The Conservative Reader

Sunak speech; grooming gangs; high streets in peril; childcare reform; the new cold war; Labour radicalism; building beautiful; the Western underclass; NHS crisis; Benedict XVI dies; Chinese monopoly

We think conservatives need to talk more and get better at sharing ideas. So here we share the best newspaper columns, policy reports and books that will stimulate thinking and promote new ways of doing things.

The Conservative Reader is published every Friday lunchtime, so please do look out for it. And expect plenty of content about the things we think make conservatism such a compelling body of thought: identity and belonging, community and commitment, market economics, national resilience and good government.

You can find more about what we think on Twitter here and here.

Best wishes, Nick and Gavin

Towering columns

James Johnson says “President Rishi” can still win by ruthlessly targeting swing voters:

…his five promises are well targeted at voters the Conservatives need to win back. The fight now is not for millennials who stopped voting Tory after Brexit. Labour has made more inroads with Leavers since 2019 than Remain voters. It is working class voters – usually over the age of 40 – who were so crucial to the Conservative majority in 2019. With immigration one of the top issues for them, pledging to stop the migrant Channel crossings will appeal. Waiting lists are a universal issue, but speak most to those over 65 who prioritise the NHS above even the cost of living. The language around the importance of family and community strikes right to the heart of small-c conservative Britain.

Mr Sunak will need to start delivering on these promises to win over sceptical voters bruised by the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss premierships. More will be needed on housing and childcare, too. But for the first time since autumn, the ingredients to close that gap are there. Swing voters are still hesitant about Keir Starmer and doubt whether the Labour leader is sincere and has a plan…

Louise Perry says the crimes of grooming gangs are being ignored:

I suspect that future historians will be puzzled by these last few decades, during which the widespread prostitution of children by organised criminal gangs — sometimes escalating to murder — was met with embarrassed silence in much of the media and among most feminists. This was even while far less serious incidents (say, Jeremy Clarkson’s comments about Meghan Markle) were met with outrage. Why would feminists jump to the defence of a princess, but raise barely a peep in response to the raped 11-year-old branded with the initial of her rapist? 

One reason, among several, was a fear of appearing racist. As former Greater Manchester Police constable turned whistleblower Maggie Oliver writes bluntly of the scandal in Rochdale, “the people at the top perceived the ethnicity of the offenders and the low status of poor white girls as a toxic mix.” As this scandal has unfolded over the last twenty years, most of those in positions of power (including many feminists) have cared far too little about the victims and far too much about their own reputations.

Which is why there is yet to be a true reckoning. Of the dozens of towns and cities targeted by these gangs, in only one — Rotherham — has an investigation been carried out by the National Crime Agency (NCA), the body best suited to independent investigations of this magnitude. While the Casey Report concluded in 2015 that, at a “conservative estimate”, 1,400 girls were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013 in Rotherham, the NCA’s subsequent investigation revised the number of victims during this period up to 1,510. As part of the NCA’s Operation Stovewood, 209 people have so far been arrested, with 20 convicted. 

Philip Johnston warns Britain’s high streets are dying and in need of renewal:

Last year, 50 shops a day closed down as retailers grappled with soaring energy costs, wider inflation and online shopping. Figures from the Centre for Retail Research showed that more than 17,000 sites across the UK shut their doors for the last time – almost 50 per cent higher than in 2021. Moreover, most of these were not businesses going bust. Just 32 per cent of the closures followed insolvency proceedings. The rest were larger retailers deciding to close some stores to cut costs or independents throwing in the towel, unable to compete with online sales.

One idea to create a level playing field between internet-based and high street retailers was an online sales tax (OST) on e-commerce goods and services. When he was chancellor, Rishi Sunak launched a consultation exercise with the aim of using the money raised to subsidise business rate cuts on the high street. Three models were reviewed: a turnover tax on e-commerce; a flat-rate levy per transaction; and a delivery surcharge of the sort that operates in other countries. In France, it is set at 0.42 per cent for platforms controlling deliveries and ride sharing services.

A two per cent online sales tax in the UK would raise about £4 billion but this is dwarfed by the £25 billion raised annually by business rates. Nonetheless it would make a contribution and the revenues could be targeted to the hardest hit areas.

Paul Goodman calls for a truly Conservative childcare policy:

Whatever you think of her solutions…Truss was certainly alert to the problems.  These are familiar – and have set out again recently in reports by the Centre for Social Justice and Onward. Public subsidy for childcare is lower than in comparable European countries, and UK families still face some of the highest up-front costs in the OECD.  The workforce are less qualified than in those neighbouring countries…

…The CSJ’s report suggests that parents are unsupportive of a big state childcare model predicated on parents being driven towards full-time work in the labour market.

The Truss supply side ideas are perfectly sensible, as were her proposals for family taxation.  But as my source says: “if I were trying to reform the subsidies, I’d start by making them more flexible rather than bunched at three and four”. That sounds a lot like ideas that ConservativeHome has floated before – namely, either restoring child tax allowances (with social security taking the strain for those who don’t pay tax). Or, more organically and praticably, rebadging child benefit as the child allowance and transferring other subsidies to it.  That way, parents could use the money for any form of childcare they liked – formal, informal or self-provided.

Michael Lind says the second Cold War is already upon us:

It is no coincidence that U.S. productivity and innovation sputtered in this century, when neoliberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans decided to let the free market develop the next wave of technologies. It turns out that venture capitalists and advertisers are more interested in addictive online sites like Facebook and Twitter than in robots and cures for cancer. Without exception the major advances in basic technology during the post-1980s era of free market utopianism have been largely funded by the federal government. Think of the sequencing of the human genome, the vaccines to combat COVID, electric cars like Tesla, and the rockets of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Neoliberal America, symbolized by Silicon Valley, is living on the technological capital inherited from developmentalist America, symbolized by the Pentagon.

This is critically important because world wars, hot and cold, are ultimately wars of industrial attrition. The three world wars that preceded today’s second cold war—World Wars I and II and Cold War I—demonstrate the importance of industrial power for victory. Imperial Germany and Nazi Germany and its allies were doomed once the U.S. mobilized its industrial might and entered the wars against them. When the Soviet Union under Gorbachev asked for a truce, the USSR was out-matched by the combined resources of the U.S., Western Europe, Japan, and its former ally communist China. In World War II, the U.S. and its allies directly bombed the factories and arsenals of their enemies. In World War I and Cold War I, the economies and morale of Imperial Germany and the Soviet Union, respectively, were strained to the breaking point without any foreign troops on the soil of the defeated power’s homeland.

Great powers, then, must not only have substantial populations and resources, but must also use them to support a world-class national industrial base in a prolonged and sustainable way. Neither state socialist crash programs that peter out over time nor bubbles and booms inflated by central banks in liberal market economies are adequate. To date in the industrial era, developmental states, both authoritarian like present-day China and democratic like the midcentury United States, have been more successful than communist regimes and free market liberal regimes. China has risen to the status of a second superpower on the basis of internal development and external trade, without waging the wars of choice on which the U.S. has squandered blood and treasure for a generation. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a reminder of the costs of wars of foreign conquest. So is the costly and humiliating failure of America’s two-decade misadventure in Afghanistan.

Michael Jacobs highlights Labour’s plans for an interventionist industrial strategy:

Aiming at the same time to tackle the UK’s abysmal productivity rate (considerably lower than that of Germany, France and the US) and a persistent trade deficit over the last 25 years, made worse by Brexit, Labour has recently published a new industrial strategy. For the first time this will focus not just on high-innovation sectors such as aerospace, but on the “everyday economy”, such as retail, transport, light manufacturing and services, seeking to raise productivity – and therefore wages – in the sectors in which most people work. Labour plans to use one of the very few genuine “Brexit freedoms” to target government procurement on UK companies. It wants to reduce the UK’s import bill and to strengthen the resilience of the economy in sectors such as food, health supplies and medicines, which were badly exposed in the pandemic. Reeves has further committed to establishing a national wealth fund to take equity stakes in Britain’s successful new businesses.

Labour will also introduce significant economic devolution to ensure that the benefits of its industrial strategy flow to all parts of the country. Commentary on Gordon Brown’s recent report on constitutional reform focused mainly on abolition of the House of Lords. But arguably Brown’s more significant proposals are for local authorities to be given major economic powers and budgets to drive economic development across England, with new powers also devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Starmer has promised to consult on Brown’s proposals, but with wide support among Labour council leaders and mayors, it is hard to see them being rejected.

Wonky thinking

Rishi Sunak laid out his vision for Britain, pledging to restore “optimism, hope and pride”:

If we’re going to deliver this better future, people will have to work hard. But I believe good, well-paid jobs are about more than just financial security. They give people purpose, confidence, dignity – the chance to build a better life for themselves. But I also believe that if you work hard and play by the rules - you should be rewarded. Which is why as soon as we can, the Government will reduce the burden of taxation on working people.

And it is staggering that at a time when businesses are crying out for workers, a quarter of our labour force is inactive. So our growth plan will look at how we can support those who can, to move back into work – including through the welfare system. Now all of this will make this country a beacon of science, technology, and enterprise and lift our productivity, raise our growth rate, create jobs in the decades to come. Good jobs give people pride in their own lives.

But a better future also means reinforcing people’s pride in the places they call home. And the change we need is to do away with the idea that it’s inevitable that some communities and some places can never and will never get better. I love my local community and it’s not right that too many for far too long have not felt that same sense of meaning and belonging. Government can’t create it – it’s something we build together. But the state does provide the foundations. So we will deliver on our promise to level up – with greater investment in local areas, to boost growth, create jobs, and reinvigorate our High Streets and Town Centres.

… I believe deeply that family – not just government – can help us answer the profound questions we face as a country. When it comes to health, family cares for us when we are sick and old; family teaches us values in education; when it comes to community – family guides us in right and wrong. That’s why family runs right through our vision of a better future.

When I first spoke to you as Prime Minister, I stressed that trust was not given but earned. I hope that in these first few weeks in the job I have begun to earn your trust. And I’ve made five promises today to deliver peace of mind. We will: Halve inflation. Grow the economy. Reduce debt. Cut waiting times. And stop the boats.

Policy Exchange published a report, A School of Place: How a New School of Architecture can Revitalise Britain’s Built Environment. A new academy dedicated to building beautiful aesthetic environments could help secure public support for housebuilding, it argues.

This paper proposes that the UK government encourages, promotes or establishes a new school of architecture and urban design dedicated to placemaking. The School of Place would seek to ensure that architects, planners and built environment professionals have access to the best theories, principles and most importantly practices that will enable them to consistently deliver liveable, successful and sustainable places that embody the very highest standards of architectural and urban design.

Such a step would be part of a wider government strategy to meet a number of critical political objectives. Promoting a wider understanding of placemaking was one of the key recommendations of the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission’s Living With Beauty report, the political evolution of Policy Exchange’s Building Beautiful programme which calls for the reinstatement of beauty in our urban landscapes…

If a new school of architecture proved effective in ensuring a generally higher quality of architecture and placemaking then this could help diffuse much of the aesthetic opposition to new housing that, despite the housing crisis, is still all too common in many British towns and cities. Raising standards of urban and public realm awareness amongst built environment professionals could also pre-emptively resolve many of the tensions that have often been a feature of British urban development within the modern era and are inherent in issues such as the consolidation of tall buildings within heritage contexts and the efficacy of protections afforded to urban character.

Book of the week

Our chosen book this week is Theodore Dalrymple’s Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass. In this 2003 social study of poverty in Britain, Dalrymple argues that a breakdown of moral norms and the abandonment of individual responsibility has caused social devastation going beyond the material:

A spectre is haunting the Western world: the under-class.

This underclass is not poor, at least by the standards that have prevailed throughout the great majority of human history. It exists, to a varying degree, in all Western societies. Like every other social class, it has benefited enormously from the vast increase in wealth of the past hundred years. In certain respects, indeed, it enjoys amenities and comforts that would have made a Roman emperor or an absolute monarch gasp. Nor is it politically oppressed: it fears neither to speak its mind nor the midnight knock on the door. Yet its existence is wretched nonetheless, with a special wretchedness that is peculiarly its own.

As a doctor who has worked for the past decade in a busy general hospital in a British slum, and also in a nearby prison, I have been in a privileged position to observe the life of this underclass. I have, for example, interviewed some ten thousand people who have made an attempt (however feeble) at suicide, each of whom has told me of the lives of four or five other people around him…

…Moreover, having previously worked as a doctor in some of the poorest countries in Africa, as well as in very poor countries in the Pacific and Latin America, I have little hesitation in saying that the mental, cultural, emotional, and spiritual impoverishment of the Western underclass is the greatest of any large group of people I have encountered anywhere…

…patterns of behaviour emerge - in the case of the underclass, almost entirely self-destructive ones. Day after day I hear of the same violence, the same neglect and abuse of children, the same broken relationships, the same victimisation by crime, the same nihilism, the same dumb despair. If everyone is a unique individual, how do patterns such as this emerge?

Quick links

The Prime Minister gave a speech laying out his vision for Britain.

Sir Keir Starmer set out Labour’s alternative.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s funeral was held in Rome.

Government net approval for health is -73 per cent, down from -3 per cent in 2020.

Michael Gove has been charged with tackling anti-social behaviour.

British manufacturing output is set to fall by 3.2 per cent in 2023.

One in five occupiers now rents from a private landlord, a figure that has more than doubled over the last 20 years.

Chinese researchers say they can break the algorithm behind most online encryption.

China’s buy-up of British assets has seen £1 billion in dividends flow back to Beijing.

“Infinite” numbers of migrants may replace Albanians crossing the Channel.

Japan is offering families 1 million yen per child to leave Tokyo.