The challenge is not just for us individually to pass on an inheritance to our own children – admirable though that is. It is also for young people as a whole to have a chance of a good education and a good job which does not depend on who your parents are.
Britain’s twin second cities of Birmingham and Manchester are now almost exactly the same size economically: Birmingham’s economic output is estimated at about £38.9b and Manchester’s about £38.1b. But Manchester achieves that with fewer people and has been growing faster.
Tough decisions are needed to curb the welfare bill, and previous governments have faced up to that reality. Politicians of today need to do the same, or the costs will continue to rise.
Conservatives worry that somehow tackling climate change is socialism. It need not be. The problem starts with a classic proposition of market economics that the price of energy from fossil fuels does not properly reflect its costs in the long-term damage to the environment and the planet.
Faced with actually paying for social care properly through a charge on our estates or a levy or instead saving money and going for cheap labour we have chosen the latter.
The Coalition’s tough spending savings could have got us to a balanced budget without that expensive offset. Fiscal conservatism should be at the heart of Conservatism. You can’t get more dry than that.
There are useful practical lessons to be learnt from the success of Manchester. Conservative ministers, Labour mayors and high-quality local officials all deserve some of the credit.
Right now the big question is how to tackle the poor performance of the British economy and the reasons behind it. Not all are Brexit related, but it’s important to address those that are. We aren’t going back in, but we should still investigate, for our own good, the Brexit effect.
We once again have to think about defence requirements, national capabilities and strategic strengths. This is what Conservatives used to do. We are rediscovering that Conservative tradition.
The sheer boldness of his vision seems far removed from modern capitalism but the technologies he has created to deliver it are of enormous value. Space X is a valued at over half of the $3b value of the top 100 companies on the London Stock Exchange.
Conservatives have, in the past, been good at building up broad coalitions behind big all-embracing Conservative principles, interpretations of which may differ. If we won’t create our own coalitions then the electorate are going to force us into one on someone else’s terms.
For many people who are not working, especially if they are young, their benefits are very low indeed. The big trend of the past decade or more has been to shift benefit spend away from young people and families towards pensioners.
Space is exciting science. It is bold human exploration. But it is also a crucial environment for complex geo-political rivalries too. Artemis II was a model of international collaboration very different from the MAGA rhetoric. Even America now is not trying to do it all on its own.