If Liz Truss thought winning was hard, governing will be a formidable task Will Tanner It will not feel like it to Liz Truss, but that was the easy bit. Political campaigns are always brutal, exhausting and emotional affairs; none more so than this summer’s long and fractious Conservative leadership contest. But the challenges of the last few months pale into insignificance against the enormity of what the new prime [...]
Boris Johnson needs to find the Tory heartlands before he fights for them Will Tanner The biggest challenge facing the Conservative Party is not just the growing question of who leads it but also where in the country it can build an electoral majority. Put simply: is the future heart of conservatism likely to be in Southern home counties or in the post-industrial towns of the North and Midlands? The [...]
Take back control? Not until we reign in bullying councils and reinstate local parishes OPEN UP You probably haven’t heard of Queen’s Park in Westminster but it has a unique claim to fame: it is the only neighbourhood in London that governs its own affairs. In 2014, after three years of bitter political battles, local people wrestled a modicum of control from the borough, Westminster City Council by establishing Queen’s Park [...]
Sturgeon’s dismal domestic record has derailed the SNP’s train of separatism October 8, 2021 Nicola Sturgeon believes in destiny. In an interview with the Financial Times published yesterday, the First Minister claimed that another referendum on Scottish independence is inevitable because of the demographics of independence. “I’ve got democracy on my side”, she argued, “if they think it’s about playing a waiting game, I’ve probably got time on my [...]
Business rates from the 16th century are ruining the high-street and an online sales tax isn’t enough February 23, 2021 The pandemic is in many ways not a break from the past but a rapid accelerator, and nowhere has the world sped up as much as in our shopping habits. In the last year, more retail sales shifted onto the internet than had done so in the previous decade. UK consumers spent £24 in every [...]
Massive corporate debt could hamper the pandemic recovery. Here’s how we could deal with it September 11, 2020 Will Tanner puts forward a suggestion for tackling UK companies’ rising corporate debt in the wake of the pandemic. The paradox of the pandemic is that everything we have done to support our economy through the crisis may inadvertently hamper our recovery out of it. Since March, the Treasury has gone to unprecedented lengths to [...]
DEBATE: Should the chancellor bend the fiscal rules to increase spending in his first Budget? March 10, 2020 Should the chancellor bend the fiscal rules to increase spending in his first Budget? Will Tanner, director of Onward, says YES. It is the prerogative of a twenty-first century chancellor to set the rules of your own tenure. Gordon Brown, George Osborne, Philip Hammond and Sajid Javid (who never delivered a Budget) all established the [...]
DEBATE: Does it make sense to run the Treasury out of Number 10? February 17, 2020 Does it make sense to run the Treasury out of Number 10? Will Tanner, director of Onward, says YES. Boris Johnson is not the first resident of Number 10 to want a closer hold on Number 11. Pitt the Younger, Peel, Disraeli, Gladstone and Baldwin all served as chancellor and Prime Minister concurrently. The two [...]
Out of the prison cell, into the workplace June 25, 2019 Crime is a top tier political issue for members of the public, but it has barely featured in the race for Number 10 Downing Street. Beyond the popular but reactive refrain of putting more bobbies on the beat, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have so far failed to spell out how they would curb rising [...]
DEBATE: Would a scheme encouraging landlords to sell to private renters help solve the housing crisis? October 9, 2018 Would a scheme encouraging landlords to sell to private renters help solve the housing crisis? Will Tanner, director of Onward, says YES. Britain’s housing market has many flaws, but one of its most pernicious is the never-ending treadmill of private renting. The average renter in London today spends 40 per cent of their post-tax income [...]
