Statistics do not lie: The UK is well behind the curve on key entrepreneurship metrics. If we want to thrive as a country, boosting business start-ups, business expansions, and creating an environment that makes survival past the five-year mark more tenable must be a national priority.
One policy which British-Iranians have been advocating for is the freezing of their assets and making them available to the innocent Iranian civilians whom IRGC members have harmed. The government has a moral duty to consider this demand.
Whether you like it or not, politics has changed. It is incumbent on us to find, and fight for our place in the new politics. We may know that Zack Polanksi is a clown, and a dangerous one at that. But he’s the one laughing right now.
In Matviichuk, Ukraine has found not only a witness to its suffering, but a voice articulating the stakes of a much larger struggle. For this is not merely a war over territory. It is, as she sees it, a defining contest between law and power, between dignity and domination.
Tony Blair made ‘education, education, education’ the centrepiece of New Labour’s message and was duly rewarded. Thirty years later, the Welsh Tories missed a signal opportunity to do the same – and Welsh youngsters may suffer as a result.
Any suggestion of peace therefore between Iran and the West ought to be viewed with great scepticism: pious men do not make deals with the Devil.
Politicians have exploited the soundbite long before Twitter came along nonetheless our politics has been dangerously infantilised. Significant debate is no longer ideas or facts but increasingly vibes and entertainment.
You cannot protect the environment by undermining the economy. If businesses are overburdened, if energy costs spiral out of control, and if families are priced out of everyday essentials, then public support for environmental action quickly erodes.
Lord Ashcroft sits down with one of Ukraine’s most prominent voices – its former foreign minister and now a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, Dmytro Kuleba – to discuss the trajectory of the war, the limits of diplomacy, and what lies ahead.
Too many local associations still behave as though visibility during election season is enough. Too many councillors still rely on outdated political assumptions in an environment that no longer rewards complacency. And too many local structures continue to confuse survival with renewal.
Over the next few years things are only likely to get worse. Labour will continue to borrow huge sums, because they don’t understand that someone has to be willing to buy all the debt they issue. Like in the 1970s, the markets will demand ever more in return for that borrowing.
There also needs to be a total clear-out of staff at the top of the Welsh Conservatives. A change of leadership is needed and that means Darren Miller needs to step aside. A total overhaul is now needed with a fresh start to start re-engaging with the party’s membership base.
There is a long way to go to the next General Election. Seriousness, clarity and conviction. That is our path back. We must show the public we understand the challenges that they and the country are facing, and that we are doing the deep thinking to deliver it.
The parlous performance of our economy and the appalling state of our public finances means we will have to look again at the economic fundamentals that underlay the ‘mini-budget. Awkward, yes, but the principles really are a way out of the fiscal hole we have dug for ourselves.
If the Conservative Party becomes an anti-Reform cartel, it will not defeat Reform. It will vindicate it. Worcestershire should be treated as a warning, not a model. And on that, Kemi was right to draw the line