Britain needs a more muscular vision of identity rooted in commitment. Pride cannot reside only in the vestiges of cultural triumphs abroad. It must inspire loyalty at home too.
We need to believe that we are a country which can solve its own problems, rather than shrugging our shoulders and stumble from crisis to crisis. We will need to recognise that we have our own part to play in creating the world that we want for future generations.
Cabinet members in the US and Singapore can command far better pay elsewhere. But they are freed up to take on real responsibility. If the UK can’t offer similar paths to the country’s brightest, it condemns itself to mid-table mediocrity.
Deciding what you’re going to do is more effective than a lengthy mission statement. Many of the UK’s political failures of the last 15 years stem from giving too much thought to branding and too little to a plan.
Instead of drawing on our national story, we’re embarrassed by it and instead compress our identity into a narrative barely older than Singapore’s independence. We’re a much older country with a much shorter memory.
If they are serious about reversing Britain’s decline, Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick will have to have a few large, difficult, and totemic fights with their own party – a lesson learnt from Machiavelli.
Admirable as Singapore is, the more one learns about it, the harder one finds identifiable the copy-and-paste solutions British politicians are so often looking for.
My hunch is the next generation of aspiring leaders will have a firmer grip on the meaning of conservatism than the current crop. Or, at least, I hope so — otherwise there might not be a party to lead.
Conservatives ought to know without being told that one cannot just take a glance round the world, see which culture one likes the look of, and graft it onto one’s own.
Basically, we need to undercut the world. We can do so if we slash red tape and tax. Within a very short period there would be a pronounced Laffer Effect.
Lee Kuan Yew is the ‘father’ of modern Singapore and, therefore, one of the most successful statesmen of our age. Chinese by ethnicity, rather than citizenship or allegiance, he is well-placed to offer an overview of the developing relationship between China and United States. In an interview with the Atlantic, he does not foresee […]
Growth is as much a political problem as it is an economic one. We need to spend vastly more time thinking about the trade-offs and compromises required to achieve it, how to sequence reforms, and which battles to pick and when.