Welcome to the blended office Since the scribes of ancient kings worked together under a sunshade, we have had offices. Offices survived the Black Death, the Red Death, Spanish Flu, and Ricky Gervais. Offices aren’t about to disappear — but they may now be changing more than ever before. We should be ready for change, but do not be surprised [...]
Boris can lead a Conservative council housing revolution With Boris Johnson now undisputed world king of the post-Brexit scene, the only relevant policy debates are those going on inside the government itself. These are yielding unusual fruit. Esther McVey, a deep-dyed Thatcherite and an advocate of blue-collar Conservatism, has been arguing for more council housing. The housing minister wants to help those “left [...]
How Boris Johnson became the heir to Blair Politics is the art of winning and keeping power. New Labour understood this. They were the greatest election-winning machine of modern times. But to the Corbynistas (Old Bennite Labour revived), New Labour are the enemy of true socialism. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour want nothing to do with New Labour’s people, policies, or campaigning techniques. Unfortunately for [...]
Don’t ignore your opponent’s ideas — you could learn from them December 13, 2019 UK politics is a machine for killing good ideas. It’s brutal, adversarial, and first past the post. Our party-bound MPs almost never ask the only question that matters: based on the facts, what is best for the country? Imagine that your company has a complex problem. Three of you work up ideas to solve it. [...]
Does your business have a Brexit plan? Good, now it needs a Corbyn plan too August 15, 2019 In the mid-1970s, when I was a 10-year-old in love with Choppers and Sherbet Fountains, the ideological war between Thatcherism and Bennism began. Small versus big state, low versus high taxation, light versus tight regulation, and private versus public ownership. Now, 45 years later, we have a neo-Thatcherite government facing a Bennite-controlled Labour party. And [...]
Our pessimistic country needs a One Nation housing crusade June 19, 2019 It’s the political equivalent of playing Pac-Man, while nodding your mullet to Wham! – our housing policy seems stuck in the 1980s, like a Care Bear in a leg-warmer. The Conservative leadership candidates have all served as part of a government whose core housing strategy hails from that Duran Duran decade: subsidised social housing sell-offs [...]
How to solve the housing crisis in five years October 4, 2017 The UK housing market is failing millions of people. It produces far too few homes, and then offers them at unaffordable rents and prices. Yet we could cure this national housing crisis in just five years, using high-technology modular construction, reimagined council housing and patient institutional capital. In Japan, the modular future has already arrived. [...]
London needs a new deal with its nation to secure a good Brexit for its leading industries November 29, 2016 We cannot assume that London will always succeed. No city is too big to fail. London must constantly reassert its global status because if a city isn’t rising, it’s falling. London has long been a world-leading financial centre and is now a magnet for the international technology sector and its startups. But, in an environment being [...]
We can renew London once again post-Brexit – if we channel the can-do spirit of our ancestors in facing up to our housing and infrastructure challenges October 31, 2016 London has always risen again. This is the 350th anniversary of its greatest resurrection. Our ancestors in 1666 reacted to the Great Fire with a speed and coordination that defies belief. They tax-incentivised developers, ran the first national charitable appeal, invented modern fire insurance, and worked day and night for free. Compared with the Great Fire, [...]
Brexit is a chance for London to renew itself once again as a great global city September 5, 2016 London is a phoenix-like city. It has reinvented itself time and again, rising from the Great Fire, the Plague and the Blitz. Compared to those, Brexit is a mild cold. The capital now needs to renew itself once again. It produces 22 per cent of the UK’s GDP and 30 per cent of its tax [...]
