Sam Richards is CEO of Britain Remade and a former special advisor at No.10 Downing Street, where until recently he worked on energy and the environment.
It’s more than reasonable that just a few months after a new leader of the Conservative Party has been elected, the party doesn’t have a fully worked up manifesto for Government. Domestic and international politics remain highly volatile; it would be counterproductive to pin the party to policies that could be out of date in 3 months, let alone 3 years’ time.
Yet while they don’t need a suite of fully developed and costed policies, top of the to do list for the new year should be setting out a broad analysis of why the economy didn’t grow under a Conservative Government last time, and what the Conservative Party would do differently if they won the next election. So far, they’ve had some success in reflexive opposition to tax rises – but they need a bigger story of why, next time, life under a Conservative Government would be different.
British families are now around £13,500 worse off than the average American family and almost £6,000 worse off than the average German family. We’re set to be overtaken by Poland by the end of the decade. We have the highest housing costs in Europe, and the most expensive industrial energy prices in the world.
There is no great mystery as to why this is – it’s far too hard to build anything in Britain. We haven’t built a nuclear power plant for just under 30 years, and a reservoir for just over 30 years. Offshore wind farms take up to 13 years to get up and running; despite taking just 2 to build – the 11-year gap is in endless paperwork and delays to grid connections.
The economic strategies of the last Conservative administrations ranged from fiscal conservatism with EU membership through to Brexit-inflected Heseltinism – yet all failed to seriously grapple with a planning system that makes it nearly impossible to build the homes, the clean energy, railway lines and roads that the country needs.
An instructive example: in 2014 the British Government announced dualling the A1 north of Morpeth – a key arterial route connecting England and Scotland. In 2019 Dominic Cummings wrote that No10 were looking to hire not just weirdos and misfits, but also “great project managers. who could dual carriageway the A1 north of Newcastle in record time”. In 2024 the new Government cancelled the dualling of the A1 – after £68.4m had been spent on planning, and not a single spade buried in the Northumbrian earth.
How is it that 14 years of Conservative Government could fail to upgrade 13 miles of the A1 to a dual carriageway?
Of course there’s a well-known story here – of the increased role of vexatious judicial reviews, of maddening environmental rules that do little to protect nature but make building impossible, of gold plating, of bat tunnels and fish discos.
But a deeper analysis of Conservative failure to deliver radical policy in Government might build on Kemi’s conference speech and make the argument that over decades and under successive Governments of both parties, MPs gave away the power to get anything done. From laws that bind their hands, to the proliferation of quangos – Ministers have been gradually drained of power. The new centres of power, the arm’s length bodies, can at their best provide genuinely useful expert advice – but too often act as campaigners within the Government machine for their own objectives, and veto players in a planning system that already has plenty of those.
“Reforming the network of arms-length bodies” – this is not retail politics. But acknowledging those areas that the party failed on in Government – on housebuilding for example – producing an analysis of why it failed and then committing to rectify that if the British people are willing to put their trust in the Conservative Party again – that is crucial work for an opposition party early in the Parliament.
Only by setting out a primary colours analysis of what went wrong on the economy in Government, and what needs to change to prevent it happening again, can the Conservative Party set a strategic direction that prevents them from falling into the easy trap of reflexively tactically opposing the Government when or if it tries to do the right thing.
This can provide a vital lodestar for shadow ministers in responding to a Government that is starting to grasp the nettle – just this week they have committed to scrap the site-by-site environmental measures that often gum up new infrastructure, and to limit the ability of time wasters to bring vexatious lawsuits against the Government.
Will the opposition – while committed spiritually to growth – seek to tactically oppose each and every measure brought forward to speed up building? Or will they acknowledge that a failure to build lies at the heart of the Conservative Party’s failure to deliver in Government – and set out their plan, their positive vision, for rectifying this failure next time?
Sam Richards is CEO of Britain Remade and a former special advisor at No.10 Downing Street, where until recently he worked on energy and the environment.
It’s more than reasonable that just a few months after a new leader of the Conservative Party has been elected, the party doesn’t have a fully worked up manifesto for Government. Domestic and international politics remain highly volatile; it would be counterproductive to pin the party to policies that could be out of date in 3 months, let alone 3 years’ time.
Yet while they don’t need a suite of fully developed and costed policies, top of the to do list for the new year should be setting out a broad analysis of why the economy didn’t grow under a Conservative Government last time, and what the Conservative Party would do differently if they won the next election. So far, they’ve had some success in reflexive opposition to tax rises – but they need a bigger story of why, next time, life under a Conservative Government would be different.
British families are now around £13,500 worse off than the average American family and almost £6,000 worse off than the average German family. We’re set to be overtaken by Poland by the end of the decade. We have the highest housing costs in Europe, and the most expensive industrial energy prices in the world.
There is no great mystery as to why this is – it’s far too hard to build anything in Britain. We haven’t built a nuclear power plant for just under 30 years, and a reservoir for just over 30 years. Offshore wind farms take up to 13 years to get up and running; despite taking just 2 to build – the 11-year gap is in endless paperwork and delays to grid connections.
The economic strategies of the last Conservative administrations ranged from fiscal conservatism with EU membership through to Brexit-inflected Heseltinism – yet all failed to seriously grapple with a planning system that makes it nearly impossible to build the homes, the clean energy, railway lines and roads that the country needs.
An instructive example: in 2014 the British Government announced dualling the A1 north of Morpeth – a key arterial route connecting England and Scotland. In 2019 Dominic Cummings wrote that No10 were looking to hire not just weirdos and misfits, but also “great project managers. who could dual carriageway the A1 north of Newcastle in record time”. In 2024 the new Government cancelled the dualling of the A1 – after £68.4m had been spent on planning, and not a single spade buried in the Northumbrian earth.
How is it that 14 years of Conservative Government could fail to upgrade 13 miles of the A1 to a dual carriageway?
Of course there’s a well-known story here – of the increased role of vexatious judicial reviews, of maddening environmental rules that do little to protect nature but make building impossible, of gold plating, of bat tunnels and fish discos.
But a deeper analysis of Conservative failure to deliver radical policy in Government might build on Kemi’s conference speech and make the argument that over decades and under successive Governments of both parties, MPs gave away the power to get anything done. From laws that bind their hands, to the proliferation of quangos – Ministers have been gradually drained of power. The new centres of power, the arm’s length bodies, can at their best provide genuinely useful expert advice – but too often act as campaigners within the Government machine for their own objectives, and veto players in a planning system that already has plenty of those.
“Reforming the network of arms-length bodies” – this is not retail politics. But acknowledging those areas that the party failed on in Government – on housebuilding for example – producing an analysis of why it failed and then committing to rectify that if the British people are willing to put their trust in the Conservative Party again – that is crucial work for an opposition party early in the Parliament.
Only by setting out a primary colours analysis of what went wrong on the economy in Government, and what needs to change to prevent it happening again, can the Conservative Party set a strategic direction that prevents them from falling into the easy trap of reflexively tactically opposing the Government when or if it tries to do the right thing.
This can provide a vital lodestar for shadow ministers in responding to a Government that is starting to grasp the nettle – just this week they have committed to scrap the site-by-site environmental measures that often gum up new infrastructure, and to limit the ability of time wasters to bring vexatious lawsuits against the Government.
Will the opposition – while committed spiritually to growth – seek to tactically oppose each and every measure brought forward to speed up building? Or will they acknowledge that a failure to build lies at the heart of the Conservative Party’s failure to deliver in Government – and set out their plan, their positive vision, for rectifying this failure next time?