There are many things that can be done to resist the tide. The first would be for ministers to make the philosophical case for where state responsibility ends, and personal responsibility starts.
Preventing right-wingers from being discriminated against by corporate progressives is not going to be top of an incoming Labour government’s list of priorities.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that mass immigration is not the economic silver bullet the Treasury believe it is.
She insists that fiscal responsibility will take priority, but if Labour take power the pressure on her to raise more taxes will be immense.
The expensive subsidy creates a domestic training bottleneck, whilst this country’s demand for healthcare workers is met through immigration.
Doing so would enable these powerful new AI tools to track the origins and patterns of disease, linking genes and experiences in ways very few health care systems can do. It would require establishing an ethical regime.
And this is the fundamental problem: it allows us to dodge a broader long-term industrial strategy, precisely because the short-term labour fix is so easy.
Why not conceive of the state as essentially a regulator and provider of services, dressed up in such odds and ends of holy writ as pass the smell test – one tax base under the NHS and the Equality Act?
He was the most formidable Chancellor of the Twentieth Century and a titan of the modern Conservative Party – voting for Sunak and endorsing his approach in last summer’s Tory leadership election.,
My argument is simply one of affordability (including, by the way, by dropping the triple lock) if our public finances are going to be sustainable.
“Long term, sustainable, healthy growth that pays for our NHS and schools, finds jobs for young people, and provides a safety net for older people all whilst making our country one of the most prosperous in the world.”
The former chancellor understood that the best way to kick-start growth – and increase revenues – was giving individuals and companies the incentives to invest.
Merely “looking at” such measures as raising the pension age and reforming the benefits system will not be enough to demonstrate fiscal credibility.
It exercises its independence selectively, and losses can generate a huge bill for taxpayers with no oversight from ministers.
What’s missing are the long-term reforms that would overcome resistance by the pension sector. The question is whether the Government will use the limited time remaining in the Parliament to fix these problems.