Rachel Reeves is scrambling around for higher taxes that will do nothing to change Britain’s long-term economic trajectory.
The big question for the leader and her supporters is why she inherited a party polling at 25 per cent and has “staunched the bleeding” at 18 per cent.
A State commands obedience in two ways: the habitual deference of the law-abiding, and the threat of enforcement. If it comes to be held in contempt, both are undermined at once.
Those of us who remember Labour’s pieties during the closing years of the previous government might be forgiven a little schadenfreude at Starmer’s karmic comeuppance. But alas, we all need to live in the country he is trying, and failing, to govern.
Our deputy editor’s contribution to a new essay collection Bright Blue on how conservatives can go about fixing the social security system.
Democracy is not about making choices, but decisions, and the two-party system was much better oriented towards presenting voters with the latter than a multiparty system more replete with the former.
The Tories might have an easier time delivering cuts to working-age benefits, but those don’t even rank in the top three spending areas pushing tax as a percentage of GDP endlessly upwards.
Her next exam question is whether or not she can build on the momentum of last week and find ways to keep winning the spotlight when it is no longer guaranteed by the political season.
Kemi Badenoch resisted the temptation to make wild and unrealistic promises, but we shall have to see how seriously voters take sensible proposals from a party polling below 20 per cent.
Badenoch does risk overstating the extent to which the Party has worked out the detail on things like withdrawing from the Convention. Fortunately, Labour’s initial counter-argument is moronic.
A sensible nuclear programme need not conflict with, for example, heavy exploitation of the North Sea. But Britain’s long-term prosperity and energy security rest also on getting a head start on tomorrow’s power sources.
The Government’s progressive critics will see a beastly litany of hurdles for people looking to settle here, and the rest will see the outline of a lanyardist paper tiger, a tough-sounding but ultimately bare-minimum effort to reconsecrate the basic idea of ILR.
She told GB News that some MPs “will leave” because she’s “saying that we need to live within our means” and “no more lavish spending”. Who are they supposed to be?
The most important question about any rebellion is whether it represents an attempt to pivot towards reality, or away from it. On the current evidence, the latter seems far more likely.
Our current system focuses exclusively on applying an abstract scheme of rights on a case-by-case basis without regard for the broader consequences. This is not sustainable.