James Frayne is Director of Public First and author of Meet the People, a guide to moving public opinion. Because few Conservative strategists supported the Party’s working class provincial pivot, there’s a dearth of decent advice on “what next”, and a great deal of...
Stephen Booth: We’re about to take back control – but what do we want to do with it?
Stephen Booth is Acting Director of Open Europe. The UK is leaving the EU in two weeks’ time but, as Mark Wallace noted recently on this site, “much of the Government’s policy for life after EU membership is as yet unpublished and unknown.” What we probably can say we...
Ali Demirbag: A post-Brexit visa regime must encourage the brightest and the best to travel to the UK on business
Dr Ali Demirbag is the Chairman of the Association of Turkish Speaking Health Professionals in the UK. In its attempts to define a new vision for the British economy, the signals coming from Boris Johnson’s government are encouraging. It is reigniting the Northern...
Roger Scruton: The ten principles that should form the foundation of a modern Conservative policy.
This article originally appeared on ConservativeHome on January 6th 2014 – almost exactly five years ago. We republish it in honour of Sir Roger. Some time ago I got together with Rodney Leach, Gwythian Prins and a few others to discuss the question what exactly...
Ryan Shorthouse and Anvar Sarygulov: We need more migrants to become citizens
Ryan Shorthouse is Director of Bright Blue and Anvar Sarygulov is a Researcher at Bright Blue. The public debate on immigration is dominated by the number of people entering and leaving Britain. However, very little attention is paid to the final step of a journey for...
Johnson – at a stroke, a bigger player in foreign affairs, because of his larger majority. But what does he want to do?
Robert Blake’s biography of Disraeli quotes from Endymion, the last of the latter’s novels, published in 1880 after he had ceased to be Prime Minister. “Look at Lord Roehampton. He is the man. He does not care a rush whether the revenue increases...
Rachel Wolf: I co-wrote this Conservative manifesto. And so can say that its focus was on neither the rich nor the poor.
Rachel Wolf is a partner in Public First. She had co-charge of the 2019 Conservative Manifesto. She was an education and innovation adviser at Number 10 during David Cameron’s premiership and was founding director of the New Schools Network. Labour has responded to...
How the half a century-long Conservative civil war over Europe was won last week in a single day. By the Brexiteers.
On this site near the start of the year, Richard Ritchie described four Commons debates, all about Europe. The first took place in 1950 on the Schumann Plan; the last in 1971 on the Commons Market. “Parliament and Parties have always been divided on this...
“Get out of London.” Now watch Johnson and Cummings turn the country upside down. Or try to.
“You guys should get outside London and go to talk to people who are not rich Remainers’.” (Dominic Cummings, September 2019.) – – – Britain’s political and economic model from Margaret Thatcher through Tony Blair to David Cameron had roughly...
WATCH: “I can make sure that numbers come down,” Johnson promises on immigration
“Yes, I can make sure that numbers will come down.”@BorisJohnson guarantees @SophyRidgeSky that the level of immigration to the UK will go down if he remains prime minister. #Ridge #GE2019 Get live #GeneralElection2019 updates here: https://t.co/26sueac4Fr...