This is not to say that all of Dodds’ analysis is coherent or correct, but the days of unhinged Corbynite attacks on capitalism are over.
The Government can do a lot in a short space of time. A key question should be: how do we make these towns nicer places to live?
McDonnell wanted a state-run pharmaceutical industry. So now we will never know how it would got on with producing Covid vaccines.
I was regaled with horror story after story on access to even existing testing. Confidence in the “moonshot” is non-existent.
Post-Covid, the environment is likely to be egalitarian and interventionist. For libertarian, small state Eurosceptics, this must come as a disappointment.
Reshaping Whitehall must be sanctioned by the Prime Minister, but he can empower the Government’s proven reformer, Michael Gove, to drive change.
It represents an emergency call to arms – not a permanent transition towards a command society.
People cannot simply be viewed as consumers or producers – there are other dimensions to policy, including the stewardship of the countryside.
Whether moderate right Conservative, or moderate left, austerity is dead, and this new age will be with us for a long time to come.
The reason we will get away with it again, as we did in the banking crash, is that there is so much deflation around, inflation is not a problem.
The fifth piece in our series this week about what the Tory Manifesto should look like.
If we can’t think of anything that’s going to do real good, maybe we could act like true Conservatives for once – and choose to do nothing at all?
There has been a tendency to suppose that because Britain’s power has declined in relative terms they must have become totally useless.
The first of a ConHome series this week on Boris Johnson’s Reset Moment – and what should follow from it.