This decision reiterates the political importance of the UK’s cities to our party – and we must aim for a blue-led council in 2022.
As a general set of principles for the UK global aims, we would do well to turn for inspiration and leadership to Churchill and Roosevelt’s Atlantic Charter.
Competitions for major public works can bring in private capital and bolster innovation – but the Civil Service must learn to let go.
On this day each year, we celebrate the first steam engine hissing into operation. And retain the decisive vision that powers progress.
I hesitate to disagree with Daniel Finkelstein, but city growth has been powered more by smalltown commuters than flat-cap wearing uber-boheminans.
The Chancellor is groping his way, knowing well that the future is unknowable, trying to hold on to as much of the past as he can.
What normalisation should mean is the return to a functioning market economy where our wants and needs are met in today’s circumstances.
Three million of them are unlikely to pitch up here, but government must plan for all eventualities – and support for its plan wouldn’t survive a mass influx.
This ambitious business case is based on our experiences not only of recovering from the last downturn, but on the successes of the last three years.
This is 25 times the number of skilled work permits issued each year to non-EU citizens and their dependants.
Here, the recovery of our automotive and construction sectors is crucial – firms in the region directly employ around 46,500 people.
John Major’s efforts in the Nineties, part-reversed by Blair, seem almost designed to give the market a bad name. There is an alternative.
If you really want to see how we’re pulling together, the best example is taking shape now at the NEC, outside Birmingham – the new NHS Nightingale Hospital.
Plus: Treasury and Work & Pensions lessons. Greenlighters v the rest. Remembering Attlee’s surplus. And: the key question now is “how”, not “what”.
Our initiative will bring together Ministers, Mayors and council leaders, to thrash out ways of building new infrastructure during the life of this parliament.