The Conservatives have rightly begun talking about growth. Our next challenge is to ensure that growth is rooted not only in the City of London, but in every county, market town and industrial community with the potential to create wealth once more.
A big reason we lost our way in government was too often we failed to remember that the private sector is where growth will come from. Some in business thought Labour would be on their side. Most can now see that this Labour Party has no understanding of how business works. We do.
When it comes to the economy, the state should not be welcomed with open arms. It should be treated with scepticism of the highest order.
In a world where narrow waterways carry the essentials of modern living, the risks associated with chokepoints can no longer be treated as peripheral. For British households, the consequences are immediate and tangible.
It is time that the conservative movement showed its adaptability once again by understanding that Global Britain and European Britain are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary.
While the Tories might have created, or exacerbated, some of of these problems, they’re serious about trying to fix them. Which Labour, it’s clear, are not.
I believe philosophically that government exists primarily to facilitate individual opportunity, and the state should not, and cannot, be involved in our lives to the extent it is. And now it cannot be afforded either.
You cannot protect the environment by undermining the economy. If businesses are overburdened, if energy costs spiral out of control, and if families are priced out of everyday essentials, then public support for environmental action quickly erodes.
The message is: don’t let the state be your only safety net, “build your own”. It is not an attack on single mothers or a call to dismantle welfare. Life goes wrong in ways the lucky often cannot imagine. The state should always be there for those who need it. But we must be honest about what it can and cannot do.
A modern financial system must work for all its users, not just the majority. Older people, small business owners, people in rural, suburban and coastal communities and the digitally excluded also need access to the banking system.
Unequal concentrations of wealth could enable monopoly-like distortions on asset values, interest rates, rents and would end market competition. Reasonably then, there must be a limit on the proportion of wealth held by a minority before it starts to jeopardise normal market function.
The decision to bring any employer with more than 21 staff into the full scope of the trade union access provisions sits uneasily alongside Starmer’s repeated commitment that growth was at the centre of his government’s economic purpose.
The route back to government is not through more noise, more grievance or a narrower politics. It is through growth, competence and a proper understanding of what makes an economy work.
It is time to stop taxing the Stock Exchange out of existence and start powering the next generation of British Tech giants and creating a new generation of shareholders.
Britain needs a different course: economic policy that rewards work, welcomes investment and helps high-growth firms scale at home rather than overseas. Labour’s legacy is a warning and a call to action for us Conservatives.