Although there is a clear ‘Sunak Effect’ among voters, running a presidential-style campaign exposes the Conservatives to the same risks as almost 80 years ago.
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.
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.
Blocking planned skyscrapers across the capital would exacerbate the housing crisis and diminish what makes London great.
“Housing policy – the building of new homes, the stewardship of existing properties, the planning of our towns, the fundamental landscape of our lives – requires long-term thinking. And a long-term plan.”
Andy Street has pursued a brownfield-first policy, with the only exception being around the new High Speed 2 Solihull Rail Station.
We often seem to be scared of making the case for less spending, but spending sometimes seems to have no relationship with outcomes.
New rules threaten to give England a generation of houses that are uglier and less popular than those we have built historically.
Although politicians like to elide them, long-term thinking and putting difficult things off until tomorrow are not the same thing.
If politicians can’t do deliver realistic cost projections and timetables, they need to make sure the public grasp the full scale of the eventual benefits.
The tentative signs are that the Shadow Chancellor is switching from an emphasis on industrial strategy and “green prosperity” to one on housebuilding and planning reform.
The A list and its successors haven’t kept a golden generation out of Parliament. Many of those who might have made it up aren’t putting themselves forward for selection in the first place.
Pierre Pierre has gone beyond wonkish economic arguments to spell out the moral, social, and conservative consequences of the crisis.
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.