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.
The UK has the most expensive industrial energy prices in the world. These are gutting our productive capacity in traditional energy-intensive industries, and pose a clear threat to our ability to benefit from the transformational impact of AI.
Since the global financial crisis, growth has been held up as the solution to all our problems: the answer to stagnant wages, creaking public services, and a rising cost of living. And it would be, if we had done any of the things necessary to allow it to happen.
If we start viewing midlife as a time of renewed possibility instead of decline, we can redesign work around longer lives, caring responsibilities, and changing health needs.
Universities are not paid to train or educate; they are paid to recruit. They get their fee when they accept a student, regardless of how they do or whether they go on to get a job. What if we took the taxpayer out of it entirely and make universities loan directly to their students.
We need an open debate about how much these pensions are costing the taxpayer, otherwise our children and grandchildren – probably on far less generous pension schemes themselves – will pay the price for £1.4 trillion worth of political convenience today.
The CSJ’s analysis shows that on current population estimates children in school today could face working until their mid-70s before receiving a state pension.
You may not like what Dubai has to offer, but don’t tarnish those who do with the brush of ‘tax exiles’ and ‘washed-up old footballers’. If we were able to attract their like and their ambition, instead of scaring them away, we would all feel the benefits.
The only answer is for government to get out the way, make mature technologies stand on their own financially and stop socialising the costs of Ed Miliband’s follies via consumers’ bills.
He doesn’t want to reduce spending; but spend more. He argues giving away control of the essentials, gives away control of their costs. The key is compulsory purchases and nationalisation. That’ll delight the markets!
There is no easy way out of this mess without politically difficult trade-offs to radically rationalise the system.
The most intense intellectual innovation happens around fissures where thinkers are in conscious tension with one another. But this process could also be seen as creating the soil in which new and hybrid ideas can take root and grow.
University may once have been a rite of passage, but it has become a sacred cow. While a degree will continue to offer a key to a better future for thousands, the era of university domination must now come to an end.
No party can credibly claim to have an answer to the public’s dissatisfaction with British politics without a plan to increase incomes through growth.