
Bim Afolami: The Chancellor has struck the right balance on easing energy bills
The package isn’t about permanent intervention in the market. It’s smoothing the edges of a particularly sharp adjustment in family budgets.
The package isn’t about permanent intervention in the market. It’s smoothing the edges of a particularly sharp adjustment in family budgets.
Most importantly, remember this. Keep going through all the disappointments. It is the most interesting job you are ever going to have.
We should never forget the millions of people who are “just about managing” – they will find it harder to budget over the next few months.
We need a mid-term review that is honest about the after-effects of Covid – and where we now find ourselves.
Without it, we won’t be able to have better public services, less debt and lower deficits, or a fairer deal for younger people.
We need to stand up for the value of Parliament and of spending time there improving and working on legislation.
For all the focus elsewhere, the most important domestic department for the next two years will be the Department of Health.
We know how difficult it was to lose millions of manufacturing jobs – let us beware of inadvertently accelerating the same process for services jobs.
We need to rethink our foreign policy not in the world we would like, but in the world we actually live in.
Reading and reflection really helps me get a perspective on what is going on, whether in my own constituency or in the country more broadly.
We need to focus on developing our brightest and most talented people, in a range of different fields, from a young age.
My view is that the only way to help square this circle is to rediscover our concern for public service reform.
MPs are starting to think of their seats in the context of their wider area, rather than simply as safe or marginal.
By all indications, we are about to voluntarily delay this policy, which risks the destruction of 19,288 ha of habitat.
It won’t be sufficient to cover the costs just for the lowest income voters – most voters will need environmentally sustainable options to be heavily subsided.