Centre WriteSam Lampier
January 25, 2019

Sam Lampier: Is the Home Office ready for the EU Settlement Scheme?

As of this week, EU citizens currently living in the UK and their families can apply for settled status and must do so by 30 June 2021 to legally remain…
Bright Blue
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Centre WriteSam Lampier
January 17, 2019

Sam Lampier: Citizenship – The missing ingredient in Britain’s immigration and integration policies?

While immigration has been a high-profile and contested policy area in British politics for some decades, an often under-explored, but related policy area is citizenship. There is some evidence from…
Bright Blue
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Centre Write
January 11, 2019

Craig Bateman: The NHS Long Term Plan – Dissolving the “historic divide”?

“This is a historic moment”, the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Theresa May MP, declared earlier this week at the launch of the NHS’s new ‘Long-Term plan’. This ten-year plan…
Bright Blue
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Centre WriteSam Lampier
January 3, 2019

Sam Lampier: Assessing the Government’s Immigration White Paper

Last month, the Government published its long-awaited Immigration white paper, setting out its plans for an immigration system after Britain leaves the European Union. Its stated aim is to establish…
Robert Hansard
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Centre WriteWilf Lytton
December 27, 2018

Wilf Lytton: Response to the Government’s Resources and Waste Strategy

Last week, the Government launched its much-anticipated Resources and Waste Strategy (RWS) for England. The RWS focuses on eight areas: the production of waste; the consumption of resources; resource recovery…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
December 24, 2018

Henrique Laitenberger: Conservative, AKKtually

The German Christian democrats have de facto only known one party leader in the 21st century: Dr Angela Merkel. Elected in 2000, she led the party through five national elections,…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
December 19, 2018

Kit Kowol: Rethinking conservatism? Look to the past

Everyone agrees, to fight Jeremy Corbyn and engage younger voters the Conservative Party needs new ideas. Recent months have seen a host of new think-tanks set up to try and…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
December 19, 2018

Lord Ahmad: A foundational freedom

Freedom of religion or belief, including the freedom to change religion, or have no faith, is a fundamental human right and one that I believe passionately should be enjoyed by…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
December 12, 2018

Dr Andrew Skilton: Something borrowed or something new?

I was half listening to a piece of vox pop radio a while ago and heard what seemed like a priceless comment from a teenage girl: “I’m not materialistic” she…
Robert Hansard
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Centre WriteRohit Bansal
December 7, 2018

Rohit Bansal: Examining the ‘hostile environment’

This year saw an increased focus on the consequences of the Government’s so-called ‘hostile environment’ policy for illegal immigrants due to the Windrush scandal. This involved cases of Windrush generation…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
December 4, 2018

Revd Mike Long: There, when we need it the most…

It is a given that British society is changing fast: we are far more diverse than previous decades. We are becoming a more fractured society, more discontented with politics in…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
November 26, 2018

Mohammed Amin: An end to Islamophobia

I want to explain briefly why tackling ‘Islamophobia’ is vital, both for our country, and for the Conservative Party in particular. The word ‘Islamophobia’ is itself contested. I normally avoid…
Bright Blue
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Centre WriteJessica Prestidge
November 22, 2018

Jessica Prestidge: Women in work polling analysis

Since 2010 the Government has enacted a series of policy initiatives to promote gender equality in the workplace, including mandatory gender pay gap reporting for businesses with over 250 staff,…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
November 20, 2018

Andrew Copson: A secular state for a secular people?

Secularism, globally, is under threat. Attacked from all sides: from the left, from the right, by liberal multiculturalists and illiberal totalitarians, abused by racists and xenophobes as a stick with…
Bright Blue
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Centre Write
November 13, 2018

Dr. Andrew Davies: Having faith in Faith

Faith communities are among the UK’s most underappreciated providers. Week in week out, they educate our children, feed the hungry, tend the sick and dying, and generally provide an anchor…
Bright Blue
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Centre Write
November 11, 2018

Ryan Shorthouse and Jessica Prestidge: Tuition fees for sandwich years, by English university (2016-17)

Bright Blue submitted Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to 94 English universities on 8 August 2018, asking for: The tuition fees charged to undergraduate students during their sandwich year, in…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
November 2, 2018

Dr. Qanta Ahmed: To veil or not to veil?

I am a Muslim woman who is observant of Islam. I also believe ‘veiling of the face’ is an un-Islamic practice. I reject the niqab as part of my personal…
Bright Blue
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Centre WriteEamonn Ives
October 26, 2018

Eamonn Ives: Time to take action on the West Midlands’ woeful air quality

Ambitious intentions When Andy Street was campaigning to become elected as Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority (hereafter the WMCA, which is an agglomeration of the seven councils in…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
October 26, 2018

Kelechi Okeahialam: Legislating to end sexual harrassment

Many girls feel street harassment is “all part of growing up”. This worrying statement comes from a report by children’s charity Plan International UK, which found that girls as young…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
October 23, 2018

Nick Spencer: British Prime Ministers ‘do God’- sort of

It is a strange fact that as Britain has become more secular its Prime Ministers have become more religious. In the decade or so after the Second World War we…
Bright Blue
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Centre Write
October 16, 2018

Tim Farron: Faithful to politics?

What role should faith have in a liberal public square? A quick trawl on Twitter of the phrase ‘religion’ and ‘politics’ predictably brings up a largely negative view: “Keep religion…
Bright Blue
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Centre WriteRohit Bansal
October 12, 2018

Rohit Bansal: Self-employment today

Self-employment has seen rapid growth since 2001, particularly among women, young people and those aged 65 and over. This rise in self-employment has been seen by some as part of…
Bright Blue
Love0
Centre Write
October 11, 2018

Stephen Pollard: The Corbynites and antisemitism

Denis Healey coined the classic ‘First Law of Politics’: “When you’re in a hole, stop digging.” As a guide to dealing with a crisis, it’s almost always the best advice.…
Bright Blue
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Centre Write
October 4, 2018

James Smith: How do we solve Britain’s housing crisis?

We haven’t been building enough houses, and this has pushed prices up. In London, the mean house price-to-earnings ratio has shot up from 4:1 to 10:1 in just two decades,…
Robert Hansard
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Centre WriteMichael Johnson
September 28, 2018

Michael Johnson: The Lifetime ISA: enhance and simplify

In 2014, I proposed a Lifetime ISA (LISA) in a paper for the Centre for Policy Studies. Three years later, one appeared in the market. However, it did not appear…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
September 25, 2018

Adam Kearns: How to house our history: the ethics concerning colonial artefacts

Over the past few years, a quiet but fierce battle has raged in the corridors of cultural power. It regards the ethics of Western countries holding the antiquities of their…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
September 21, 2018

Anne le Roux: Reprogramming Capitalism

Technological advances are changing the way that we produce, trade and consume. These changes can threaten traditional capitalist economic models however, capitalism has developed many ways of evolving. There are…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
September 19, 2018

Oscar Rocklin: A new chapter in the immigration debate

This week the Government’s Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) released its final report on the impact of migration from EEA countries into the UK. This follows on from a report published…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
September 14, 2018

Oscar Rocklin: Myanmar’s high crimes against the Rohingya

Last month, the United Nations (UN) released the conclusions of an investigation into the humanitarian situation in Myanmar, with special focus on the treatment of the Rohingya population of Myanmar’s…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
September 14, 2018

Max Glynn: How do we solve Britain’s housing crisis?

To call the housing crisis a quagmire would be an understatement. Strangely it is one of the few bipartisan issues in modern Britain: every party accepts that we must solve…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
September 5, 2018

Oscar Rocklin: Making sense of tax

Ruth Davidson MSP’s recent intervention on the need for a new approach to taxing tech giants as a means of protecting high streets and town centres touches on a much…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
September 3, 2018

Eamonn Ives: Conservation nation: new Bright Blue essay collection out today

Almost a year has now passed since the striking and sobering images of mountains of plastic, choking the world’s seas and oceans, were first broadcast onto our television screens in…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
August 24, 2018

Oscar Rocklin: Conservatism and civil society since Thatcher

The infamous quotation most frequently deployed to denigrate the Thatcher legacy is from her interview with Woman’s Own in which she stated “there is no such thing as society”. Although…
Robert Hansard
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Centre WriteRyan Shorthouse
August 21, 2018

Ryan Shorthouse and Andrew Harrop: Consensus continued? The next stage of pension reform

The last 15 years have seen impressive cross-party consensus on pensions policy, particularly the establishment and extension of auto-enrolment into workplace pensions. This has led to improvements in retirement savings…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
August 15, 2018

Saher Murtaza: Getting to the heart of the burqa row

Last week, Boris Johnson caused a ruckus by likening Muslim, burqa-wearing women to “letter boxes” and “bank robbers”. In the furore that ensued, debates over whether the burqa is compatible…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
July 27, 2018

Olivia Utley: The future of Civil Partnerships

When same-sex marriage was introduced in 2013, civil partnerships (civil marriages in all but name) - which were introduced in the 2000s by the new Labour Government - technically became…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
July 24, 2018

Oscar Rocklin: “Soft power” in post-Brexit Britain

“Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath”. These words of Athenian statesman Solon should help guide how Britain rethinks its diplomatic efforts for the years ahead.…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
July 11, 2018

Benedict Rogers: The end of human rights in Hong Kong?

On 23 January this year, the House of Commons held a debate on Hong Kong. The following day, the House of Lords introduced their own oral question. Both debates were…
Robert Hansard
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Centre WriteEamonn Ives
July 4, 2018

Eamonn Ives: Public polling analysis of attitudes towards the impact of and policies on air pollution

The Government has recently renewed its focus on environment policy, influenced in part by recent Bright Blue polling which showed that climate change was the number one policy area which…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
June 27, 2018

Finley Morris: The US has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council. Should we be worried?

On Tuesday 19th of June the United States withdrew its position as a member of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). This announcement is seen by many as a blow…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
June 15, 2018

Jordan Byrne: To deliver real equality in the workplace, we must tackle shared parental leave

On the 6th of February 1918, the first step towards universal suffrage was taken. The Representation of the People Act was a major step, but one that Emmeline Pankhurst, who had…
Robert Hansard
Love0
Centre Write
May 25, 2018

Philip Box: Hotting up: Strengthening the Climate Change Act

Ten years since Parliament passed the world's first Climate Change Act, the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen significantly, whilst the economy has grown. However, following the 2015 Paris Agreement…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
May 14, 2018

Claire Ainsley: The new working-class – and what it means for politics

A recent poll by YouGov produced the remarkable finding that voters broadly considered to be working-class – in social grades C2DE – have had a rapid swing from Labour to…
Robert Hansard
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Centre WriteRyan Shorthouse
May 8, 2018

Ryan Shorthouse and Campbell Robb: Burning Britain?

When Theresa May delivered her first speech as Prime Minster on the steps of Number 10 Downing Street, she proclaimed that the mission of her Government was to tackle the…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
April 25, 2018

Oliver Harvey: It’s time to regulate Facebook

In the 1974 film The Conversation, mercenary spook and grumpy jazz enthusiast Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is tasked by a secretive multinational cooperation to follow a young couple around San…
Robert Hansard
Love0
Centre Write
April 18, 2018

Tahmidur Chowdhury: Spiralling violent crime – has the government been ignoring this issue for too long?

With numerous reports highlighting the spike in violent crime from the beginning of 2018, London is now statistically more unsafe than New York. Whilst the argument has been focused upon…
Robert Hansard
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Centre WriteSam Hall
April 17, 2018

Sam Hall: Public attitudes to UK climate leadership – Ten years since the Climate Change Act

In recent months, the Government has made the environment a major focus of its domestic policy programme. In January 2018, the Prime Minister, Theresa May, gave the first domestic prime…
Robert Hansard
Love0
Centre Write
March 29, 2018

David Verghese: Integrating veterans into society

Every day, around the country and around the world, the men and women of the Armed Forces serve their fellow citizens in keeping the country safe. They often undergo huge…
Robert Hansard
Love0
Centre Write
March 23, 2018

James Boyd-Wallis: The certainty curse

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts”, said the British philosopher Bertrand Russell.…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
March 13, 2018

Thimios Tzallas: The future of liberal conservatism in Greece

A few days ago, Greek public opinion was passionately discussing the new TV advertisement of a major toy-store chain. The protagonist is Panayiotis Psomiadis, a hard-core, veteran right-wing politician and…
Robert Hansard
Love0
Centre Write
March 9, 2018

Jeff Webster: Tackling the housing crisis

The Government has announced plans to increase house construction. This is sound policy and the Government is right to focus on ways to increase supply. But we shouldn’t lose sight…
Robert Hansard
Love0
Centre Write
February 19, 2018

Tom Chapman: Vote Blue, Go Green!

The conviction that we must leave the next generation a country in a better state than when we found it drives Conservatives. In our ‘Blue Planet II’ age, that belief…
Robert Hansard
Love0
Centre Write
February 15, 2018

Max Jeffery: A future fit for this country

Emerging industries have grown vastly in recent years, pushing the UK to the fore of future growth. We are storming ahead in non-animal technologies, in quantum technologies, and in graphene…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
February 13, 2018

David Stephenson: Reducing fees won’t stop universities failing students

Following the appointment of Sam Gyimah as universities minister, a reduction in tuition fees has become more likely. It is believed that, unlike his predecessor Jo Johnson, Gyimah supports No.…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
January 17, 2018

Tim Loughton MP: Are we serious about protecting children?

Next month, my bill to give opposite sex couples the same choice of marriage or civil partnership that is currently only available to same sex couples will get its second…
Robert Hansard
Love0
Centre Write
January 9, 2018

Aled Jones: Taming the internet

Over New Year weekend, Logan Paul, one of Youtube’s most successful content creators, posted a vlog of a trip to a Japanese forest where he found the body of a…
Robert Hansard
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Centre WriteRyan Shorthouse
January 3, 2018

Ryan Shorthouse and Andrew Harrop: Saving for the Future

Democratic politics is, at its heart, about finding solutions that compromise between different legitimate interests, values and people in our society. We make the most progress in tackling pressing problems…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
December 19, 2017

George Freeman MP: The need for a new foreign policy based on aid, trade and security

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…
Robert Hansard
Love0
Centre Write
December 11, 2017

Joel Collick: How conservatives think about human rights

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…
Robert Hansard
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Centre Write
December 4, 2017

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…
Robert Hansard
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