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.
I think your subtle point that the Tories of yesteryear and the current lot don't necessarily translate into what the Tories need to become to be electable is well made.
Political parties are dynamic, rarely stay constant and have to be contemporary with the times- although the ideology of socialism - tax & spend seems perfectly suited to the current labour regime.
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.
But a big part of the reason for immigration is economic? Most of it is legal and we benefit in some ways. We get cheap Deliveroo, we get to abandon our parents and work elsewhere because, as Badenoch mentioned, immigrants wipe their bottoms.
I hope you didn’t find what I wrote condescending Pete. I should add that your manifesto in sum is very good and hits all the right notes. But we have huge issues facing Britain and the rest of the world in fact. Let me illustrate that with a point that isn’t beyond anyone who is non economically trained.
Politicians and the media like to talk about the high levels of public debt. Indeed they are reaching 100% of GDP. But no one looks at the flip side of this coin. There is actually a huge glut of global savings - caused by the rise in the huge elderly demographic. All these savings are desperate to find returns especially in excess of inflation. The only way to do that is to push growth as hard as possible, since strong growth causes bond yields to rise and thus provides safe returns for the retirees.
So the billion dollar question is, does the level of public debt actually matter as long as growth is strong?
You see it all feeds back to more micro questions about tax and spending (fiscal policy) - which is what the parties generally obsess over. If we were to free ourselves from this dogma (represented by the BoE, Treasury, OBR and numerous private sector think tanks) then politicians would be able to pursue growth strategies that would benefit us all. Obviously you need good government to select those strategies wisely but it is not impossible.
As an adjunct, I think one the best guys out there is former Morgan Stanley economist - Michael Taylor - who writes some great stuff here on Substack and is the SDP economics man.
After 14 years of broken promises and lies, the only vehicle to secure trust from voters would need to be concrete pledges with penalty clauses for failure. Penalty clauses such as immediate resignation and calling another general election. All elected members being banned from elections for life. The party disbanded.
It's more to do with paying the consequences & understanding the implications of what the EU will do to us.
We accepted ( wrongly) in my view to have the ECHR tide into the Withdrawal Agreement & Trade & Corporation Act - by doing so we've actually given the EU a big stick with which to beat us.
Gotta give Barnier/Weyand their dues - they knew how to tie us Brits up in international law.
In order to remove illegal migrants etc from the UK requires a modernising of the ID system and a massive restructuring of UK ports and airports.
It will be expensive, but the money saved will exceed the cost.
The computer softwareware must hold the DNA, eye ID and fingerprints of all leaving or arriving in the UK.
Much of this ID software has been available for decades.
Cameras need to cover every nook and cranny of ports and airports so the smuggling transport can be traced and potentially the illegal migrant returned immediately.
Each port/airport has to have holding cells for those not entitled to be in the UK (where it hasn’t been possible to return illegals immediately) them
transfer to remote areas for holding till being deported.
Savings are made on those who leave the UK secretly and are therefore not entitled to claim benefits.
This is more onerous than at first thought as benefit claimants have to reclaim benefits and may lose entitlement as well as having to comply with a waiting period before obtains monies. It may also affect residency.
The savings on benefits will be considerable and fraud discovery will explode as multiple benefits claims by one person will be revealed
Immigration into Europe and North America has as much to do with increasing prosperity in Africa and South Asia as anything our institutions have been doing. With new found relative wealth people gain the incentive to move to what they perceve as richer countries as a way enhancing their prosperity. This mirrors what happened in Britain and much of Europe in the later 19th and earlier 20th centuries where increasing income from industrialisation made the idea that emmigrating to North America or the Antipodies a viable proposition for many people. In Britain the number of people emmigrating outnumbered those immigragating until, at the earliest, the end of the 1960s.
When ever people start talking about immigration I've reminded of a quote froma disussion about the fall of the Roman Empire the the effect that during the third and forth centuries "Everyone who was anyone in North and Eastern Europe wanted to be Roman, because Romans were rich and they wanted to be just as rich"
Pete, what do you think of the SDP, could they not perhaps be the solid chassis of a new vehicle that could accommodate ideas from people such as yourself and even - who knows - politicians such as Jenrick?
Thanks for the content as always...everything I can see points to the Tories being as dead as the proverbial. If these are the best they can scrape up then god help us.
I've been musing recently...is focusing on politics a bit of a distraction though? Might we be at the end of an age/civilisation and in a place where only an economic and social collapse is going to bring the 'rip it up and start again' moment that might be necessary?
The decline of all sorts of things - popular music, politics, the arts, the cognitive ability of the average Uk citizen....suggest we're not so much in 'the end times' but certainly an end time.
Any chance of voting our way out of this passed a while ago, surely?
Why not draft a post ECHR bill of rights and see what that looks like and how it will be immune from tampering and meddling by short term political oppotunists.
We don’t need any of it. Neither did Britain need to be part of the ECHR despite drafting it.
Our legal and constitutional arrangements were just fine since our BoR 1689.
We did it because Europe was mostly based on Napoleon law which didn’t guarantee such things as Habeas Corpus. Hence the reason the Continent went through tyrannies of all kinds over the past 3 centuries.
I think there are a number of external factors ( events) coming into play that will make it more likely that the Tories could come back to power in 2029. Possibly led by Jenrick.
Truth is, Labour has made a complete hash of its first 3 months - even with the Irish mafia fully ensconced in No. 10, it's going to be hard to turn HMS Starmer around - Plus, we're now finding Starmer really is an empty vessel - he doesn't/can't do politics. Labour is a gift that will help sow the seeds of its own demise especially with Lammy, Rayner & the high priestess of the ' faux bob hairstyle ' Reeves.
We oughtn't to forget that in the EU things are getting seriously desperate given Ukraine, Germany an ungovernable France - the Draghi report has gone down like a bucket of sick - over regulate as the EU has done ( and is doing) & necrosis really does start. Plus, the EU will give jack squat to Starmer for a UK/EU reset.
Which leads us back to the Tories & Jenrick - this man has major challenges but at least, a bit like an alcoholic ( or so I'm told 😜) he admits to fundamental problems - we adapt or we die.
Support for Reform is very soft - they carp from the sidelines - Jenrick has to appeal to ex Tory defectors with a strong message - if leaving the ECHR is the loadstone - it will really bring into focus the horrors of International Law too.
Welcome back Pete - keep the faith a little longer - The Tories might be broken but the potential for an intelligent revival is still possible.
For the record - I've only ever beaten my wife - once - & that was in Chess.
I get & understand your tired trope that the Tory Party had 14 years .....ffs - the Tory party had 18 years by the time John Major pulled the rip cord.
The facts of life are generally exceedingly simple - 10, 13, 14 or 18 years is a long time - the voters yearned for a change - and sure, after a poorly planned and bodged Brexit along came COVID to blow a £500bn hole in our finances - add a dash of Ukraine & inflation going through the roof - we still get an ineffectual & loveless landslide from Sir Kneeler.
No, the Tories under Jenrick will adapt & find/create new Tory Values ( & Party to vote for) or it will die - the good news is that Reform looks to be a busted flush for disgruntled Tufton-bufftons & labour - let then consume themselves by lack of vision, naïve ideology & poor leadership.
I genuinely love the fact that nearly 6.9m did still vote Tory - of course 6.85m of these voters could be wrong. Your admission that you find it unfathomable is and of itself interesting.
I can even understand why you think the Tories can't change their spots - the truth is they do ( as per Mrs Thatcher's reign) & as parties go, they've been pretty successful for over 100 years at being in power.
I long learned that life is, as it is, not necessarily how I'd like it to be.
Labour is doing a cracking job of doing & being unpopular - I'd anticipate their shenanigans to carry on, especially with Starmer as leader.
A few years in the cold for the Tories is no bad thing - the taste for power - which, whether you like it or not - the Tories are good at - will come back; they'll be more hungry and lean by 2026/7 & might even be fighting fit with a new vision and agenda by 2028/29. All to play for.
There is no way John Major could hav e won the 1997 election - the Tories had been in power for 18 long years.
The Tories since 2010 & 5 PM's later were tired & burnt out & certainly out of new ideas- in a term - punch drunk if you like - it's not rocket science to understand. Plus, if we really want to go to extremes - why would 11m Tory voters all ( together ) desert the party and go to Labour, Lib or Reform ( with such low calibre teams) in 2024 - answer they didn't.
Power is all about necessity - having it & sufficiency, using it - you can't wield it, if you don't have it.
Reversing every policy of Labour isn't the way politics work either. One has to work with what you've got to move forward.
It's very apparent that we have differing views on what politics is about & the expectations we have of it. Retrospective legislation is difficult to enact not least because of the legal & commercial ramifications of such changes.
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.
Good points.
I think your subtle point that the Tories of yesteryear and the current lot don't necessarily translate into what the Tories need to become to be electable is well made.
Political parties are dynamic, rarely stay constant and have to be contemporary with the times- although the ideology of socialism - tax & spend seems perfectly suited to the current labour regime.
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.
I'm not an economics man. I wouldn't know where to even start.
Thomas Sowell's 'Basic Economics'. It explains things concisely.
But a big part of the reason for immigration is economic? Most of it is legal and we benefit in some ways. We get cheap Deliveroo, we get to abandon our parents and work elsewhere because, as Badenoch mentioned, immigrants wipe their bottoms.
I hope you didn’t find what I wrote condescending Pete. I should add that your manifesto in sum is very good and hits all the right notes. But we have huge issues facing Britain and the rest of the world in fact. Let me illustrate that with a point that isn’t beyond anyone who is non economically trained.
Politicians and the media like to talk about the high levels of public debt. Indeed they are reaching 100% of GDP. But no one looks at the flip side of this coin. There is actually a huge glut of global savings - caused by the rise in the huge elderly demographic. All these savings are desperate to find returns especially in excess of inflation. The only way to do that is to push growth as hard as possible, since strong growth causes bond yields to rise and thus provides safe returns for the retirees.
So the billion dollar question is, does the level of public debt actually matter as long as growth is strong?
You see it all feeds back to more micro questions about tax and spending (fiscal policy) - which is what the parties generally obsess over. If we were to free ourselves from this dogma (represented by the BoE, Treasury, OBR and numerous private sector think tanks) then politicians would be able to pursue growth strategies that would benefit us all. Obviously you need good government to select those strategies wisely but it is not impossible.
As an adjunct, I think one the best guys out there is former Morgan Stanley economist - Michael Taylor - who writes some great stuff here on Substack and is the SDP economics man.
After 14 years of broken promises and lies, the only vehicle to secure trust from voters would need to be concrete pledges with penalty clauses for failure. Penalty clauses such as immediate resignation and calling another general election. All elected members being banned from elections for life. The party disbanded.
We don't have to leave the ECHR, we can simply override it in any respect we please. All it takes is clear statute: https://www.brugesgroup.com/blog/why-hasnt-the-uk-parliament-used-its-limitless-power-to-halt-immigration
It isn't so much leaving the ECHR.
It's more to do with paying the consequences & understanding the implications of what the EU will do to us.
We accepted ( wrongly) in my view to have the ECHR tide into the Withdrawal Agreement & Trade & Corporation Act - by doing so we've actually given the EU a big stick with which to beat us.
Gotta give Barnier/Weyand their dues - they knew how to tie us Brits up in international law.
Good point. But all that is needed is the will.
In order to remove illegal migrants etc from the UK requires a modernising of the ID system and a massive restructuring of UK ports and airports.
It will be expensive, but the money saved will exceed the cost.
The computer softwareware must hold the DNA, eye ID and fingerprints of all leaving or arriving in the UK.
Much of this ID software has been available for decades.
Cameras need to cover every nook and cranny of ports and airports so the smuggling transport can be traced and potentially the illegal migrant returned immediately.
Each port/airport has to have holding cells for those not entitled to be in the UK (where it hasn’t been possible to return illegals immediately) them
transfer to remote areas for holding till being deported.
Savings are made on those who leave the UK secretly and are therefore not entitled to claim benefits.
This is more onerous than at first thought as benefit claimants have to reclaim benefits and may lose entitlement as well as having to comply with a waiting period before obtains monies. It may also affect residency.
The savings on benefits will be considerable and fraud discovery will explode as multiple benefits claims by one person will be revealed
Except, except...
Immigration into Europe and North America has as much to do with increasing prosperity in Africa and South Asia as anything our institutions have been doing. With new found relative wealth people gain the incentive to move to what they perceve as richer countries as a way enhancing their prosperity. This mirrors what happened in Britain and much of Europe in the later 19th and earlier 20th centuries where increasing income from industrialisation made the idea that emmigrating to North America or the Antipodies a viable proposition for many people. In Britain the number of people emmigrating outnumbered those immigragating until, at the earliest, the end of the 1960s.
When ever people start talking about immigration I've reminded of a quote froma disussion about the fall of the Roman Empire the the effect that during the third and forth centuries "Everyone who was anyone in North and Eastern Europe wanted to be Roman, because Romans were rich and they wanted to be just as rich"
Pete, what do you think of the SDP, could they not perhaps be the solid chassis of a new vehicle that could accommodate ideas from people such as yourself and even - who knows - politicians such as Jenrick?
I do believe the SDP has a place in the future of our politics. Just not my cup of tea.
Thanks for the content as always...everything I can see points to the Tories being as dead as the proverbial. If these are the best they can scrape up then god help us.
I've been musing recently...is focusing on politics a bit of a distraction though? Might we be at the end of an age/civilisation and in a place where only an economic and social collapse is going to bring the 'rip it up and start again' moment that might be necessary?
The decline of all sorts of things - popular music, politics, the arts, the cognitive ability of the average Uk citizen....suggest we're not so much in 'the end times' but certainly an end time.
Any chance of voting our way out of this passed a while ago, surely?
The Tory party must be destroyed, Back Badenoch!
If anyone still believes the Conservative Party has to be a broad church, they still haven't figured it out yet.
Why not draft a post ECHR bill of rights and see what that looks like and how it will be immune from tampering and meddling by short term political oppotunists.
We don’t need any of it. Neither did Britain need to be part of the ECHR despite drafting it.
Our legal and constitutional arrangements were just fine since our BoR 1689.
We did it because Europe was mostly based on Napoleon law which didn’t guarantee such things as Habeas Corpus. Hence the reason the Continent went through tyrannies of all kinds over the past 3 centuries.
What would replace the ECHR?
The institutions that handled its tasks before it was incorporated into our system.
A good, balanced post Pete.
I think there are a number of external factors ( events) coming into play that will make it more likely that the Tories could come back to power in 2029. Possibly led by Jenrick.
Truth is, Labour has made a complete hash of its first 3 months - even with the Irish mafia fully ensconced in No. 10, it's going to be hard to turn HMS Starmer around - Plus, we're now finding Starmer really is an empty vessel - he doesn't/can't do politics. Labour is a gift that will help sow the seeds of its own demise especially with Lammy, Rayner & the high priestess of the ' faux bob hairstyle ' Reeves.
We oughtn't to forget that in the EU things are getting seriously desperate given Ukraine, Germany an ungovernable France - the Draghi report has gone down like a bucket of sick - over regulate as the EU has done ( and is doing) & necrosis really does start. Plus, the EU will give jack squat to Starmer for a UK/EU reset.
Which leads us back to the Tories & Jenrick - this man has major challenges but at least, a bit like an alcoholic ( or so I'm told 😜) he admits to fundamental problems - we adapt or we die.
Support for Reform is very soft - they carp from the sidelines - Jenrick has to appeal to ex Tory defectors with a strong message - if leaving the ECHR is the loadstone - it will really bring into focus the horrors of International Law too.
Welcome back Pete - keep the faith a little longer - The Tories might be broken but the potential for an intelligent revival is still possible.
For the record - I've only ever beaten my wife - once - & that was in Chess.
I get & understand your tired trope that the Tory Party had 14 years .....ffs - the Tory party had 18 years by the time John Major pulled the rip cord.
The facts of life are generally exceedingly simple - 10, 13, 14 or 18 years is a long time - the voters yearned for a change - and sure, after a poorly planned and bodged Brexit along came COVID to blow a £500bn hole in our finances - add a dash of Ukraine & inflation going through the roof - we still get an ineffectual & loveless landslide from Sir Kneeler.
No, the Tories under Jenrick will adapt & find/create new Tory Values ( & Party to vote for) or it will die - the good news is that Reform looks to be a busted flush for disgruntled Tufton-bufftons & labour - let then consume themselves by lack of vision, naïve ideology & poor leadership.
A beaut of a response.
I genuinely love the fact that nearly 6.9m did still vote Tory - of course 6.85m of these voters could be wrong. Your admission that you find it unfathomable is and of itself interesting.
I can even understand why you think the Tories can't change their spots - the truth is they do ( as per Mrs Thatcher's reign) & as parties go, they've been pretty successful for over 100 years at being in power.
I long learned that life is, as it is, not necessarily how I'd like it to be.
Labour is doing a cracking job of doing & being unpopular - I'd anticipate their shenanigans to carry on, especially with Starmer as leader.
A few years in the cold for the Tories is no bad thing - the taste for power - which, whether you like it or not - the Tories are good at - will come back; they'll be more hungry and lean by 2026/7 & might even be fighting fit with a new vision and agenda by 2028/29. All to play for.
There is no way John Major could hav e won the 1997 election - the Tories had been in power for 18 long years.
The Tories since 2010 & 5 PM's later were tired & burnt out & certainly out of new ideas- in a term - punch drunk if you like - it's not rocket science to understand. Plus, if we really want to go to extremes - why would 11m Tory voters all ( together ) desert the party and go to Labour, Lib or Reform ( with such low calibre teams) in 2024 - answer they didn't.
Power is all about necessity - having it & sufficiency, using it - you can't wield it, if you don't have it.
Reversing every policy of Labour isn't the way politics work either. One has to work with what you've got to move forward.
It's very apparent that we have differing views on what politics is about & the expectations we have of it. Retrospective legislation is difficult to enact not least because of the legal & commercial ramifications of such changes.
You only need two policies to put the country in to better shape: end mass immigration and end Net Zero. Many other problems drop out as a result.
Then you can work on constitutional restoration: resetting things back to the way they were pre-Blair and even pre-Heath.