Alex Burghart: Why you should get involved with the Conservative policy renewal programme

Alex Burghart MP is Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, and Conservative MP for Brentwood and Ongar. He is coordinating the party’s policy renewal programme.

In November, Kemi Badenoch won the leadership on a promise of Renewal. That renewal is running through everything: the party’s structures and approach, CCHQ (which Kemi wrote about on this site last month), and, ultimately, its policies.

In 1832, Disraeli said: “I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good … a Radical to remove all that is bad.” As the party embarks on its most significant policy review in half a century, we all know that radicalism is much needed.

Neither our economy nor our government any longer serves the British people. Since 2008, wages have been stagnant whilst the cost of living has grown, leaving ordinary people considerably worse off. At the same time government has come to suffer from creeping sclerosis, hidebound by its own – or international – laws and regulations. The UK hasn’t built a new motorway in over 20 years. It hasn’t completed a new power station in 30 years. It’s taken £1.2 bn to date to not build the new lower Thames crossing.

By the time of the next general election, it is highly likely all will be worse. National debt will be higher – very likely, much higher. In March the Chancellor borrowed £10.7 bn, which is £4.2 billion more than she thought she would. By 2029-30, the OBR estimates the annual cost of servicing the national debt will have reached £120 bn.

During that time the economy will have grown little, if at all. No government has ever taxed its way to growth. The OBR’s ludicrously optimistic November prediction of 2 per cent growth in 2025 was halved last month even before the announcement of tariffs (‘fanciful’ was how one senior economic commentator described their figures to me).

Ordinary families will be worse off – very probably, much worse off. Council tax is rising. Energy prices are rising (thanks, Red Ed). Water bills are rising. Train fares are rising. Last week, eight bills rose costing families £1,100. The Jobs Tax alone is due to cost families £3,500. Growth, borrowing costs, inflation, living standards are all going in the wrong direction under Labour.

It doesn’t stop there. Unemployment too will probably be higher. The Chancellor has A-bombed business confidence (now at its lowest ever ebb), causing companies to halt hires and lay off staff, while Labour’s idiotic Employment Bill is poised to do the precise opposite of what it says on the tin. A charter by the unions and for the unions – it will strangle businesses in reams of red tape, let rip strikes galore and encourage unions to hold employers to ransom. This 300-page bill will haemorrhage jobs, slash salaries and take us back to the 1970s, destroying one of the world’s most successful labour markets in the process.

The likelihood of Labour’s welfare reforms either making meaningful savings or, critically, getting more people back into work looks vanishingly small. By their own estimates, these reforms will leave more people on benefits and take more people out of work, which takes a particular level of incompetence to achieve.

Labour’s talk of reforming government is but lip service. Since the election they have established 33 new quangos, and their adherence to legalism is driving them to pay £18bn to give away the Chagos Islands.

Not to mention the open-door immigration policy they have pushed, which means any new housebuilding gains will be wiped out, salaries will stay low and the strain on our public services will continue. No one voted for this, and it is the last thing this country needs.

Enough. It is time to shift the broken paradigms that have emerged since 1997. The next government must be ready to solve completely the problems set to metastasize under Labour, and be ready to rise to the challenges of the 2030s with technology and determination.

It is time to plan a renewal based on the truth. The truth that growth can only come from private enterprise. The truth that our country must live within its means and use its precious resources only on the things that really matter.

Renewal must begin with the prosperity of the country and its people. It is time to find the policies that will give us not just growth in GDP, nor – for that matter – growth in GDP per capita, but sustained growth, in the real-terms earned disposable income of ordinary families. No longer can government figures be fudged by immigration. It is time to truly become a high growth, low immigration economy.

Prosperity must help families to acquire security. We must become again the party of the property-owning democracy, dramatically increasing the proportion of UK citizens who own their own homes. It is time too to acquire an abundance of cheap energy that will drive down costs for families, help businesses compete and save public services money. It is time to return sanity to our justice system and effectiveness to our policing. Time to protect our borders and end illegal immigration. Time to regain control of our laws and systems to enable the democratic will of the people to be fulfilled by those elected to do so. It is time to rewire, reprogramme and reboot our country.

This is the greatest challenge in decades. Labour has made a mess of it. Reform is all anger and no ideas. Only the Conservatives can do this job. We need your experience as businesspeople, as doctors, as teachers, as farmers, as parents, as Conservatives. To get involved, contact the policy reviews at https://policy.conservatives.com/.