The joke, now far less funny, is that the Greens were always watermelons – eco-kindliness on the outside, Corbynite hard-left socialism within.
The soaring number of exclusions in our schools reveals an education system that is in disarray. This highlights broader warning signs of an education system that has failed to get back on track even six years on from successive lockdowns.
Soldiers are beginning to take a back seat and instead control the robots and the systems that do the fighting. In the Ukraine war, we are witnessing the rise of the machines – and machine learning. Ground warfare will not be the same.
Successive governments have made decisions on immigration and around assimilation which have created conditions in which some groups haven’t adopted the norms, behaviours, and customs of mainstream British society. Sectarianism is the political manifestation of that and, if we want to address it, we must address these underlying causes.
Winning the most important job in England outside Westminster – a year before the general election – would give the Tories an undeniable recovery story, a big bully pulpit, the ability to outshine Labour on crime, taxation and public service provision.
Conservatives have, in the past, been good at building up broad coalitions behind big all-embracing Conservative principles, interpretations of which may differ. If we won’t create our own coalitions then the electorate are going to force us into one on someone else’s terms.
Lowering taxes can be a win-win-win situation. It increases individual liberty, it benefits society as a whole and also can raise tax revenue. We can point to both theory and practice to back this statement up.
The Conservatives achieved their greatest modern success when we looked optimistic, competent and outward-looking: patriotic without sounding angry, serious without sounding technocratic, conservative without appearing reactionary.
The strategic challenge for the Tories is that it has been losing support to both its right and left. Move decisively to the right and more votes get lost to left-wing parties, move decisively to the left and watch Reform steal the Tories’ lunch.
When voters are asking national questions, it is only right that national leaders provide national answers. Silence would not depoliticise the issue; it would simply leave a vacuum for speculation. Local elections are a moment to highlight the partnership between national and local government.
The job for politicians is to set the tone and take us with them. To lead the way, sell their plans in terms of what they will mean for real people in their everyday lives, and how they will make Britain a beacon of prosperity on the world stage once again.
Realistically, saving the high street as it was would require the flexing of state power. The alternative is accepting the reality that high street shopping is not coming back and probably means redeveloping high streets into housing and providing community spaces.
More than half our imports come from the EU. To get economic growth we would achieve more if we concentrated on import reduction from Europe including the EU by making and growing more at home. Let’s start with oil, gas and electricity, and move onto backing our farms and market gardens to grow more of what we need to cut the food miles.
As a classicist Boris Johnson must be familiar with the fall of the Roman Empire, which was brought about in part by collapsing fertility rates. Yet he fails to recognise a parallel impending catastrophe of our own times. In fact, Johnson says that falling populations are a “blessing” and a “ray of hope”, because of the “crippling burden” human beings place on nature. But are people not part of the natural world?
If Britain wants to restore a culture of responsibility, it must stand with those who step forward. Because a country that fails to back its heroes will soon find it has none.