The Tories are meant to be the party that tells the truth to the voters. And retreating to knee-jerk Nimbyism is the opposite of truth-telling.
If we can get state spending under control and make key reforms to boost growth, a surge in living standards will follow. The headroom to start cutting taxes will then emerge giving young people yet more scope to save and invest.
Henry Hill argues on CapX’s podcast The Capitalist that none of the major parties, including Reform UK, are willing or able to countenance the painful measures that might alter Britain’s unsustainable public spending trajectory.
With another Budget just around the corner, all eyes will be on whether the Chancellor can make things better, or at the very least not make them much worse.
Drumming up strong headlines, holding the government to account, and exposing hypocrisy worked well for Labour in Opposition. Now with these revelations about hidden donations to Starmer the Conservatives are giving them a taste of their own medicine.
Previous policies pushed by Reform have tended to have an off-the-cuff, back-of-the-fag-packet quality but their immigration plans are not like that. At least for now, it is Farage and Reform, not Labour or Conservative who have undeniably captured the zeitgeist.
Labour still seems to be driven primarily by ideology, rather than affordability. Unfortunately, it is households and businesses who will pay the price for that tunnel vision.
Either we take inspiration from a time when Britain could actually build things, or we condemn ourselves to spending the future living in smaller, ever more expensive houses, and watching the conservative dream of a home-owning democracy slip away.
Our deputy editor joins Reem Ibrahim of the Institute of Economic Affairs on the CapX podcast.
Once the applicant is offered a place, and takes out a student loan to fund it, universities have near-certainty that they will get paid. All the risk is borne by young people and the taxpayer.
The CPS and its Thatcher Fellowship are doing their bit to position the Conservative Party as the party of business once more.
The idea of ‘remaking conservatism’ might sound counterintuitive. The clue’s in the name, after all. But the world’s oldest political party has not achieved that distinction by being unresponsive to changing times.
The success of the policy groups rested on close collaboration between shadow ministers, external advisers, and think tanks. We helped them make a philosophical case so there would be understandable principles and objectives once in government.
Did the civil service stop attracting the best and brightest because Britain is no longer a great power, or did we stop being a great power because the talent intake dried up?