Labour
Party Posturing on Trident
No tactical gains to be made from playing politics with defence
"...A fully costed Strategic Defence and Security Review that looks critically at all significant planned defence spending is crucial to achieving efficient allocation of resources and obtaining the best outcomes for the military..."
Rank Idiocy
The MyPolice fiasco suggests that speaking to the vision of a Big Society is more important now than ever before
"...A small, social start up finds that its biggest competitor is the state it is trying to help. Not only that but the state attempts to crowd out its competitor by using the very same domain name. She would be entitled to ask: whose side are they on?..."
Whatever Happened to Traditional Conservatism?
Guest contributor Michael Merrick takes on the shibboleths of progressivism
"...beyond the trendies in Islington, metropolitan ethics is rather less popular, and it can alienate..."
When Universities Become Production Lines
Why streamlined higher education means quality left behind
"...how can the quality of education be maintained through a reduction in budgets, a streamlining of services and an increase in student numbers all at the same time?..."
Budget 2010 - Children and Families
Not the budget to end child poverty
"...The cost of child poverty is high – it is estimated to stand at £25bn per year – so the fight against it should be part of the plan for economic recovery, not something that can be treated on the sidelines..."
Budget 2010 - Ownership and Enterprise
A budget of disparate, but promising micro-economic initiatives
"...SMEs can expect a twelve month cut in the business rates and a doubled entrepreneurs' relief for Capital Gains Tax. This will mean that 500,000 SMEs will pay reduced taxes, including 350,000 of which that will pay no tax at all..."
Budget 2010 @ The Disraeli Room
The ideas behind the announcements
On Wednesday March 24th, The Disraeli Room will run a series of comment pieces on the issues that arise from what promises to be one of the most important budgets in recent times.
Raging against the Machine
Guest Contributor, Michael Merrick, on why some forms of localism deserve to fail
"...we ought to avoid turning the civic realm into a sectarian power play for ghettoised interest groups, and instead encourage an associative realm in which diversity is embraced as a healthy corollary of the system, rather than an absolutised foundation of it..."
AV It!
The Great Electoral Reform Debate Part Two: Director of Research at the Electoral Reform Society, Lewis Baston, with a withering piece directed at opponents of real electoral reform
"...Qvortrup points out that AV in Australia sometimes produces elections in which a party wins more votes but fewer seats than its main opponent. This is not an argument for keeping FPTP, whose track record in Britain on this is appalling. In three of the four close elections (margin of victory less than 2 percentage points) since 1918, the party with fewer votes won more seats (1929, 1951, February 1974). A system with a 75 per cent failure rate in testing conditions is unfit for purpose..."
