Lib Dems will become extinct again in 2029. They are a confection. A freak by product like Starmer victory of 14 Years of Fake Tory Progressive rule. Their three pillars – spend spend on the black hole 200bn NHS, rejoin the tanking dysfunctional EU, and go mad green – all will be exposed as disasters by 2029. Many are just Nimbys and these are thdir fig leafuxury beliefs. Madness for Kemi to chase a party whose voters are mainly made up of angry Tories outraged by the quasi Socialist Green Nut progressive party of the Fools Cameron May Johnson and Sunak. PC right about her potential and need to re think levelling up.
No, they won’t – unless they undergo a wholesale change of ideology, which is unlikely. The UK (along with a number of other western countries) is approaching the point of no-return with the ‘social democratic’ model of a big state, high taxation, over-spending, high regulation, low growth economy. This model is *only* sustainable if there are a) continuous productivity improvements in the public sector, b) continuous real GDP growth per capita in the private sector and c) where available significant extra-economic wealth resources available to the state to substitute for personal & corporate taxation (see: Norway, Saudi, UAE etc.).
The UK has none of these. Public sector productivity has not improved, at all, in 25 years whilst the state has expanded hugely. Real GDP per capita growth has been anaemic and GDP capita in real terms is still below 2008 levels, and the UK has no golden commodity goose to bolster the treasury coffers.
It’s not a question of ‘drifting to the right’ or left or wherever. It’s about honesty in the face of reality. At some point the general populace are going to have to be told/realise the truth, which is that this model is simply unaffordable, without some radical and far reaching changes. These will involve significantly shrinking the size of the state, dealing with the unfunded public sector pensions liability (£2.7Tn and rising by £150bn a year), getting rid of whole swathes of regulation so that businesses can grow, controlling illegal immigration, recognising the NHS is past any hope of reform and switching to a state supported, insurance funded model where the money follows the patient (there are plenty of examples to choose from), delivering cheap and affordable energy at the expense of excessive “green” ideology, completely reforming planning so that infrastructure and houses can be built and not stymied by NIMBYS, newts and bats, and forcing the idle and feckless back into work.
None of this sounds remotely like a LimDem manifesto, and it isn’t. Currently it isn’t anybody, because it is going to be a very hard message to sell, it is however what is needed.
Your penultimate paragraph spells out well the very tough measures we need to take to prevent the death of our nation. To sell these necessary things to the people in a democracy requires statesmanship and communication skills of the highest order; I hope Kemi has these, and wish her well, but I’m not too confident. She needs to go beyond the usual shallow partial analyses and slogans to show people the reality of where we are and where we’re going. For example, she needs to get people to face up to the fact that ‘reform’ of the NHS can’t be along the ‘business as usual’ Cameron and Starmer lines. As you have said, we need a completely different funding model, making people take more responsibility for their health (and old age) care via an insurance-based model, as is used in more successful systems on the Continent and elsewhere. This, and all the other items on your list, will be a hard sell, but sell them we must.
Michael Cazaly
14 days ago
What alienated Tory voters is that the Tory party has become the LibDems.
The LibDems (and Labour) won seats from the Tories because the Tory voters stayed at home, or voted Reform.
As an acolyte of Gove, it is unlikely that Badenoch will produce any policies which will change this, although she may well win a general election for the same reason that Starmer won: the electorate simply being fed up with incompetence.
Getting Lib Dems back into the Tory Party will be difficult, as they are very much captured by the ‘trans’ agenda, which Kemi has vowed to take on. I hope she sticks to this, because I’m feeling increasingly politically homeless, as well as utterly fed up with a country where neither the government nor the national public broadcaster are either willing or able to say what a woman is.
The problem with this view is it’s not backed up at all by how folks actually voted. More switched to LibDems and Lab than to Reform. So the dilemma for Kemi is which way she leans. Reform direction may spike Farage and play to some of the Tory base, but it could condemn to longer term opposition.
It’s the problem with echo chambers. One becomes indignant with dissenting facts and complexity.
That’s not right. Reform got many more votes than the lib dumbs. That’s why the party first past the party first past the post system is no longer democratic.
Perhaps you should take you own advice, acquaint yourself with the facts and stop posting the drivel that reverberates in the data free, echo-chamber of your own head.
From Ipsos:
“Ipsos data from interviews with n=4,909 2019 Conservative voters who voted in the July 4th General Election breaks as follows (our estimates suggest that in total 74% of 2019 Conservatives voted in the election, but a quarter – 26% – stayed at home). Just over half among those who did vote stayed with the Conservatives (53%) but one in four opted for Reform UK (24%). However, one in five voted for either Labour (12%) or the Liberal Democrats (7%) (and another 2% for the Greens). So Reform UK was the biggest single beneficiary, though almost as many switched to parties in the other direction.”
I’d suggest that even if she may have aligned herself with Gove in political terms in the past – as a way of gaining a strategic foothold in Tory ranks – she will become her own political entity. She first needs to “find her feet” and put the hard yards in with her party before turning to the electorate.
If you’re trying to “smear her by association”, you’ll be guilty of making a far too premature judgement and need to remember that politics is the art of the possible. It takes time, and sound judgement, not knee jerks.
The country is utterly broken. It doesn’t take a genius to work out how to fix it…most people have. Yet Kemi isn’t saying anything of consequence whatsoever…at a time when the Labour government is widely seen as useless. If not now, when? When will be a better opportunity?
Katharine Eyre
13 days ago
We can trace it back to Boris Johnson’s bragging incompetence that with Brexit we could “have our cake and eat it”; this ensured that the European Commission would not cooperate with continuing the Dublin Principle, which enabled us to return asylum seekers coming from mainland Europe.
It was silly to expect the continuance of the application of the Dublin Regulation after leaving the EU but this point is pretty much irrelevant now anyway, since the Regulation doesn’t even function in/among the remaining EU member states. It is dead law.
Mary didn’t provide any solutions. She listed out where she thought blame lay but absolutely zero Policy propositions or how she’d convince sufficient folks to support them. Classic. Only really half engaged in the challenge and getting the Unherd gig doesn’t require full engagement
Mary doesn’t have to that’s the job of our elected politicians who are either unwilling or totally incapable of enabling change.
Caradog Wiliams
13 days ago
At least the Labour Party has a plan:
To deprive us of energy so that we have to tough it out every winter, not to rock the boat with the NHS and keep going as usual, to remove private schools to prevent thinking, to tax the middle classes until the state owns everything, to keep as far away as possible from the USA and the ‘evil one’, to use the police to stop discussion of alternatives, to encouraged immigration to solve the problem of Brits wanting to work from home or not wanting to work at home, to join the EU so that we are stuck for ever.
The result of all of this is a grey country of nothing. Our fields will be covered by wind turbines or solar panels, farm animals will disappear, all jobs in heavy industry will go, we will have to import everything we use. It will be safer inside because all police will work from home, as will council workers, teachers. Better that nobody leaves their houses. Many old people will die which will release the pressure on the NHS.
What do the Tories offer as an alternative? I believe the answer is a big fat zero.
Chipoko
13 days ago
“As a black immigrant, she can craft a credible and ethical Britain First agenda without taints of racism or imperialism.”
This implies that anyone who is not a black immigrant would be tainted by racism or imperialism.
I detest this identitarian disease that has so deeply infected public discourse – or, what’s left of it that has any value.
Simon Blanchard
13 days ago
That all sounds like a to do list I could get behind. But then so did “levelling up”. Kemi seems to me to be a lone star and the people remaining around her, the same old bunch of generic crooks and careerists. She’d need a crack team to get anything done. Where’s the talent?
Jonathan Andrews
13 days ago
All these ideas might work, how would I know but it seems to be singing from the hymn sheet of last few decades. That is, that we just smarter people making smarter decisions.
In some cases, we do need intelligent government strategies, in others it’s better that we leave to individuals,families and businesses. I’m not going to pretend I know how to decides these questions; the devil’s in the detail but can we have a period where our politicians believe that, on balance, they should not intervene and only ever do so when there little alternative.
It strikes me a incredible that the UK’s average income is lower than the poor state in the US. But more incredible is that we don’t seem to recognise that maybe they are doing something right.
Frankly, the above article suggests more of the same.
Milton Gibbon
13 days ago
This article has some lazy tropes. Cameron did not “win” with a promise of maintaining the NHS. He had to form a coallition government with the very party whose voters he could not win even with his “NHS, NHS, NHS” platitudes.
Similarly, Ed Davey is not the leader of a political party. His last campaign was disgusting anti-politics with no discussion of policy. The voters who turned to him need to have a long, hard look at themselves – more so than Reform voters who at least registered a protest vote backed by policy. The tactic of acting like a clown while downplaying serious political thought is far more dangerous to British political culture than Farage ever was.
The “greed agenda” which the author decries is summed up by lower taxes. This is a widely and deeply popular programme as long as people feel that the tax burden is reduced for them. Farmers thought that a vote for Labour wouldn’t hurt them. More fool them. This is the real impact of tax rises. We are already over-taxed and the real problem is people don’t feel that they get return on their investment. More tax but worse schools, healthcare, roads etc.. What is it all for?
As someone who lived grew up in London and has now moved out to the provinces the UK government is right to bet the house on the capital. The level of disenchantment and lack of drive even in the Home Counties just isn’t the same, let alone up north. If there was a vast pool of untapped talent out here then venture capital would have found it. The fact is that the best and brightest move to the South East (hint: if you haven’t then you might want to reflect on this).
Just response to one point re: worse schools – did you see the data and report last week showing best state schools now perform better than most private schools at English and Maths ?
A dair poinnt but this has been the case for a long time. The trouble is that while they may be giving their pupils better grades the rounded education isn’t what it needs to be. This isn’t confined to the state sector – parents with children at private schools must ask themselves “what are they getting out of all the money I am investing in them?”. I would counter your point with all the recent articles about university students not being able to read properly and ask if state schools are really “improving” or whether public schools have been dragged down.
Yet according to the National Literacy Trust 1 in 6 school leavers is functionally illiterate. That’s at least 11 years in the English education system, and they can barely read. They shouldn’t be allowed past Primary school, let alone out into the workplace.
As requested, I just reflected on not having moved to South East England. And I still wouldn’t want to. I could earn a lot more, but there’s more to life than money. Such as beautiful scenery, tranquility, low population density, available GP appointments, and so on. Then again, you’ll never hear me moaning about lack of opportunity, so perhaps it isn’t a fact that all of the best and brightest move to the SE? We may just have different priorities.
I too have moved out because I wanted a different, better life – I’m not one to cast stones in glass houses. You clearly have a very high opinion of yourself but anecdote doesn’t make data: Table_3.13_2122.ods
London’s taxes are double/triple those of other regions (1.5 times the SE, triple most other areas, NI more than 4 times as much). The GP appointments that the rest of the country relies on are paid for by the taxes of London.
I do have confidence in my capabilities. But that’s beside the point. I was responding to the sweeping and condescending “fact” that “the best and brightest move to the South East”.
Excellent. I’m glad we got that sorted. Thank you for agreeing
Last edited 13 days ago by Morten Hansen
Dougie Undersub
13 days ago
Badenoch does not need to woo the LibDems, especially not those of the leafy Home Counties commuter belt. They’ll come crying back once Labour’s vindictive tax policies start to bite.
Richard Littlewood
13 days ago
How can anyone vote for the Tories after they dethroned a sitting Prime Minister, and then changed the party’s rules to ensure a non-entity, Sunak, with no political allegiance except to himself, became Prime Minister without needing to win a vote?
They do not care for democracy, they do not care for legal process. They think choosing a Prime Minister is a game.
What did that ‘sitting Prime Minister’ accomplish other than Brexit?
UnHerd Reader
13 days ago
Nothing will happen. Kemi went to Davos and received her instructions.
Talk right and when you get in, keep on tacking left.
They must think we’re daft!
It’s all very well going on about venture capital in the North. But when there is no scope for ordinary business, as anything other than services are imported at sub-cost cheapness from abroad, businesses will never start.
Until you can pick up a random item at a Tesco Extra, and not see “Made in China” on the bottom, all talk of new businesses is futile. This can only be fixed by having a trade policy that benefits US, not “global prosperity” (just like most of the fastest-growing nations have). I don’t see any party interested in that – just look at the reaction to Trump’s tariffs.
Peter Beard
13 days ago
If Kemi or any other wannabe wants to succeed they will need to convince the nation it needs fundamental structural change. Collier is right about the need to address levelling up but he also points out that there are a few reasons it will not happen on the scale that is needed.
Neither Levelling Up nor defanging identity politics will ever happen unless the ‘Big State’ is made fit for the purpose. The Big State doesn’t want reform, it is happy as it is meddling with our lives while enjoying 4 day weeks, comfortable salaries, and a heavily gilded and early retirement. Successive governments have invested so much power in the big state it now exercises too much control to allow itself to be reformed. We have surrendered to it, we have allowed ourselves to become the captives of an unelected tyrant that now determines how we live. If you doubt this just think about how it took over our lives, and our elected government, during Covid. It has the NGOs, the civil service and the BBC and a lot more to uphold its grip on the country.
I have no tried and tested solution, and if I did their misinformation tsars would already be discrediting it. The only chance we have is populism, using the ballot box while we can, to elect politicians that we would be willing to take to the streets in order to support and then mandate them to reform the House of Lords so that all its members were a consequence of proportional representation. This would create an elected chamber with a direct mandate from the electorate to become the Supreme Court of the UK and to enforce the sovereign right of Parliament to determine and enforce the laws of the land.
This revised House of Lords would then be mandated to ensure the State acted strictly in accordance with the Laws of the United Kingdom.
Only then would Parliament be able to take on the state.
Only then will Parliament represent the people.
Last edited 13 days ago by Peter Beard
Tyler Durden
13 days ago
Nigerians have been a significant migration group to Britain over the last 10 years. So I think what you’ll find in the Badenoch/Patel administration is a way of selling ongoing mass migration that will be a little more palatable to the middle-class Tory voters that wanted this pair to lead the party.
Meanwhile, the Petitioners for a new general election come from constituencies who rightly wanted an anti-immigration Jenrick leadership.
Peter Stephenson
13 days ago
the still staggering figure of £41,000 – 41,000 per what?
I understand that it’s an average figure, per asylum seeker per year.
John Tyler
13 days ago
Her task is not to align, attract or adapt to anyone else’s ideals and policies. She must set out and then instil set of values. It is from values that policies should develop, not from focus groups, polls and opponents. When policies are founded and rooted in values they can adapt to circumstances without compromising what really matters. When policies are based on who shouts loudest or what pollsters declare they quickly become a useless mishmash of competing approaches.
Stick to your guns, Kemi, and the inevitable storms will pass.
Philip Stott
13 days ago
As long as Kemi promises to abandon nut-zero she’s got my vote.
James Kirk
12 days ago
Gumption? Labour have been an open goal for twenty weeks. Where was she? Alex Burghart showed her how PMQs should go, there’s no need for a sword’s length between her and Starmer who just mainly pokes fun at her, the only time he ever smiles. He probably looks forward to Wednesdays against such a weak opponent.
The Farmer’s protest. Who were the key proponents? Clarkson and Farage. English men and if you think that’s racist let’s ship in Denzel Washington, Vivek Ramaswarmy or a young Morgan Freeman if you must ship in outsiders to sort the place out.
Charles Hedges
12 days ago
The LDs are largly the product of hard work done by others, namely their ancestors and those who undertake technically skilled, dirty and dangerous work today. Much of our problem in the UK is due to the Rentier class which has expanded to include much of the public sector. Orwell wrote about this in his essays.
A combination of inherited wealth without the noblesse oblige of the gentry; long time spent in education undertaking non- engineering degrees; a feebleness of spirit which means they refuse to be tempered by adversity and have their mettle tested; produce people who are as bout as useful as chocolate teapots. However, they consider themselves morally and intellectually superior and as consequence entitled to a life of material comfort and security. They are no different to the priests of ancient Egypt or abbots living of the sweat of serfs in the Middle Ages.
j watson
13 days ago
Much in this I could agree with and at last someone on the Right better recognising the problem was the Tories enabled ever greater regional inequality and never moved beyond slogans. Furthermore that a better analysis of what’s wrong with UK capitalism than just more tax cuts for the wealthy and wiser national investment decisions are needed.
I’m not convinced Kemi has impressed in first few weeks. Rather weaker than expected IMO, but to be fair v early days and she’s a big job first getting her parliamentary party on side. Only a third supported her. I hope though the positive vibe Author conveys proves correct.
Rob Britton
9 days ago
‘Badenoch needs to start, though, by getting rid of the greedy stench of the Liz Truss package that still cloaks the party: the tax-cutting for the rich and public-service cutting for everyone else. This was widely recognised as morally repellent, alienating the many Conservative voters who fled to the Liberal Democrats”
This was actually quite a good article until I read this and then I lost interest! Actually they fled to Reform.
Last edited 9 days ago by Rob Britton
Douglas Redmayne
13 days ago
Olukemi won’t attract many Reform or potential Reform votets for obvious reasons. Reform will also draw voters attention to her pro immigration record and insinuate a self interest. If she boasts about being a cultural Christian then she willbe off putting to people in tne centre. That will help tne Liberals. The only option lef therefore will be to espouse a low tax agenda; this will make people cling to Labour. I suspect the Tories are finished and good riddance.
What a gross remark. Whilst no doubt a few on the fringe of Reform still think like that, most voters do not. And the point of tax reform is to benefit the poorer echelons before doing anything for the rich.
Main Edition
US
FR
Lib Dems will become extinct again in 2029. They are a confection. A freak by product like Starmer victory of 14 Years of Fake Tory Progressive rule. Their three pillars – spend spend on the black hole 200bn NHS, rejoin the tanking dysfunctional EU, and go mad green – all will be exposed as disasters by 2029. Many are just Nimbys and these are thdir fig leafuxury beliefs. Madness for Kemi to chase a party whose voters are mainly made up of angry Tories outraged by the quasi Socialist Green Nut progressive party of the Fools Cameron May Johnson and Sunak. PC right about her potential and need to re think levelling up.
So you hope. The Liberals could do very well in 2029 if the Tories ally with Reform or drift to the right.
The Conservatives desperately need to return to the right. They have been centre left for years.
No, they won’t – unless they undergo a wholesale change of ideology, which is unlikely. The UK (along with a number of other western countries) is approaching the point of no-return with the ‘social democratic’ model of a big state, high taxation, over-spending, high regulation, low growth economy. This model is *only* sustainable if there are a) continuous productivity improvements in the public sector, b) continuous real GDP growth per capita in the private sector and c) where available significant extra-economic wealth resources available to the state to substitute for personal & corporate taxation (see: Norway, Saudi, UAE etc.).
The UK has none of these. Public sector productivity has not improved, at all, in 25 years whilst the state has expanded hugely. Real GDP per capita growth has been anaemic and GDP capita in real terms is still below 2008 levels, and the UK has no golden commodity goose to bolster the treasury coffers.
It’s not a question of ‘drifting to the right’ or left or wherever. It’s about honesty in the face of reality. At some point the general populace are going to have to be told/realise the truth, which is that this model is simply unaffordable, without some radical and far reaching changes. These will involve significantly shrinking the size of the state, dealing with the unfunded public sector pensions liability (£2.7Tn and rising by £150bn a year), getting rid of whole swathes of regulation so that businesses can grow, controlling illegal immigration, recognising the NHS is past any hope of reform and switching to a state supported, insurance funded model where the money follows the patient (there are plenty of examples to choose from), delivering cheap and affordable energy at the expense of excessive “green” ideology, completely reforming planning so that infrastructure and houses can be built and not stymied by NIMBYS, newts and bats, and forcing the idle and feckless back into work.
None of this sounds remotely like a LimDem manifesto, and it isn’t. Currently it isn’t anybody, because it is going to be a very hard message to sell, it is however what is needed.
Your penultimate paragraph spells out well the very tough measures we need to take to prevent the death of our nation. To sell these necessary things to the people in a democracy requires statesmanship and communication skills of the highest order; I hope Kemi has these, and wish her well, but I’m not too confident. She needs to go beyond the usual shallow partial analyses and slogans to show people the reality of where we are and where we’re going. For example, she needs to get people to face up to the fact that ‘reform’ of the NHS can’t be along the ‘business as usual’ Cameron and Starmer lines. As you have said, we need a completely different funding model, making people take more responsibility for their health (and old age) care via an insurance-based model, as is used in more successful systems on the Continent and elsewhere. This, and all the other items on your list, will be a hard sell, but sell them we must.
What alienated Tory voters is that the Tory party has become the LibDems.
The LibDems (and Labour) won seats from the Tories because the Tory voters stayed at home, or voted Reform.
As an acolyte of Gove, it is unlikely that Badenoch will produce any policies which will change this, although she may well win a general election for the same reason that Starmer won: the electorate simply being fed up with incompetence.
I don’t know where this idea that Tory voters switched to Liberal comes from. Ipsos says 24% went to Reform and just 7% Liberal.
Getting Lib Dems back into the Tory Party will be difficult, as they are very much captured by the ‘trans’ agenda, which Kemi has vowed to take on. I hope she sticks to this, because I’m feeling increasingly politically homeless, as well as utterly fed up with a country where neither the government nor the national public broadcaster are either willing or able to say what a woman is.
The problem with this view is it’s not backed up at all by how folks actually voted. More switched to LibDems and Lab than to Reform. So the dilemma for Kemi is which way she leans. Reform direction may spike Farage and play to some of the Tory base, but it could condemn to longer term opposition.
It’s the problem with echo chambers. One becomes indignant with dissenting facts and complexity.
Errr… Reform got more votes than the Libdems.
That’s not right. Reform got many more votes than the lib dumbs. That’s why the party first past the party first past the post system is no longer democratic.
Perhaps you should take you own advice, acquaint yourself with the facts and stop posting the drivel that reverberates in the data free, echo-chamber of your own head.
From Ipsos:
“Ipsos data from interviews with n=4,909 2019 Conservative voters who voted in the July 4th General Election breaks as follows (our estimates suggest that in total 74% of 2019 Conservatives voted in the election, but a quarter – 26% – stayed at home). Just over half among those who did vote stayed with the Conservatives (53%) but one in four opted for Reform UK (24%). However, one in five voted for either Labour (12%) or the Liberal Democrats (7%) (and another 2% for the Greens). So Reform UK was the biggest single beneficiary, though almost as many switched to parties in the other direction.”
“Acolyte of Gove”
I’d suggest that even if she may have aligned herself with Gove in political terms in the past – as a way of gaining a strategic foothold in Tory ranks – she will become her own political entity. She first needs to “find her feet” and put the hard yards in with her party before turning to the electorate.
If you’re trying to “smear her by association”, you’ll be guilty of making a far too premature judgement and need to remember that politics is the art of the possible. It takes time, and sound judgement, not knee jerks.
The country is utterly broken. It doesn’t take a genius to work out how to fix it…most people have. Yet Kemi isn’t saying anything of consequence whatsoever…at a time when the Labour government is widely seen as useless. If not now, when? When will be a better opportunity?
We can trace it back to Boris Johnson’s bragging incompetence that with Brexit we could “have our cake and eat it”; this ensured that the European Commission would not cooperate with continuing the Dublin Principle, which enabled us to return asylum seekers coming from mainland Europe.
It was silly to expect the continuance of the application of the Dublin Regulation after leaving the EU but this point is pretty much irrelevant now anyway, since the Regulation doesn’t even function in/among the remaining EU member states. It is dead law.
The Dublin principle wasn’t functioning before the Brexit vote. Virtually no one was returned to their point of origin.
We actually received more migrants than we exported under the Dublin Regulation.
This is a ‘more of the same’ type of analysis. Has the author read Mary’s recent piece for the real issues and solution?
Mary didn’t provide any solutions. She listed out where she thought blame lay but absolutely zero Policy propositions or how she’d convince sufficient folks to support them. Classic. Only really half engaged in the challenge and getting the Unherd gig doesn’t require full engagement
Mary doesn’t have to that’s the job of our elected politicians who are either unwilling or totally incapable of enabling change.
At least the Labour Party has a plan:
To deprive us of energy so that we have to tough it out every winter, not to rock the boat with the NHS and keep going as usual, to remove private schools to prevent thinking, to tax the middle classes until the state owns everything, to keep as far away as possible from the USA and the ‘evil one’, to use the police to stop discussion of alternatives, to encouraged immigration to solve the problem of Brits wanting to work from home or not wanting to work at home, to join the EU so that we are stuck for ever.
The result of all of this is a grey country of nothing. Our fields will be covered by wind turbines or solar panels, farm animals will disappear, all jobs in heavy industry will go, we will have to import everything we use. It will be safer inside because all police will work from home, as will council workers, teachers. Better that nobody leaves their houses. Many old people will die which will release the pressure on the NHS.
What do the Tories offer as an alternative? I believe the answer is a big fat zero.
“As a black immigrant, she can craft a credible and ethical Britain First agenda without taints of racism or imperialism.”
This implies that anyone who is not a black immigrant would be tainted by racism or imperialism.
I detest this identitarian disease that has so deeply infected public discourse – or, what’s left of it that has any value.
That all sounds like a to do list I could get behind. But then so did “levelling up”. Kemi seems to me to be a lone star and the people remaining around her, the same old bunch of generic crooks and careerists. She’d need a crack team to get anything done. Where’s the talent?
All these ideas might work, how would I know but it seems to be singing from the hymn sheet of last few decades. That is, that we just smarter people making smarter decisions.
In some cases, we do need intelligent government strategies, in others it’s better that we leave to individuals,families and businesses. I’m not going to pretend I know how to decides these questions; the devil’s in the detail but can we have a period where our politicians believe that, on balance, they should not intervene and only ever do so when there little alternative.
It strikes me a incredible that the UK’s average income is lower than the poor state in the US. But more incredible is that we don’t seem to recognise that maybe they are doing something right.
Frankly, the above article suggests more of the same.
This article has some lazy tropes. Cameron did not “win” with a promise of maintaining the NHS. He had to form a coallition government with the very party whose voters he could not win even with his “NHS, NHS, NHS” platitudes.
Similarly, Ed Davey is not the leader of a political party. His last campaign was disgusting anti-politics with no discussion of policy. The voters who turned to him need to have a long, hard look at themselves – more so than Reform voters who at least registered a protest vote backed by policy. The tactic of acting like a clown while downplaying serious political thought is far more dangerous to British political culture than Farage ever was.
The “greed agenda” which the author decries is summed up by lower taxes. This is a widely and deeply popular programme as long as people feel that the tax burden is reduced for them. Farmers thought that a vote for Labour wouldn’t hurt them. More fool them. This is the real impact of tax rises. We are already over-taxed and the real problem is people don’t feel that they get return on their investment. More tax but worse schools, healthcare, roads etc.. What is it all for?
As someone who lived grew up in London and has now moved out to the provinces the UK government is right to bet the house on the capital. The level of disenchantment and lack of drive even in the Home Counties just isn’t the same, let alone up north. If there was a vast pool of untapped talent out here then venture capital would have found it. The fact is that the best and brightest move to the South East (hint: if you haven’t then you might want to reflect on this).
Just response to one point re: worse schools – did you see the data and report last week showing best state schools now perform better than most private schools at English and Maths ?
A dair poinnt but this has been the case for a long time. The trouble is that while they may be giving their pupils better grades the rounded education isn’t what it needs to be. This isn’t confined to the state sector – parents with children at private schools must ask themselves “what are they getting out of all the money I am investing in them?”. I would counter your point with all the recent articles about university students not being able to read properly and ask if state schools are really “improving” or whether public schools have been dragged down.
Yet according to the National Literacy Trust 1 in 6 school leavers is functionally illiterate. That’s at least 11 years in the English education system, and they can barely read. They shouldn’t be allowed past Primary school, let alone out into the workplace.
Correct. The author, like his latest tome, has been “Left Behind”.
As requested, I just reflected on not having moved to South East England. And I still wouldn’t want to. I could earn a lot more, but there’s more to life than money. Such as beautiful scenery, tranquility, low population density, available GP appointments, and so on. Then again, you’ll never hear me moaning about lack of opportunity, so perhaps it isn’t a fact that all of the best and brightest move to the SE? We may just have different priorities.
I too have moved out because I wanted a different, better life – I’m not one to cast stones in glass houses. You clearly have a very high opinion of yourself but anecdote doesn’t make data:
Table_3.13_2122.ods
London’s taxes are double/triple those of other regions (1.5 times the SE, triple most other areas, NI more than 4 times as much). The GP appointments that the rest of the country relies on are paid for by the taxes of London.
I do have confidence in my capabilities. But that’s beside the point. I was responding to the sweeping and condescending “fact” that “the best and brightest move to the South East”.
Condescending? If anything it was self-effacing! Far be it from me to talk down to one so capable.
Excellent. I’m glad we got that sorted. Thank you for agreeing
Badenoch does not need to woo the LibDems, especially not those of the leafy Home Counties commuter belt. They’ll come crying back once Labour’s vindictive tax policies start to bite.
How can anyone vote for the Tories after they dethroned a sitting Prime Minister, and then changed the party’s rules to ensure a non-entity, Sunak, with no political allegiance except to himself, became Prime Minister without needing to win a vote?
They do not care for democracy, they do not care for legal process. They think choosing a Prime Minister is a game.
What did that ‘sitting Prime Minister’ accomplish other than Brexit?
Nothing will happen. Kemi went to Davos and received her instructions.
Talk right and when you get in, keep on tacking left.
They must think we’re daft!
Davos is not a thing.
Rather pointless that it exists in that case, eh.
It’s all very well going on about venture capital in the North. But when there is no scope for ordinary business, as anything other than services are imported at sub-cost cheapness from abroad, businesses will never start.
Until you can pick up a random item at a Tesco Extra, and not see “Made in China” on the bottom, all talk of new businesses is futile. This can only be fixed by having a trade policy that benefits US, not “global prosperity” (just like most of the fastest-growing nations have). I don’t see any party interested in that – just look at the reaction to Trump’s tariffs.
If Kemi or any other wannabe wants to succeed they will need to convince the nation it needs fundamental structural change. Collier is right about the need to address levelling up but he also points out that there are a few reasons it will not happen on the scale that is needed.
Neither Levelling Up nor defanging identity politics will ever happen unless the ‘Big State’ is made fit for the purpose. The Big State doesn’t want reform, it is happy as it is meddling with our lives while enjoying 4 day weeks, comfortable salaries, and a heavily gilded and early retirement. Successive governments have invested so much power in the big state it now exercises too much control to allow itself to be reformed. We have surrendered to it, we have allowed ourselves to become the captives of an unelected tyrant that now determines how we live. If you doubt this just think about how it took over our lives, and our elected government, during Covid. It has the NGOs, the civil service and the BBC and a lot more to uphold its grip on the country.
I have no tried and tested solution, and if I did their misinformation tsars would already be discrediting it. The only chance we have is populism, using the ballot box while we can, to elect politicians that we would be willing to take to the streets in order to support and then mandate them to reform the House of Lords so that all its members were a consequence of proportional representation. This would create an elected chamber with a direct mandate from the electorate to become the Supreme Court of the UK and to enforce the sovereign right of Parliament to determine and enforce the laws of the land.
This revised House of Lords would then be mandated to ensure the State acted strictly in accordance with the Laws of the United Kingdom.
Only then would Parliament be able to take on the state.
Only then will Parliament represent the people.
Nigerians have been a significant migration group to Britain over the last 10 years. So I think what you’ll find in the Badenoch/Patel administration is a way of selling ongoing mass migration that will be a little more palatable to the middle-class Tory voters that wanted this pair to lead the party.
Meanwhile, the Petitioners for a new general election come from constituencies who rightly wanted an anti-immigration Jenrick leadership.
the still staggering figure of £41,000 – 41,000 per what?
I understand that it’s an average figure, per asylum seeker per year.
Her task is not to align, attract or adapt to anyone else’s ideals and policies. She must set out and then instil set of values. It is from values that policies should develop, not from focus groups, polls and opponents. When policies are founded and rooted in values they can adapt to circumstances without compromising what really matters. When policies are based on who shouts loudest or what pollsters declare they quickly become a useless mishmash of competing approaches.
Stick to your guns, Kemi, and the inevitable storms will pass.
As long as Kemi promises to abandon nut-zero she’s got my vote.
Gumption? Labour have been an open goal for twenty weeks. Where was she? Alex Burghart showed her how PMQs should go, there’s no need for a sword’s length between her and Starmer who just mainly pokes fun at her, the only time he ever smiles. He probably looks forward to Wednesdays against such a weak opponent.
The Farmer’s protest. Who were the key proponents? Clarkson and Farage. English men and if you think that’s racist let’s ship in Denzel Washington, Vivek Ramaswarmy or a young Morgan Freeman if you must ship in outsiders to sort the place out.
The LDs are largly the product of hard work done by others, namely their ancestors and those who undertake technically skilled, dirty and dangerous work today. Much of our problem in the UK is due to the Rentier class which has expanded to include much of the public sector. Orwell wrote about this in his essays.
A combination of inherited wealth without the noblesse oblige of the gentry; long time spent in education undertaking non- engineering degrees; a feebleness of spirit which means they refuse to be tempered by adversity and have their mettle tested; produce people who are as bout as useful as chocolate teapots. However, they consider themselves morally and intellectually superior and as consequence entitled to a life of material comfort and security. They are no different to the priests of ancient Egypt or abbots living of the sweat of serfs in the Middle Ages.
Much in this I could agree with and at last someone on the Right better recognising the problem was the Tories enabled ever greater regional inequality and never moved beyond slogans. Furthermore that a better analysis of what’s wrong with UK capitalism than just more tax cuts for the wealthy and wiser national investment decisions are needed.
I’m not convinced Kemi has impressed in first few weeks. Rather weaker than expected IMO, but to be fair v early days and she’s a big job first getting her parliamentary party on side. Only a third supported her. I hope though the positive vibe Author conveys proves correct.
‘Badenoch needs to start, though, by getting rid of the greedy stench of the Liz Truss package that still cloaks the party: the tax-cutting for the rich and public-service cutting for everyone else. This was widely recognised as morally repellent, alienating the many Conservative voters who fled to the Liberal Democrats”
This was actually quite a good article until I read this and then I lost interest! Actually they fled to Reform.
Olukemi won’t attract many Reform or potential Reform votets for obvious reasons. Reform will also draw voters attention to her pro immigration record and insinuate a self interest. If she boasts about being a cultural Christian then she willbe off putting to people in tne centre. That will help tne Liberals. The only option lef therefore will be to espouse a low tax agenda; this will make people cling to Labour. I suspect the Tories are finished and good riddance.
What a gross remark. Whilst no doubt a few on the fringe of Reform still think like that, most voters do not. And the point of tax reform is to benefit the poorer echelons before doing anything for the rich.
#TLDR