.)
They are a big part of the problem.
May 9, 2024
It’s not just the Tories. What you say about them could be said about politicians across the spectrum. Ever known what it is to vote for a sensible candidate in any election? Me neither. There is a section of the population that wants to go into politics, and hardly any of them have the intention to do it for sensible reasons. Either they want a political career and see how far up the greasy pole they can climb, or they are idealists who want to rise to a position where they can impose their ideas on everyone else, or they are nutters.
May 9, 2024
The truth is that this has been a Labour government in all but name. The hosing of money into the economy that we have seen in the past 14 years and the rise in tax rates, coupled with increased regulatory burden are all policies that would have sat very happily with Denis Healey and Jim Callaghan.
May 9, 2024
The Conservative Government failed when it moved to from supporting the centre ground of UK Society. Picking up and running with Blair/Brown policies going to the left of Labour, hanging on to the skirts of the Socialist EU Commission. Anything centre ground, mutual, working for the majority is now considered by the left wing ‘one nationalists’ to be on the right – just name calling because they want to be part of a collective dictatorship where only those that agree with the 100% should have a voice.
As this Conservative Government is showing Socialists, the left will not serve the people, will not defend democracy, will not defend sovereign legislators, or come to that ‘free-speech’ – more of the many reason this is not any way shape or form a Conservative middle ground government, it is an emerging left wing dictatorship.
May 9, 2024
I do not have many criticisms of you Sir John but one I find myself returning to is the way you succumb to the political vernacular. This wording is specifically designed to marginalise those who disagree with it (see the term trans and cis as good examples of this) and to shut down dissention.
On the political landscape small boats, crisis net zero, climate change and lurch fall within this.
By using your opponents’ language you give them legitimacy. In this instance it is not a lurch to the right it is returning to your 2019 manifesto, it is enacting social and economic Conservatism. You are a skilled communicator who has probably received training that tells you using these buzzwords means your opponents listen to you. They do not, but adopting their language moves the Overton window in their direction.
Let’s encourage the Prime Minister and Chancellor to return to the 2019 manifesto which won an 80 seat majority.
Reply I do need to engage them. I do not support phrases and policies I disagree with.
May 9, 2024
This government with its high taxes and oppressive laws would surely be seen to be lurching to the right if they did anything that was really Conservative.
It’s not just that HMG has done nothing to support the people of this country since Sunak was foisted on us as PM, it’s more a case of one bad law after another. To say that the Tory party had forgotten how to be Conservatives is a gross understatement.
It was Brown who insisted that there would be no more boom and bust, preferring bust he started the decline of the UK by making us inefficient, using ‘tailored’ inflation index to deny us pay rises, while the Pound in our pockets was buying less and less.
All we ever wanted was a government that was right, decent and honest….ahh, if only.
May 9, 2024
Here we are again. A list of things his party in government does and has done that our host opposes. He will stay with it no matter what it does however. He dare not do anything else, for years has stayed no matter how it fails and as he believes the country, England.
What is the party worth at the moment? Only collapse and wholesale removal of all leaders will bring change. How can he stay with such failure. How does he think it helps us?
Reply I was elected as a Conservative so I keep my word. By staying a Conservative 2014-19 I helped secure a referendum and Brexit.
May 9, 2024
What does “lurching to the right look like” please? Does it mean protecting our culture, stability and institutions by ending mass immigration from all over the world? Does it mean protecting our wealth, economy, industry farming/fishing and ensuring energy and military security by ending Net Zero? In which case the country needs to “lurch to the right”.
May 9, 2024
“I agree with them that saying so called right wing things in the hope that people will come back from Reform is not going to work.”
The reason why this will not work is because those who have gone to Reform no longer believe the Conservative Party will enact their manifesto/election promises. To issue over 1m visas in a single year when the promise was to reduce immigration to the “tens of thousands” was quite possibly the biggest known betrayal in our history.
May 9, 2024
Is it now considered “lurching to the right” to ensure energy, economic and military security?
The current plan for 2035 is for meagre supplies of expensive and chaotically intermittent renewable energy to be rationed using smart meters, dynamic pricing and rolling blackouts. See the “consultation” published 16/04/2024 :
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/delivering-a-smart-and-secure-electricity-system-implementation
Forget the Net Zero Strategy promise made on P19 that we will have electricity available “at the flick of a switch from abundant, cheap British renewables….”
Increasing fines starting this year will mean that by 2030 the choice for private transport will be between an impractical and explosive ev and an ice with a £15K government fine added to the price.
May 9, 2024
Not if we don’t vote for them. Who would?
May 9, 2024
From the Telegraph
“Britain is refusing to sign the World Health Organisation’s pandemic treaty while it insists the UK would have to give away a fifth of its jabs, The Telegraph understands.”
Nearly thought the UK Parliament was thinking it was Sovereign, then read the rest of what was said, they are still inclined to accept World Government on the terms the undemocratic unaccountable bureaucrats would wish to force on to us. Why did they even engage in talks? Why engage with anything that tries to circumvent democracy?
The Socialist unelected unaccountable want to control the World, this Conservative Government keeps jumping into bed with them as it also has demonstrated it wants Socialist rule, they deny government for the people by the people at every opportunity.
Left or right isn’t the question, its having elected politicians serving those that elected them.
May 9, 2024
It must be frustrating to our host to see how events have panned out. As somebody sympathetic to the views Sir J. has stated all I can say is that by their own (in)actions, we have a Government that “Is in Office but not in Power” and the electorate have had enough of that.
May 9, 2024
Sir Johns’ comments today are a cry in the wilderness . The Government ought to listen but it does not do this , or , it has not the capability to do so . Public sentiment will react more today to the BoE’s decision on reducing the interest rate or not ; the public have given up on the Sunak/Hunt regime .
May 9, 2024
Let the Sunak government lurch where it may, there will be no tide to take at the flood and its remaining life is bound in shallows and in miseries, much akin to the Callaghan government.
It has sufficient control to make an immediate (for that is essential) impact only over fiscal and direct measures so Hunt’s replacement enacting an emergency Budget to please us Redwoodistas offers the lone slim hope of salvation.
The wider electorate would respond similarly after witnessing the effects, including VAT off energy bills, small businesses flourishing after VAT thresholds are eased, IR35 revised, and all the other much needed measures to boost economic health. Such a step was overdue two years ago of course!
May 9, 2024
Dear Sir John .
It matters not what the Goverment decides to do , or which path to follow, at now the eleventh hour .
So many years of squandering time and vast amounts of our money on poorly thought through projects and idiotic policies .The list is endless. Promises broken, lives wrecked . Boris Johnson last week turning up to vote with no I.D said it all . Gross incompetence at every level . The truth is my/our party could promise the earth today , but no one would believe … Me now included . So sad what has been done to my Country.
So much damage done by so few, affecting so many .
May 9, 2024
Your party could have stayed in power for decades if only you had delivered on your manifesto promises and not gone down the woke and net zero rabbit hole. You have opened the door for a Labour government which will continue the decline of our country. We are led by fools. Even if you now changed course few would believe this was anything but temporary and just an election ploy.
May 9, 2024
Off Topic.
It seems Tory defector Natalie Elphicke has realised an unusual way to keep her job at the next GE.
Of course it may not work on her electorate, but could encourage some more redundancy avoiders queueing up!
Reply She is not standing again!
May 9, 2024
Going to the Lords?
May 9, 2024
If she’s offered a cabinet position in labours new government ….just you wait and see how quickly she’d agree
Reply She will not be an MP as she is not standing again
May 10, 2024
She could be in the lords and accept ….like Cameron
or change her mind about stepping down
May 9, 2024
Sir John, it’s all ‘a bit late’. Ok, very late. Too late for Sunak and his people to win any confidence from the People of Britain. We all know what needs to be done. (You so neatly list a few of the things. He seems incapable/ unwilling [both?] to tackle any of them). Sunak turned out to be no leader. We need a leader. It’s not his fault. It’s just how it is. Fate does it to us all (be it as individuals or whole nations). We’re going to have to ‘grin and bear it’ until the right person and circumstances come along. (Dear God, give us – please – the fortitude to do so). Some of us are lucky enough to have experienced Margaret Thatcher. We know how much we miss her! Enough said here…
May 9, 2024
The big problem with Public Sector businesses is that they are not seeking customers. The NHS exists to stop diseases. The police exist to prevent crime. How then do we reward public workers who achieve these objectives? Has there been any economist who has addressed this problem? What do other countries do?
May 9, 2024
Cancel ALL working from home
May 9, 2024
“There is a run of commentary urging the Prime Minister to avoid a lurch to the right.”
From whom please?
Anyway, it will never happen. The Party has been captured and those in control of the Conservative Party have already parachuted into all the safe seats those that support the Labour/Lib Dem/Green policies of mass immigration and Net Zero. So those that are left (excuse the pun) after the next GE will not provide any opposition to Labour’s policies.
May 9, 2024
“I agree with them that saying so called right wing things in the hope that people will come back from Reform is not going to work”
You would think that the Conservative Party would be going after the same type of voter that at the last GE gave them seats in the so-called Red Wall because it’s quite clear that these voters have been deserted by Labour. In fact the labour Party has distain for the indigenous working class voter as evidenced by Bigotgate in the 2010 election.
May 9, 2024
Only 36 boat people arrived yesterday
May 9, 2024
We need to stop funding left wing woke universities
May 9, 2024
Lurch right is just another attempt at a denigrating catchphrase concocted by the liberal left. These dedicated socialists refuse to accept the Nazis Party too were socialist and never condemn the regime of Stalin, another socialist, who murdered more of his own people than the Nazis killed in the war. It is more accurate to say ‘conservatives’ rather than “Right wing” and instead of “Hard Right” say, ‘Tough conservative’ – it is more meaningful.
The problem is, we have Tory government in name only and until they change their policies to those true conservative policies desired by both business and citizens, they’ve no chance of re-election. So we’ll suffer even more. Our country is in dire straits.
May 9, 2024
The government is fortunate that neither Reform nor any other party has come up with a coherent set of policies and means of getting them implemented with a team of people who could clearly fill ministerial roles and replace recalcitrant quango management along with the publicity to get their message across. The big winner in the recent elections was NOTA, clearly waiting for the right party to vote for.
That is not going to be the Conservatives until they rid themselves of the Uniparty people. Elphicke slid across the floor while barely turning a hair.
May 9, 2024
None of this is going to matter unless the Conservative Party replaces Sunak whose record means he will never have confidence or credibility or therefore support from most British people. What is needed is a new leader who will splash against the Conservative shop window the magic message ‘UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT’ (just as in a shop business) and then many British people will give the Conservative Party another look and a chance to get their vote (just as in a shop business).
May 11, 2024
You should never have got rid of an elected Pm. You should make sure that Brexit is fully put into place which it has not been. Some of the organisations we followed while in the EU have not been put into British law, eg water checks for one. Some of us are fed up to the teeth from working our socks off all these years and people we have elected have not put into place what we voted them to do. No wonder we are fed up.