FORGET partisan politics, override short-termism and emergency fire-fighting. What the folks desperately want is the spirit of optimism to stream via their veins, and to see an thrilling future in entrance of them.
The chief who can do that will launch a constructive, pent-up vitality of huge energy in the proper path, in addition to avoiding anger on the streets.
In brief, we have to convey again to the fore these arcane phrases ‘development’, ‘productiveness’, ‘well being’ and ‘prosperity’ – not as soundbite rhetoric, however primarily based on a ten-year renaissance and development horizon.
This doesn’t imply kicking the can down the highway. We’d like actions, like silver bullets, from day one, with ongoing fulfilment of these choices unfolding in entrance of us over the longer interval. Here’s what must be finished …
Cancel HS2. Within the firestorm of an vitality, meals and inflation disaster, simply who cares about getting from London to Birmingham 20 minutes faster? Particularly at a value of £100billion-plus, and counting.
Cancel Internet Zero. We don’t have a local weather emergency, we have now a cost-of-living emergency. Cancelling Internet Zero means no extra inexperienced taxes. In the meantime, set about busting open these coal mines. Get fracking. Pump extra oil. Construct nuclear. Let’s get transferring. Let’s get self-sufficient.
Take again our fishing waters. In an island surrounded by productive seas, it’s ludicrous if we will’t feed the nation with cheap fish, as a primary precedence. Reclaim 100 per cent of our territorial waters – fishmongers and fish and chip retailers must be burgeoning in our communities.
Deliver again Mike Yeadon. We’d like correct medical scientists over right here, not charlatans beholden to Huge Pharma. Entice Mike Yeadon, not with gold however with ardour, to get again right here and assemble a high group from the worldwide group.
Two duties for them: 1. Turn out to be the federal government adviser on the well being of the nation (stuffing Sage the place it belongs): 2. Start the method of making fully-funded, impartial analysis and improvement laboratories for medication and medicines, to switch Huge Pharma, ultimately changing into the non-profit UK producer and provider of all our pharmaceutical wants.
Take away all sanctions in opposition to Russia. Not in assist of Russian aggression, however to cease taking pictures ourselves within the foot. Stop all arms gross sales to Ukraine – this isn’t our combat.
Repair the price of a kilowatt-hour. Vitality must be reasonably priced, as a lot by the poor as by enterprise, in any other case every little thing will seize up, similar to a lockdown. Repair the price of a kwh – the usual unit for the sale of electrical energy – for everybody at a worth the poor can afford. This takes the fast stress off the financial system as a complete. Nonetheless, there is no such thing as a such factor as a free lunch, so fund the shortfall from normal taxation.
The Authorities thereby turns into the largest single buyer of the vitality business, and may negotiate laborious on the cash. That is nationalisation by stealth, over a time frame, with out the large upfront capital buyout.
Funding from normal taxation is a fairer means of distributing the ache, however can be even fairer if sure sectors had been paying their correct due. Particularly, massive firms and worldwide conglomerates with large turnovers get away with accounting manipulation, switch of earnings offshore, and over-generous write-offs.
Radically, subsequently, I’d suggest that enterprise is not taxed on its earnings, however on its gross UK revenues, in actual time, on the banking second, i.e., one per cent of banked income is straight away shaved off and remitted to the Treasury.
Even when that cash subsequently goes overseas, it has to undergo the UK banking system first. Revenue/loss declarations, or certainly tax returns, are not required, and no ongoing legal responsibility is accrued. Tax is collected in actual time at zero assortment or accountancy value.
Make and develop every little thing we will. We all know our local weather, our pure assets and our historical past. We have to turn out to be as self-sufficient as doable, rising our personal fruit and greens, rearing our personal livestock, mining and smelting our personal metals, constructing our personal automobiles, making our personal pots and pans.
This implies placing up tariffs in opposition to something we will produce ourselves. Being seduced by cheaper items from overseas comes at a really excessive, long-term value – dependency and even slavery. Let’s get Britain again to work. Actual work.
Reappoint PC Dixon. This isn’t a nostalgic craving for the previous, epitomised by PC George Dixon patrolling Dock Inexperienced within the widespread BBC tv sequence from 1955 to 1976. While you take bobbies off the road, you break the tactile connection between the police and the communities they purport to serve. It’s, or must be, a private relationship between the officer and the residents on his or her beat. They need to know one another.
To say ‘we’ve moved on from there, trendy policing is extra advanced’ is a complete misnomer – a lie, in actual fact. Think about the ability of ‘Good morning, Mrs Smith, how are you immediately?’ from a uniformed officer (not one in hi-viz or Gestapo black, please), whether or not to a citizen on the backyard gate or to the proprietor of a bistro.
In fact, the officer on the beat has the advantages of recent know-how – physique cameras and emergency name services for assist from fast response models. However hiding behind surveillance cameras in darkened management rooms shouldn’t be policing – it’s spying, sniping and abrogation of civic duty.
Reconstruct the NHS. Progressively strip out centralisation and the concomitant layers of administration by making every hospital a standalone value centre, headed by its matron and almoner.
Take away tuition charges for nurses in addition to the necessity to have a level within the first place – there are many caring folks with out {qualifications} who would make glorious nurses, and may be educated on the job. Pay nurses extra with cash saved from the cuts in administration. Preserve centralisation for buying, to impact economies of scale.
Ban range, vital race idea and intercourse training from the Nationwide Curriculum. How did we ever get to imagine that schoolteachers have the proper (or the time) to indoctrinate kids with such nonsense, when English grammar, English literature, arithmetic, historical past, geography, music et al are all jostling for consideration on the trail to good instructional improvement?
