Ryan Bourne: Will the Government’s new High Potential Individual visa actually attract top global talent?

Questions have been raised about whether the visa route will truly be as liberal as some have implied

Toby Lloyd: Two years since Johnson promised to level up Britain, has the detail proven better than the spin?

The appointment of O’Brien to lead the forthcoming levelling-up white paper shows real commitment to the agenda.

Craig Mackinlay: The Government is fooling itself if it thinks it can go down the Net Zero path without electoral damage

We should pause for breath, inject some rational thinking and consider the alternatives before it’s too late.

Daniel Hannan: The City was always going to survive post-Brexit. But now we must diverge from EU rules, and allow it to prosper.

Brexit doesn’t just allow the City to make its regulatory regime more competitive; it obliges it to do so.

Stephen Booth: Switzerland’s painstaking negotiations with the EU tell us a lot about our future relationship with Brussels

We can expect greater divergence, whether we like it or not, and should focus on our diplomatic relationships outside the bloc.

Eamonn Butler: The Government wants to build back better. It might want to sort out its enormous tax burden first.

Sunak & Co show no sign of setting their sights on getting it down.

David Gauke: Free trade on vaccines. The EU may have made threats, but it is the US that has actually blocked exports.

Plus: Why as an Ipswich supporter I’m happy to see the end to the European Super League. And: My take on Mercer’s resignation.

Therapy and the law. The technical considerations for the Government as it plans a conversion therapy ban.

Badenoch and the Prime Minister have called the proposed ban ‘complex’. Here’s why they did so.

Philip Mitchell and Chris Goddard: 2020 was a reality check on China. Trade offers opportunities for the UK to assert its values.

It allows for criticism and negotiation provided the West stands together to call out abuses.

John Macdonald: Are the Tories becoming the party of high taxes and picking industrial winners?

The second piece in a ConHome mini-series this week on industrial strategy after the pandemic.

Iain Dale: Johnson can say all the right words. But not in a way that people relate to, as Blair and Cameron could.

Plus: Sturgeon is ridiculous to criticise the PM’s trip to Scotland. And: Now’s not the time for a Coronavirus inquiry.

Andrew Rosindell: How close we came to waking up in the backstop

If the Spartans hadn’t held out against the pleas of our colleagues then Britain would have been trapped in a customs union with no way out.

The Moggcast: Cummings has a “willingness to shake things up and sometimes things get too shaken”

Our interviewee on the “disgraceful” treatment of Symonds and Johnson’s longstanding Euroscepticism.

Nick Hillman: Three options for higher education. Less support for students, fewer of them – or else they pay more

If if the higher education sector must take some further pain in the spending review, then the last option is the least bad.

Johnson’s quiet shift to a more permissive migration policy

He is averse to using numbers as the main instrument of control – perhaps viewing them as an arbitrary measure of success.