In the Telegraph, Douglas Carswell outlines his plan to reverse Britain’s decline by radically reforming governance, slashing regulations, cutting taxes and spending, securing borders and realigning foreign policy toward the Anglosphere. Here’s how his article begins:
Britain is in a pitiful condition. Our economy is faltering, burdened by high taxes and excess regulation. Public services no longer serve the actual public. Culturally, we are coming apart, strained by mass immigration, a crumbling sense of identity and a demographic transformation so swift it risks making our country unrecognisable.
None of this is inevitable. It is a consequence of abysmal policy, inept leadership and an administrative class that has lost all accountability to the people it claims to represent.
But putting Britain back on the right path will take much more than merely a Parliamentary majority.
The policies needed to renew our country will face fierce resistance from an administrative state determined to prevent their implementation. Unless we have a plan to overcome opposition from unelected officials and activist judges, national recovery will not be possible.
We don’t just need a change of government in Britain. National recovery means that we must fundamentally change the way Britain is governed.
The Leftist Revolution
For the past three decades, Britain has endured an ideological onslaught, a revolution cloaked as progress.
Men, we have been told, can become women. The ancient legal principle of equality under the law has been cast aside, with those holding certain “protected characteristics” treated preferentially.
Today, state bodies are required to tilt the scales against white Britons under the guise of “equality”. People have been sent to prison for their privately expressed opinions.
Our history, once a source of pride, is being rewritten. The country that produced Shakespeare, Newton, Brunel and Austen is not allowed any claim to exceptionalism, other than exceptional wickedness. Young people in Britain, a nation that led the fight to abolish to slave trade, are taught we were its chief practitioners.
Films and books are no longer produced to entertain but to lecture and scold.
Over the past generation, our elites have not just politicised culture and our past but turned our democracy into a technocracy, with power devolved to unelected “experts”.
The Bank of England, granted independence, presided over a banking crisis and lost control of inflation. The Climate Change Committee shapes energy policy, advising on measures which drive up costs and ruin what remains of our manufacturing. The Environment Agency halts development, Ofcom restricts free speech, the Information Commissioner dictates how businesses handle customer data. Judges decide whether we tap oil and gas reserves, while courts, not the free market, set wages.
The Leftist revolution began with Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide victory. Though Blair himself served as Prime Minister for only 10 of the past 28 years, every administration since he left Number 10 – Labour and Conservative – has held essentially the same core assumptions. They have governed in the belief that experts are infallible; that our rights are not the distinct product of our Island inheritance, but are universal. The core Blairite belief is that human nature is itself universal, people from any background interchangeable.
This is why they opened our borders, allowing millions of immigrants in, believing that anyone can become British – or even English, Scottish or Welsh.
None of this was chosen by us. None of it is based on what is good and true. It has not served us well.
Lamentable Decline
Britain has been run into the ground. We might imagine dispassionate bureaucrats crafting public policy for the common good, but the truth is grimly different: we have suffered a catastrophic decline.
Living standards have stagnated for the best part of two decades. Between 2008 and 2022, median income rose 7.2%. Over the previous 14 years, median incomes rose 38%. The UK per person output was once comparable to that of the United States. Today, UK per capita output has fallen behind that Mississippi, the poorest state in America.
High taxes and regulation have produced economic sclerosis, despite masses of monetary stimulus used to try to generate growth.
The UK now has £2.97 trillion of public debt, equal to about 100% of the value of all goods and services that the country produces each year. Three decades ago, our public debt was a modest 25-30% of GDP.
Since creating an Office of Budget Responsibility, we have squandered public money irresponsibly on Covid lockdowns, green energy boondoggles and, before that, bank bailouts. Public spending is rising to 45% of GDP, compared to a mere 37.6% when Tony Blair began as Prime Minister.
The NHS, run by its own unaccountable bureaucracy, is failing. Waiting lists reached 6.24 million by February 2025 – one in 11 Britons – while A&E delays spiral, with over 60,000 forced to wait over 12 hours in January, 21 times pre-Covid levels.
One in 27 people in Britain today is an immigrant that has arrived in the past two years – a staggering 2.5 million newcomers in 2023 and 2024 alone. Far from the “brightest and best,” too many are low-skilled, poorly educated and with a high propensity to commit crime. Many non-Western immigrants offer little economic benefit to our country, as data from the University of Amsterdam suggests, yet some will bring with them issues of cultural incompatibility.
20 years ago, Muslims made up about 3% of the UK population. Since then, their share of the population has risen to over 6%, and it is expected to double again over the next 20 years. While the vast majority of Muslims live peaceful, law abiding lives, the risks of extremism among some needs to be confronted.
Britain’s Armed Forces are a shadow of their former selves. The Royal Navy’s fleet has shrunk from 79 vessels in 1995 to a mere 28 today; the Army’s tanks from over 400 to 100; the RAF’s aircraft from 800 to 265 combat aircraft. Personnel have halved from 300,000 to 136,000 since the mid-1990s. Quality may have risen, but quantity has collapsed.
In recent years, almost every public body in the country, no matter how ineffective at delivering on its core mission, has found the time to promote a “woke” ideology, prioritising social justice and historical revisionism. Police forces have found the time to promote inclusivity but not to catch criminals. The NHS spends millions on diversity, equity & inclusion directors while millions languish on waiting lists waiting. Museums funded by British taxpayers present exhibits that take every opportunity to show Britain in a bad light. It is no surprise that patriotism among young people has been in precipitous decline.
Carswell goes on to outline nine ‘milestones’ (under which are grouped 34 specific policy steps) to turn the country round:
1. Securing Control Over Public Administration
2. Securing Control Over Borders
3. Undoing the Blairite Legislative Legacy
8. Strengthening Defence, Realign Foreign Policy
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: In Episode 32 of the Sceptic, Laurie Wastell sat down with the former UKIP MP to discuss what the Right really needs to do to reform Britain…
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Starmer’s goal is to get Britain on whole different set of tracks, made in China.
The younger people have a very different perspective from older generations. I was shocked at seeing the differences of opinions in different age ranges. Huge gulfs. They see the attack as eminating from their living antecedents hence the hatred of the boomers. They compare the chances that their grandparents had in terms of home ownership, jobs and pretty much everything else compared with their own. And they conclude that even if the boomers didn’t bring about their own impoverishment then they don’t seem particularly concerned about the fate of posterity or even their progeny. They will often take the side of immigrants and minorities because they feel a bond of oppression. It is impossible to consider these matters without taking this into account.
Yes, the immediate post-war generation had advantages of job security, affordable housing and (for those going into higher education) little or no student debt.
No, this older parent is deeply concerned for the fate of his offspring and has already contributed significantly to the cost of their higher education – a cost that was largely met by the State in my day.
Assets accrued have been the product of self-reliance, diligent study, hard work and getting the job done – tried and tested attributes that also worked for the two preceding generations I know of. No bonds of oppression perceived or dished out.
As to why jobs are less secure and housing less affordable, better ask the generation after mine that has overseen the last decade and a half since the 2008 crash.
Hear, hear.
Yes, I received a student grant to study engineering which was based on your parents income. But that was before the idiot Tony the Liar came along and decided half of young people should go to university to study..er…something or other and created the largely useless and damaging ‘university industry’.
Arguably the leftist revolution began in 1945
I thought this a very eloquent description of the current state of play and the decline of the UK. An excerpt;
”Once, the plain was united by a single path, a shared journey. But now, the path has fragmented. Men and women bear their burdens—hopes, dreams, suspicions—like pilgrims on an ancient road. And on the horizon, a storm gathers. Not a single tempest, but a maelstrom of winds, each howling with its own menace, its own peril.
Men and women wander in diverging directions, each clutching their own fragment of truth. The stories that once bound them—of liberty, of progress, of a common destiny—have been cast aside or forgotten. In their place, there is only noise, a deafening clamour of voices screaming into the void for likes and clicks. They turn inward, away from actual others towards virtual monikers, and the plain becomes a wasteland of isolation. Radical individualism, once a flame of strength, now rages unchecked as offline fuses with on; a wildfire consuming all in its path.
Then comes the fog of cultural relativism, creeping in from the edges of the plain. It blurs the lines between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong. In the fog, men lose their way. They forget the values that once guided them—reason, justice, the dignity of the individual. They forget that some truths are eternal, that some principles are worth dying for. And in their forgetting, they fling open the gates to chaos.
The winds of political polarisation howl across the plain, inspired by algorithms, tearing at the fabric of society. Once, there was a marketplace of ideas, a forum where men could debate and disagree yet remain bound by a shared understanding. Now, the marketplace is a battlefield. The voices are louder, angrier, shriller. Compromise is treason; dialogue, weakness. The institutions that once held the plain together—the courts, the assemblies, the churches—crumble under the weight of mistrust. The people no longer believe in them, and without belief, they cannot stand.”
https://countrysquire.co.uk/2025/03/20/the-plain/
Maybe tof but one outstanding and continual purveyor of the destruction of this country namely Bliar needs to be prosecuted for treason and the penalty for which he watered down needs to be re-instated.
Once we have dealt with this treasonous Next Tuesday the real business of recovery must begin.
He is certainly up there with the worst of them.
The examples of how the NHS is a disgraceful, woketastic organization just don’t stop;
”1) BREAKING: CHRISTIAN NURSE TAKES LEGAL ACTION AFTER BEING INVESTIGATED BY NHS FOR CALLING 6FT TRANSGENDER PAEDOPHILE ‘Mr’
The convicted paedophile, ‘Mr X’, is in a high security male prison after multiple convictions for luring boys into sex acts while pretending to be a teenage girl on social media.
After refusing to refer to Mr X as a ‘she’ while on duty, Jennifer Melle was racially abused and physically threatened.
Instead of supporting her, however, Epsom and St Helier University Hospital Trust has abandoned Jennifer and treated her like the criminal.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has also said Jennifer is ‘a potential risk’ for not using Mr X’s preferred ‘gender identity.’
The story is the latest in a series of cases where NHS policy supports trans ideology over biological reality. It also follows the publication of the Sullivan report this week which revealed that the police are allowing criminals to ‘self-identify’ their gender on official records.
In this case, policy has led, in the name of inclusivity, to the NHS siding with a paedophile convicted of serious offences, while pretending to be the opposite sex, over members of staff with Christian and gender-critical beliefs.
Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, the case Jennifer has now launched against the Trust on the grounds of harassment, discrimination and human rights’ breaches, is believed to be unprecedented.
In response to her claims, NHS lawyers have said that Christian beliefs Mis holds, that we are born male and female, are ‘not worthy of respect in a democratic society.’”
https://x.com/CConcern/status/1903744254624563694
Source; https://christianconcern.com/ccpressreleases/christian-nurse-takes-legal-action-after-being-investigated-and-punished-by-nhs-for-calling-convicted-transgender-male-paedophile-mr/
“In response to her claims, NHS lawyers have said that Christian beliefs Mis holds, that we are born male and female, are ‘not worthy of respect in a democratic society.’”
I’m not sure what is being said here particularly “Mis holds.”
Notwithstanding the above NHS lawyers clearly need some rapid reprogramming and the hospital head should be P forty fived.
All beliefs are worthy of respect except apparently those held by the men and women who created the greatest civilisation in the world.
I think we need to get rid of the term “gender critical” and and bring in “gender realist”. Do not use their language.
It’s all very well kicking the word processor into action and many of the proposals may be desirable. But attempts to do some of these things (by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss) were soon kicked into touch.
Imagine the Ship of State as a huge supertanker. It’s going to take a huge effort to get the ship to take the slightest turn. There’s so much inertia and considerable resistance by the crew AKA the Blob.
Long consistent pressure is required and that is not in the nature of the two current main parties.
Ok fair enough but nothing there any of us couldn’t have dreamt up.
The problem is how to get from here to there and I’m not sure he’s any more idea than I have.
Yes, his analysis is good, but he offers no real solutions. But to be fair, what solutions are there? I guess the expansion of forums like this, and engaging in debate with the non-engaged is the most important tool of attack. Winning hearts and minds.
May be we also need to be sneaky, and use the same dirty tricks our opponents use; dissembling and smearing, and nudging.
But perhaps real change will come out of the blue, from a moment of national outrage. We almost saw it with the Southport riots, but Starmer was on top of that, and crushed it before it made a difference. And yet, the pressure cooker is still boiling away, there will be other key moments.
It’s about being relentless and never giving up.
If you are thinking about English politics and economics the short answer is that there is no solution to these woes. I feel embarrassed if I watch an English television program or listen to an interview on British news these days. I ceased listening to it long ago because they started to speak in sterile managerial language. But honestly these days it is like baby talk. And then you read the comments below and you understand why they felt the need to do babytalk. You have to be honest about this situation.
Mr Carswell identifies 9 milestones that will get this country back on track. Does he think Liebour will just suddenly adopt his manifesto? In your dreams. As sensible as his suggestions are the present political system doesn’t allow the demos to hold ministers to account mid term and express their discontent. If such a system existed things would be very different.
“They have governed in the belief that experts are infallible ,,,,.”
To learn how infallible experts are read this:
BREXIT – Science Proves Project Fear “Expert forecasts .. no better than dart-throwing monkeys.”
Agree with the points made.
My take is that emotional arguments have taken over rational arguments.
This results in inaction, increased divisiveness and lack of long term strategy by the political classes.
Good article thanks. Carswell for PM. Too few Carswell’s in politics.
Thanks for the links, will go through them.
Personally I am leaning to UKIP.
I don’t think Reform have the balls for the fight.
Reform under the Messiah and his mate the Immigrant are an utter shambles which was only to expected given the same thing has happened with UKIP and the Brexit Party. We can only hope that with help from Musk, Lowe and Habib can create an alternative party and sign up all the disaffected local Reform groups.
On a rare plus for Reform – so far I think – is the selection of local person Sarah Pochin as the Runcorn candidate as opposed to Farage dropping in some ‘celeb’ candidate and pissing off the local party members. An interesting dynamic might play out in Runcorn where the youngers voters have no interest in the byelection leaving the older and more Reform inclined voters to hold sway in a reduced turnout.
He’s on the right track, but I wonder how he intends to participate from Mississippi?
I also wonder whether he has mended relations with Farage after doing his best to scupper UKIP when he became the Party’s only elected MP?
He did, apparently, contact Farage and urge him to run in Clacton last year …. and communications were held after he’d won the seat so it’s possible there is an ongoing discussion.
Carswell isn’t wrong. The video interview is worth watching.
It’s all very grim, and sometimes I’m tempted to say to hell with it, and give up. But my capitulation would delight those who hate this country. I shall plod on proselytizing to anyone who will listen to me. And if this country does take the path of cantonisation (or civil war), then I will happily defend the barricades of my canton.
The thing that concerned me about Douglas’s suggestions especially regarding the Privy Council was what would happen if a really authoritarian figure was voted in and used those powers?