Centre Write
Centre Write
Last month I was in the Bekaa valley - Lebanon’s agricultural heartland (the “Napa Valley” of the Middle East), now sadly synonymous with the exodus of families fleeing the chaos and war in Syria. Its slopes are lined with vineyards, while the flat valley bottom is dotted with the informal refugee settlements that house 35% of the 1.5 million Syrians that this tiny country has welcomed since 2012. Less than ten miles from Syria, it is only a coincidence of…
The philosophy of Conservatism and a belief in human rights are closely linked. Conservatives typically believe in the principles of personal freedom and a government limited by the rule of law. There is a strong tradition of Conservative politicians championing the development and protection of human rights. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was drafted and championed by Conservative politicians after World War Two. Indeed, it was actually a Conservative MP – Quintin Hogg – who first advocated a…
Monday, 04 December 2017 11:12

Julian Glover: Contents for conservatism

Thinking about conservatism in Britain, without thinking about Brexit, is becoming ever harder. The spring has been poisoned. This leaves those of us sympathetic to a gently-sceptical, generously-patriotic, largely-tolerant political force in favour of liberty with a problem. Our state of permanent national anxiety does not have to be the new normal. But large parts of the Conservative party have gone mad, seeming to prefer a diet of nationalist revolution, pretending that the impossible is possible, and doing so in…
Assuming the federal government’s ambitious timetable is met, on 1st July 2018, Canada will become the first G7 country to have legalised the production, sale, use, and possession of recreational cannabis. They will be only the second country in the world after Uruguay to fully legalise cannabis. If implemented well, this is a major opportunity for Canada to improve its public health outcomes, reduce young people’s contact with criminals and the justice system, cut the influence and funding of organised…
That UK prisons are overcrowded is well-known. That current recall practice is the second biggest drive behind the dramatic growth of the prison population is not. Nor is the concept of recall itself familiar to many. Despite its apparent innocuity, however, there are compelling arguments for a rethink of the practice’s use. What is recall? Recall refers to the practice of bringing offenders who are out on licence or parole back into prison. A person may be recalled if they…
The Chancellor is steering our economy through choppier waters. The Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast weak growth for the UK economy over the next few years while just last week the deputy governor for monetary policy of the Bank of England warned that Brexit could negatively affect productivity. One way of boosting the economy would be to further increase the employment rate of women. According to the Government’s Women’s Business Council, equalising the participation rate between men and women…
Much of the UK’s land area – 71% – is devoted to agriculture overseen by farmers, land owners, and land managers. The rules and arrangements which govern those groups, therefore, can have a profound impact on the country’s natural environment. Currently, rural activity and natural environment policies are funded and administered disparately by both the EU and the UK Government, across a number of different schemes. But by leaving the EU, and by extension the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the…
Monday, 20 November 2017 10:22

Idreece Khan: Left to Right

I am what you would call an unnatural conservative. My grandparents moved to the U.K in the sixties and spent their entire lives involved in Labour politics. Indeed, most of my family to this day are staunch Labour supporters. I grew up in a part of the country that was extremely safe Labour territory. My dad would often joke that the red rosette would win, even if it were to be placed on a baboon. I even spent a large…
Over the last several months, fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs), electronic gambling machines which lurk in betting shops, have been the subject of deep opprobrium, from the puritan left to Guido Fawkes. They are addictive and harmful, goes the charge, and finally the government has proposed a set of restrictions on them. Yet from a liberal perspective, driven by the harm principle (Mill’s dictum that people’s actions should be restricted only when they harm other individuals), it is not obvious…
Today’s most fundamental injustice is the lottery of birth. Conservatives should reject the socialist anathema of outcome inequalities; and instead make and prove the argument that capitalism can be a catalyst for, rather than a barrier against, closing this diversion between potential and prospects. Injustice found in institutions designed to achieve justice surely burns most. Much on the agenda recently have been worrying disparities, regarding, for example, the disproportionately high BAME prison population. If adjusted for arrests, however, it is…

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