The Conservative offer
It is good that Conservatives defend people’s right to choose the schools for their children, and support educational charities. It is progress that Conservatives back getting more of our own oil and gas out of the ground instead of importing more. It is welcome that the government will make it more difficult for Councils to pursue their anti driver agendas.
The Prime Minister’s five aims of cutting NHS waiting lists, lowering inflation, getting some growth, bring the deficit down and stopping the small boats are fine. Some of these will need new policies and initiatives to deliver them. What we need this week is more detail on how these important changes will be brought about. If the courts seek to block sensible migration reform then Parliament must be asked to legislate to redirect them.
The government needs to be on the side of the doers, the strivers, the self employed, the small businesses, the savers, the home buyers, the skilled workers as well as helping the drivers. We need to unleash more enterprise to expand our domestic capacity, replace some of those imports, generate more better paid jobs at home and collect more tax revenue from more activity.
To do this we need an early budget. Tax rules and rates that are driving people out of self employment need to be reversed. The VAT threshold that stops many a small business expanding for fear of the heavy compliance costs of VAT and the 20% extra imposition it entails should be raised. Energy is far too dear and is just getting dearer as OPEC stifles oil output and drives up the prices again. The taxes on it should be brought down as the oil price rises.
The government should lead an ownership revolution, making it easier and more worthwhile for people to venture their savings, to set up and grow businesses, to work for themselves, to buy their own home and to invest in their local community.
It should promote more domestic supply, to give us more choice, better value and to cut down on all that CO 2 long distance transport by ship and lorry imposes to bring in so many imports. Why not spend our agricultural grant money on promoting more food growing to cut the food miles, instead of using it to wild what were good farm fields? Why not bring down energy taxes so more energy using industries can stay here and grow here?
Conservatives need to be the low tax party, the enterprise party, the back Britain party.
The Prime Minister’s speech to conference
The P{rime Minister this week has a great opportunity and a great platform to set out his vision of the future and tell us how Conservatives can make things better and help people improve their lives.
Today I ask what should Rishi Sunak tell the nation this week, from such a good platform?
After 5 years of a Coalition government and 8 years of a Conservative one he must not trash the past and can be proud of some achievements. The transformation of school standards, the freedom from the large EU budget contributions and escaping from the running up of big new EU debts, the global reach of an independent UK strengthening our ties with Australia, New Zealand and the Trans Pacific Partnership are all to be welcomed. Nor must he spend much time on the past, but show he as a new Prime Minister is looking forward to the huge opportunities ahead for the UK now Brexit and the covid lockdowns are behind us.
He needs to reassure us that the high levels of taxation are temporary, brought on by covid and the Ukraine war. He should point the way to a slimmer, fitter and better public sector after several years of poor productivity and service interruptions from lockdowns and strikes. We need empowered users of public services, and well rewarded public servants with the machine power and data to be more productive. People want access to doctors and hospital appointments to be easier and quicker, for their children to have a choice of good schools, for our public transport to be on time and affordable and for our roads to have fewer potholes.
He began the fight back over the last two weeks. Government should not be telling us which cars and heating systems to buy and then stopping us buying ones they do not like. It should not be keeping our oil and gas in the ground and importing it from abroad. They should not be raising taxes on strivers, savers and small businesses.
Tomorrow will offer some ideas on what he can now deliver.
My Interview with Talk TV
Please find below my Interview with Talk TV’s Mike Graham where we discussed illegal immigration and my new paper on Inflation
You can find it between 1:13:34- 1:23:22
Public spending up by £350 bn this year on 2019
The combination of inflation, a productivity collapse and higher interest rates means public spending is up by £350 bn this year compared to 2019.
No wonder taxes are so high. If the public services got their productivity back up to 2019 levels they would cost £30 bn less. Productivity was down 15.2% in 2020, up 7.3% in 2021 and up 1.7% last year.Overall public sector productivity 2019 to end 2022 is down 7.5%.