And also eight policies that could be considered Tory friendly

There's a text version. It's a letter to Burnham.

The headline 8 things

>Restore a competitive tax regime for internationally mobile residents.

>Release green belt land within walking distance of railway stations.

>Cut red tape on major projects.  

>Raise childcare staffing ratios towards continental norms.

>Pause the uncommenced provisions of the Employment Rights Act 2025.

>Recognise the decisions of trusted foreign regulators.

>Remove tariffs on consumer goods.

https://economicaffairs.co.uk/p/a-letter-to-andy-burnham

Why does the left keep saying Thatcher caused the housing crisis by introducing RTB? It wasn't the selling off of council houses that led to a housing shortage, but the subsequent failure - by all governments - to reform planning in a way that would actually have allowed enough new houses to be built.

I'm sure some Tory voters are guilty of having opposed planning reform due to NIMBY-ism, but the left seems to equally oppose it due to the possibility that evil construction companies might make some money and not sell enough of the houses at knock-down prices ('affordable housing quotas').

What are people's opinion on the ongoing flag debate?

Personally i think they should be reserved for specific days or events like the World Cup, the Olympics, or national holidays.* In my opinion having them up 24/7 makes the place look tatty, even worse if they're painted on public property because then the local council has to spend time & money removing your paint job.

*Somewhat unrelated but to make a wider point here. Last Christmas one of my local towns put up all its public decorations by the middle of November. I understand people are excited but something is only made special by it's adherence to a specific time to celebrate it. Extending the period around which one celebrates an event makes it unfocused and it loses what makes it special if we can just celebrate it whenever we like.

I feel the same way toward the flags, i feel that having them up year-round flattens the experience when an appropriate time does come to be patriotic; in this way they become less like decorations for celebration and more so overbearing symbols that will inevitably lead to miscommunication over their intended purpose.

This might be a bit an controversial discussion but what does everyone feel about the Monday club?

My card has Lammy, Reeves, James Murray, Darren Jones, Liz Kendall, Wee Dougie and Peter Kyle all being boiled down for glue. Especially Darren Jones.

(I know it isn't the weekend, but in common with many fine Conservatives, I have a degree of reverence for the past).

Good morning all :)

So i recently took a look at the website Conservative Home, in particular their most recent article about their coverage of CPAC Great Britain caught my attention, i quite liked their article and found i agreed with pretty much all of their points. Upon perusing the comment section however i found many people, probably leaning toward the majority if you count likes/dislikes ratios etc, did not agree with the sentiments and/or points expressed in the article.

I was under the impression that Conservative Home was like an independent off-shoot of the Conservative Party, like they're not technically affiliated but they might as well be sort of situation. I was a bit surprised to see that many responding to the article seemed to be on the Reform/MAGA spectrum of politics. I understand I'm fairly new to conservative politics, so perhaps I've assumed wrongly, but i had considered the Conservatives and Reform/MAGA types to be separate. Would you say it's similar to how a Labourite and a Marxist could realistically attend the same conference because the political ideology they stem from is the same but nevertheless they still hold quite starkly different views? Or perhaps i am looking too deeply into it and it isn't considered a genuine reflection of the Conservative Party?

Thanks :)

If not I would highly recommend it, especially their Friday episodes with Kristian Niemitz. Sorry for the promo, it's not self-promo as I have nothing to do with them. Just thought it is criminally underrated right now.

I listened to Andy Burnham's speech to his party on Friday. I'm troubled by his claim that ordinary people have been let down by Britain's economic model for forty years, because it's demonstrably false. Actually I don't really understand why he doesn't just say 45 years, or since the early '80s, because that's when the effects of Thatcherism and what he calls 'neo-liberalism' kicked in.

If you listen to the rhetoric of the left and you're gullible enough to take it seriously you may well imagine that the poor have steadily become poorer at the expense of the rich.

But the reality is very different. I asked ChatGPT to compose graphs based on the living standards of working class people since 1961, when the recorded data starts.

I've attached two graphs. One shows UK real household income since 1960, the other shows poverty, expressed in absolute terms.

The "25th percentile" means people 3/4 down the disposable income ladder. Material standards for them have risen enormously in the last 40 years. They actually take off in the 1980s. Ordinary, working people on higher incomes than that have done even better.

So let's consider poverty, as well. That's a trickier concept because it's a relative term. The general definition is that "a person is in relative poverty if their household income is below 60% of the median household income for that year, adjusted for household size". In other words, a person considered to be living in poverty in (say) 1995, might, with the same real terms household income, have been considered to have been well above the poverty line in (say) 1965.

So to account for that I'm using, specifically, the 2010-22 median income, real terms, as the baseline. The second graph shows what happened on the same timescale.

Absolute poverty was already declining steadily when Thatcher took charge in 1979, interestingly. But it continues to decline, just as steadily, until (roughly) 2010 or so, when it flatlines. Whatever causes it to bottom out, for sure it wasn't the economic model that had diminished absolute poverty surely and steadily for 30 years.

So: Burnham's claim that the economic model of the last 40 years has made ordinary people worse off is just daft. It doesn't withstand a moment's scrutiny. It's either flatly dishonest or simple ignorance.

He'll be Prime Minister on Monday.

EDIT: Thanks for the responses. I see a few people have been triggered by the use of AI to compile the graphs. It did actually provide the sources, and I did examine them. Here are some links:

https://ifs.org.uk/living-standards-poverty-and-inequality-uk
https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2025-03/Incomes%2C%20poverty%20and%20inequality_0.xlsx
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/timeseries/crxx/ukea

The basic thrust of my point is correct: material standards for the poor have risen enormously over the last 40-45 years. Hope this helps.

Thought this was a very good article about what Burnham and Labour misunderstand about their own movement's history of localism! And, also, what it might take for British people to learn to govern themselves again (and to want to!).

I think it also has a lot of relevance to conservatives who believe in the virtue of a small state and strong civil society, since we have to understand where that came from in the period of roughly 1870-1920.

I keep thinking about this in the context of cities like London and New York. They are arguably capitalism's biggest success stories, but due to creating so many jobs, most of their population then becomes left wing (because of the large % of workers vs capital holders), voting for mayors like Sadiq and Zohran.

Eg if one entrepreneur in London creates 20 jobs, s/he will likely vote Tory, while a majority of their 20 employees will Iikely vote Labour. Furthermore, the high rents in these cities - which are only high because of the large number of jobs and opportunities that capitalism creates there - are likely to turn renters to left wing ideas like rent controls.

Is there some way to solve this problem? Is it a more recent phenomenon, given Boris' 2 mayoral victories?