Conservatives should never be shy in promoting a strong case for individual enterprise. We should acknowledge where the system doesn’t work, and seek to amend it.
In Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Angola and Cameroon maize is a staple, yet the earliest mention of maize in west Africa comes from a Portuguese document that lists it as being loaded on to slave ships bound for Africa.
If you are a borrower, the more you borrow, the more it costs.
The bull market, rising prices, earning lots of money, make it seem as if the good days will never end. When prices are falling and there is a recession, that also feels as though it will last for ever. Politics is the same. People simply can’t imagine changing circumstances.
We are often told that capitalism is in crisis, but look around the world and you’ll see that it has never been so buoyant.
The idea that historians aren’t affected by what goes on around them I think is slightly fanciful.
Of all the meals that represented British culture, perhaps none captured the imagination more than the Christmas pudding. It was the Victorians who firmly fixed the traditional plum pudding as a festive dish.
It’s often been said that conservatism is successful because it chimes with these basic human instincts. It’s time for us to ask fundamental questions about what the Conservative Party is for, and what it actually believes.
Aspiration, opportunity, and a stake in society are things which combine education, decent healthcare and the fruits of a capitalist system where individuals contribute to society, while also pursuing their natural inclination to improve their lot in life.
Any book on empire will omit, by necessity, vast tracts of the imperial experience, and so critics can easily find facts and details to contradict an author's bold generalisations.
I don't see how a lowering of VAT helps much, in terms of stimulus. VAT is a form of sales tax. It gets paid when you spend. A stimulus should put money in your pocket before you have actually spent the money.
From the start of her leadership of the Conservative party in February 1975, Thatcher’s style seemed shrill and uncompromising, and she became an easy object of mockery. When she left office nearly 16 years later, she was a widely recognised, but clearly still highly controversial, figure.
Mansa Musa never spoke in public, and whispered everything to an interpreter; he was also never allowed to be seen eating a meal.
