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5 radical ideas to balance the UK budget
| Long reads, Uncategorized
With our new PM in place the focus shifts from supercharging growth to finding short to medium term savings to balance the books. In truth as we have found dramatically already, the one measure is needed to enable the other: the interest cost of our debt has reduced because the markets have confidence that the current government will better identify cost savings and possesses the fiscal responsibility needed to deliver them. This in turn could provide the headroom potentially for a pre-election boost to help people feel more positive about their finances, and by extension vote for the Conservative Party in 2024/5. But this development also highlights that as we seek to find savings we must also consider measures that we might otherwise overlook, where indirect impacts or even the perception of smart government action can lead to reduced costs. We saw this most powerfully through the accelerated introduction of vaccines, which, costly as they were to develop, led to the ability to open up ...
Read more Tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth
| Speeches
My Lords, what else is there to say after so many heartfelt, excellent and eloquent tributes both in this Chamber and beyond? Our late Queen upon her passing, as ever ...
To build a more agile Britain, our leaders need to help us buy back better
| Long reads
The leadership contest we have just witnessed was like the political equivalent of Squid Game but without the bathos. The battle lines were relatively clear and on a 2 by ...
Setting the record straight on my work on East-West relations
| Long reads
The following statement is in response to allegations relating to my past work on UK-China relations. In short, it accuses me of having met with Chinese people and organisations, which ...