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Stout Yeoman's avatar

Reform supporters when they talk about "The Tories" betray a need for a bogeyman or minds closed to reality.

After its defeats of 1974 the Tories underwent ideological transformation courtesy of Keith Joesph and Margaret Thatcher. "The Tories" were not the same Tories from 1979. As Charles Moore, Thatchers' biographer, points out Thatcher herself only became as conservative as she did after the 1974 defeats.

Robert Jenrick has undergone a similar transformation no less sincere than Lord Frost (who says he only recently became conservative). If he wins the leadeship then talk of "The Tories" is to be stuck with ghosts of the past, an attachment of narcissism to destructive vengeance.

It may be that MPs do not follow Jenrick and thereby bring about the party's destruction or, like Thatcher, Jenrick may persuade enough to stick by him and so transform the party.

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Marblechops's avatar

As I wrote on your original manifesto piece there is a gaping hole which is a macro economic overview.

Your policy ideas are all micro in nature and fail to address the capital and current account issues as well as the clear problems in central banking.

It is abundantly clear after 2008 that the framework is not only broken but highly damaging to the economy. The real rise in property prices is only part immigration. The rest is QE and monetary policy.

The BoE needs huge reform and probably renationalization. Its ideas are unbelievably anachronistic. It has no control over CPI and hasn’t for decades. In an open trading globe it is pissing in the wind! But worse because it thinks it still can influence CPI it overlooks the clear fact that what it does influence hugely is asset prices. In fact asset price growth should be its target today, not CPI.

Indeed, it likely even generates some CPI via high assets prices. Ie: commercial property rents must feed in to higher output prices.

This is a huge subject and also the most important but no party, nor yourself has even begun to tackle it.

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