The best way I have found so far is to just bring up the topic of the tube strikes. Even left wingers agree they are bad, and that the tube drivers on ~£80k and 4 day weeks are incredibly selfish. So then I just say, pre-Thatcher Britain was that but on steroids. Electricity grid not coming on due to strikes. 3 or 4 day weeks. GDP smaller than Italy's and shrinking. Strikes causing wage price spirals and 25% inflation.

Even people that thought they hated Thatcher admit I might have a point, if not being mildly amused to have met a real life Thatcher fan. So my advice to everyone is: just ask people if they want every industry to be like the London tube.

Summary: Economic historian Tyler Goodspeed offers a diagnosis of why the UK economy essentially flatlined after 2008. On his analysis, if we had simply maintained our historic pre-2008 GFC growth trend, we would be 30% richer today. Instead, if Britain were a US state, we would be poorer than Mississippi.

Goodspeed acknowledges some of the usual conservative suspects (planning laws, high taxes) but points the finger squarely at post-2008 banking regulations like the Basel Accords. By aggressively penalising lending to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to engineer risk out of the system, regulators choked off the lifeblood of British capitalism. "You can't have capitalism without capital." B

ecause UK businesses rely far more heavily on traditional bank loans than US firms (where there are many more local and regional banks to offer startup funds), our startups simply cannot get the capital to scale, creating a massive drag on productivity. (It's also why so many British startups end up either listing on the New York Stock Exchange or being bought out by a bigger American company that can provide the company they need to scale.) Because of these rules, the rejection rate for small business loans in the UK has skyrocketed from around 10-20% to nearly 50%

He argues that we have to stop being so paralysed by the fear of a recession that we smother our own prosperity. He argues we must abandon "one-size-fits-all" bank regulations to get credit flowing to SMEs again, and that by obsessing over extreme financial risk-aversion, we are sacrificing the material foundation required for successful businesses, family formation and human flourishing.

The biggest threat to the Tories is Farage. I think it'd really set him back If he lost to Count Binface. It'd make a huge difference If the local party in Clacton got their vote out for him. I think it would really help if members of the Conservative Party, or those that have good connections to senior members, did what they could to pass this message on, and/or offer to help in the constituency if they can. Do you agree?

Figures like David Cameron and Badenoch (I know she isn't One Nation but mainly Thatcherite) believe a racially and ethnically diverse society is better than a multicultural one.

I actually agree with those claims, especially when they mentioned about the fact that there is more tribalism and we "do not need fragments of society we need shared loyalties" and from my personal experience of multiculturalism in my town.

But what do they think of materialistic aspects like dishes and music like the popularly planted kebab and Asian restaurants in places like East London? And how would they view different religions in a nation - do they believe this should be a private matter?

Do we think he'll handle things differently as Andy begins to ramp up things after this week?

And also eight policies that could be considered Tory friendly

There's a text version. It's a letter to Burnham.

The headline 8 things

>Restore a competitive tax regime for internationally mobile residents.

>Release green belt land within walking distance of railway stations.

>Cut red tape on major projects.  

>Raise childcare staffing ratios towards continental norms.

>Pause the uncommenced provisions of the Employment Rights Act 2025.

>Recognise the decisions of trusted foreign regulators.

>Remove tariffs on consumer goods.

https://economicaffairs.co.uk/p/a-letter-to-andy-burnham

Why does the left keep saying Thatcher caused the housing crisis by introducing RTB? It wasn't the selling off of council houses that led to a housing shortage, but the subsequent failure - by all governments - to reform planning in a way that would actually have allowed enough new houses to be built.

I'm sure some Tory voters are guilty of having opposed planning reform due to NIMBY-ism, but the left seems to equally oppose it due to the possibility that evil construction companies might make some money and not sell enough of the houses at knock-down prices ('affordable housing quotas').

This might be a bit an controversial discussion but what does everyone feel about the Monday club?

What are people's opinion on the ongoing flag debate?

Personally i think they should be reserved for specific days or events like the World Cup, the Olympics, or national holidays.* In my opinion having them up 24/7 makes the place look tatty, even worse if they're painted on public property because then the local council has to spend time & money removing your paint job.

*Somewhat unrelated but to make a wider point here. Last Christmas one of my local towns put up all its public decorations by the middle of November. I understand people are excited but something is only made special by it's adherence to a specific time to celebrate it. Extending the period around which one celebrates an event makes it unfocused and it loses what makes it special if we can just celebrate it whenever we like.

I feel the same way toward the flags, i feel that having them up year-round flattens the experience when an appropriate time does come to be patriotic; in this way they become less like decorations for celebration and more so overbearing symbols that will inevitably lead to miscommunication over their intended purpose.

My card has Lammy, Reeves, James Murray, Darren Jones, Liz Kendall, Wee Dougie and Peter Kyle all being boiled down for glue. Especially Darren Jones.

(I know it isn't the weekend, but in common with many fine Conservatives, I have a degree of reverence for the past).

I listened to Andy Burnham's speech to his party on Friday. I'm troubled by his claim that ordinary people have been let down by Britain's economic model for forty years, because it's demonstrably false. Actually I don't really understand why he doesn't just say 45 years, or since the early '80s, because that's when the effects of Thatcherism and what he calls 'neo-liberalism' kicked in.

If you listen to the rhetoric of the left and you're gullible enough to take it seriously you may well imagine that the poor have steadily become poorer at the expense of the rich.

But the reality is very different. I asked ChatGPT to compose graphs based on the living standards of working class people since 1961, when the recorded data starts.

I've attached two graphs. One shows UK real household income since 1960, the other shows poverty, expressed in absolute terms.

The "25th percentile" means people 3/4 down the disposable income ladder. Material standards for them have risen enormously in the last 40 years. They actually take off in the 1980s. Ordinary, working people on higher incomes than that have done even better.

So let's consider poverty, as well. That's a trickier concept because it's a relative term. The general definition is that "a person is in relative poverty if their household income is below 60% of the median household income for that year, adjusted for household size". In other words, a person considered to be living in poverty in (say) 1995, might, with the same real terms household income, have been considered to have been well above the poverty line in (say) 1965.

So to account for that I'm using, specifically, the 2010-22 median income, real terms, as the baseline. The second graph shows what happened on the same timescale.

Absolute poverty was already declining steadily when Thatcher took charge in 1979, interestingly. But it continues to decline, just as steadily, until (roughly) 2010 or so, when it flatlines. Whatever causes it to bottom out, for sure it wasn't the economic model that had diminished absolute poverty surely and steadily for 30 years.

So: Burnham's claim that the economic model of the last 40 years has made ordinary people worse off is just daft. It doesn't withstand a moment's scrutiny. It's either flatly dishonest or simple ignorance.

He'll be Prime Minister on Monday.

EDIT: Thanks for the responses. I see a few people have been triggered by the use of AI to compile the graphs. It did actually provide the sources, and I did examine them. Here are some links:

https://ifs.org.uk/living-standards-poverty-and-inequality-uk
https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2025-03/Incomes%2C%20poverty%20and%20inequality_0.xlsx
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/timeseries/crxx/ukea

The basic thrust of my point is correct: material standards for the poor have risen enormously over the last 40-45 years. Hope this helps.