Instead of a Conservative housing policy that emphasises home ownership and architectural beauty, it will now be done the Labour way. When tower blocks start rising over the Home Counties, I hope that our remaining MPs realise their mistake.
The logic of the choice remains as Ken Clarke put it – Rwanda or nothing. Sir Keir has swallowed much in his pursuit of power, but Rwanda is a mouthful too much for him, or at least for his party. So he’s trying to bluff his way out of the problem.
The joint One Nation Caucus and Tory Reform Group conference last weekend, following the recent National Conservative Conference, are pointers to the shape of a possible future.
Amidst generally woeful scores, the Conservatives still lead on terrorism and defence, and run Labour close on law and order, asylum, and – still – the economy.
Immigrants, too, get old. Assuming standards of medical care remain, or improve as the science advances, enormous movements of migrants would be constantly required just in order to pay the bills of earlier waves.
Racist opposition to immigration, notably in the former East Germany, does not mean reputable opposition is impossible.
Concern about net immigration figures tends to eclipse the significant number of people on course to gain citizenship, and thus the right to vote in general elections.
If Sunak doesn’t commit the Conservatives to leaving, and then somehow wins the next election, the next Leader of the Opposition will take up the cause.
Our deputy editor tells Newsnight that the controversy about housing illegal entrants in hotels will continue until the Government bites the bullet and builds a proper asylum estate.
His university-educated opponents will view him as a relic of the past. I see his refusal to stay on message as the shape of things to come.
Both the wish to improve education and to offer more help to families require more public spending, not less. Such proposals only make sense if government is willing to be tougher in other areas.
Labour are happy to hammer the Government for it’s lack of progress, but lack any convincing alternative plan to make the system effective and bring numbers down.
The intellectual heft of figures like him will be vital in ensuring that it moves forward, rather than languishing in the same ideological dead-ends that sunk it in the first place.
When our political class feels that it cannot act, it cobbles together ad-hoc explanations for why its apathy is actually cunning strategy, hard-headed pragmatism, or just somehow grown-up.
If research were seen as an investment rather than a charitable donation, then the sector would enjoy higher levels of funding than it does now.