Harry Fone is the Grassroots Campaign Manager for the TaxPayers’ Alliance. As I’ve argued from day one, many local authorities simply don’t have their priorities right. This seems particularly clear in Walsall where councillors have awarded themselves a pay rise...
Sanjoy Sen: The Government and Stellantis. ‘Picking winners’ is rarely a popular concept among Tories but it’s often a reality.
Sanjoy Sen is a chemical engineer in North Sea oil. He contested Alyn & Deeside in the 2019 general election. The Government has been in “productive” discussions with Vauxhall’s new owner, Stellantis, over the future of the Ellesmere Port Astra plant...
Nigel Wright: What Canada’s new Conservative leadership thinks about CANZUK
Nigel Wright is the London-based Chair of Canadian Conservatives Abroad (CCA). With the United Kingdom’s recent withdrawal from the European Union, the country finds itself needing to negotiate new free trade deals to expand market access for its products and...
Barney Campbell: The case for a new national service scheme – driven by incentives, not compulsion
Barney Campbell is on the approved candidates list having previously stood in Easington in the 2017 election. He is the author of ‘Rain’, a novel about the war in Afghanistan. Moving on from the Budget, the next big document to have ink spilt over its...
Newslinks for Monday 8th March 2021
Coronavirus 1) Schools return in England: Johnson hails first steps to freedom “Boris Johnson has hailed the return of pupils to school today as the first step on his “road map to freedom” and insisted that the country is ready for it. With all nine million...
School reform post-Covid. Beware of throwing out Gove’s baby with the bathwater.
Lengthening the school day, shorterning the summer holidays: these and other ideas for reform were already under consideration at the Education Department and within government. But they would not be up for assessment now, since there would have been no Collins Review...
Neil O’Brien: Lessons we can learn from fast-growing countries to help us to grow faster
Neil O’Brien is co-Chairman of the Conservative Party’s Policy Board, and is MP for Harborough. Here’s a striking thing: several countries which suffered decades of communism are now richer than large parts of the UK. In 2018, the GDP per head of Yorkshire, Northern...
International Women’s Day and what the polls tell us. ‘Building back better’ might need a feminist version too.
Today marks International Women’s Day (IWD), which I confess I have a degree of cynicism about. Like many Conservatives, I am generally wary of anything related to identity politics. It is not as empowering as some of its proponents seem to think. Case in point:...
Dolly Theis: Ask her to stand – a guide to elections
Dolly Theis is the Co-Founder of 50:50 Parliament’s #AskHerToStand Campaign. She is completing her PhD at Cambridge University’s MRC Epidemiology Unit and contested Vauxhall in the 2017 general election. A guide to standing for election Step 1. Ask you/her to stand...
Ian George: How to ensure the “right to regenerate” proposals succeed
Cllr Ian George represents Coombe Hill Ward on Kingston-upon-Thames Council. Robert Jenrick’s new ‘Right to Regenerate’ proposal aims to force the hand of public bodies who own much-needed unused and uncared for land, but who have no immediate plans to bring it back...