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‘Marriage is a public institution and essential to society’
● Marriage is the way society regulates baby-making - a liberal way of ensuring more children grow up in a stable family ● Marriage is becoming a middle-class phenomenon, further exacerbating inequality ● We have successively abolished the economic...
‘The household is properly an economic institution, sustained by a better work-life balance’
● Industrialisation and deindustrialisation have disrupted the economic basis of the household ● Policy seems designed to make the home as uncomfortable and pointless as possible ● A better settlement would help women and men do more of what they...
‘People are naturally skilled for the work of the future: the vocations of care and creativity’
● Automation is making manual and clerical jobs redundant ● Human beings are uniquely good at creative and caring roles, and we should focus on developing skills and opportunities here ● There is a special role for young people in helping society...
‘We need a new principle of “community power” to let people take back control of their neighbourhoods’
● Successive governments have reduced the power and competence of local councils ● We need more power for councils - but also for communities themselves ● The UK should lead the world in innovations in democracy and local governance In the three...
‘In public services we can have quality in abundance, not equity in scarcity’
● Public services are too centralised and individualised ● ‘Social solutions’ are growing through the cracks in the Attlee settlement ● We need a place-based model of public services which draws on the huge resources oflocal communities I argued in...
‘We need a more social economy: private capital should serve the public good’
● Businesses, like individuals, are relational, and operate in a moral context ● The purpose of a business is to serve the public ● Government could stimulate a boom in the social economy In the previous post (Proposition 6) I argued that the doctrine of...
‘We need a new “economics of place” instead of the failed doctrine of economic mobility’
● We have chronic regional inequality because labour and capital are not as mobile as the economy theory suggests ● Government have reinforced inequality through Higher Education and capital investment policy ● Places need strong identities, and...
‘We need a new constitutional settlement that includes the recognition of England within the Union’
● The Union is unstable because England is a political non-entity ● A new constitutional settlement that recognises England could attract the support of people across the UK In the three posts above I have argued that the state should promote the customs...
‘We need environmental nationalism: a deal between Left and Right to save the planet and reduce mass migration into Europe’
● Environmentalism is unpopular because it echoes the globalist, anti-national agenda ● Climate change should be addressed as a security challenge to the nation state ● We need an assertive foreign policy, with more spending on defence, development and...
‘We need a leaner, more capable state, and greater security in food, energy and tech’
● Whitehall should focus on the big strategic things, not the management of local human services ● We face multiple opportunities and challenges, including existential threats; these are the proper business of government ● We should build our resilience in the...
‘The state should safeguard the customs of the country’
● Nations enable liberty ● Elite disdain for the nation threatens the social covenant ● Government should nudge our institutions towards patriotism Brexit was a revolt against the pan-national idea. Yet the EU was not the real target of the Leave...
‘The purpose of politics is to create the conditions for virtue’
‘We’ precedes ‘I’: society forms the individual We are our best when we exercise the virtues: the ‘excellences of the species’ To nurture the virtues politics should strengthen the family, the community and the nation It would help to know who we are, or at least...