It is absurd that our financial regulator cares more about whether you have enough women on your board than if you actually make any money.
Tory centrism might at some point be due a comeback. It is the obvious gap in the market. But unless it learns from these and its other mistakes, it ain’t happening.
Wanting the US action against Iran to replace an evil regime with something much better is one thing, but the odds were always that is not going to be the case. In such circumstances, reticence in supporting the US was not a moral failure, but perfectly sensible.
Wrapping up policy proposals within a grand narrative of their historical importance and situating them within a long national story has powerful imagery that can move the conservative soul.
You may not like what Dubai has to offer, but don’t tarnish those who do with the brush of ‘tax exiles’ and ‘washed-up old footballers’. If we were able to attract their like and their ambition, instead of scaring them away, we would all feel the benefits.
If the voters are going to accept the costs of rearmament, the positive case needs to be made. This includes bluntly explaining the risks that those of us who obsessively monitor the news are already aware of. It also requires setting out why our military power matters.
This government of international lawyers, by international lawyers for international lawyers has used its own skewed and incompetent interpretations of human rights, net zero, post-colonial settlements and other international treaties to sell us out and weaken our security.
Polling saturation is turning our politicians from leaders into followers. Polls can tell us what voters think about a particular issue, but they cannot tell us if those voters are correct. The public’s views are often contradictory
The Conservative answer should not be a return to liberal complacency. Nor a race to outflank Reform on rhetorical hardness, because they will always go further. In this immigration debate, the Conservative answer should be stronger integration.
There are no easy solutions. When you hear someone urging the country to get real about the vulnerabilities of renewable energy, but without also acknowledging the fragilities of a hydrocarbon-based economy, the argument is either blinkered or made in bad faith.
Sometimes military force is abused, mis-used, or disastrously misjudged. However, history also shows that it can halt aggression, stop atrocities, and bring down regimes that brutalise their own people. Just War theory does not claim that violence is never justified.
We need to ask people to acknowledge what was once a basic reality. That the purpose of a state is to serve the interests of its citizens and decisions ought to be taken through that framework. Is an intervention in our national interest? Does it benefit Britain and its people?
Contrary to PM Starmer’s assertion at Wednesday’s PMQs, Kosovo highlighted that major political change can be brought about from the skies. If, as is said, war is too important to be left to the generals, it should never be left to the lawyers.