Are some people seriously contemplating voting Tory again? Have they lost their minds? Do they not remember the years 2010-2024 - the economic stagnation, the housing crisis, the immigration shambles, the deepening 'wokeification' of our institutions and society, the mad green zealotry, the sacrificing of our energy security? Does all that get forgotten because Kemi Badenoch can turn a decent phrase? The Tories deserve to die a slow death. They should certainly never get anywhere near power again for a good many years.

At the dawn of globalisation, around 2000, I believed that markets, in their ceaseless search for efficiency, were capable of driving global prosperity. I worked for years for a highly professional global oil company. It was imperfect, of course, but run by clever people who ceaselessly searched for better ways of doing things. I felt the temptation to echo the view of my colleagues that governments should cushion the impact of change, but as far as possible get out of the way and let globalist efficiency deliver global prosperity. I still believe that private business, under competitive pressure, will outperform state enterprises. However, private businesses owe no allegiance to any political entity. They guarantee no particular citizen’s interest. And that, in an age of fragile supply chains, is a challenge to our national economic model. 2008 was the first big eye-opener for me. When the globalised banks failed, it was the state that had to step in and bail them out, because some banking is a vital utility in the economy. That was the first cry in the night. Global supply chains work brilliantly, and then fail suddenly. Often, they fail with the force of an economic heart attack to the nation. We saw it again in 2020, as Covid put enormous strain on global vaccine supply chains, and caused a race to hoard vaccines within borders. Those with the best pharma skills got the vaccines first. Covid was bad, but the next pandemic could be 10x worse. Right now, we see it in the fuel supply system. Private oil operators, behaving perfectly rationally from their point of view, have reduced 9 UK oil refineries twenty years ago, to 4 now. As a result, the UK has gone from producing 85% of our diesel needs in 2000, to only 45% today. It is diesel which fuels our farms, factories, HGVs etc, and acts as the real life blood of our economy. The Straits of Hormuz constriction, and damage to Russian and Ukrainian oil refineries, have made global supply of diesel very short : and left the Uk particularly exposed. What made global sense for private oil companies does not make sense for the British economy when global supply chains stumble. In 2000, at the dawn of globalisation, the world basked in a unipolar moment, a Pax Americana which policed global supply chains. In 2026, history is back - and none of this can be relied upon. So strategic national needs, once again, have become the legitimate interest of government. Global supply chains are efficient : but national supplies are reliable. That is why all political parties need to begin to think hard, once again, about how genuinely strategic industries can be maintained onshore. The future must be a world of global markets where there is wide diversity and abundance of supply, but more government-assured ownership of truly strategic industries. This will carry an efficiency cost. We can mitigate that cost if we change the British habits of a lifetime and run national industries well, of course, but insurance is never free. Market fundamentalism is dying. Lumpen state socialism died in the 20th century. Pragmatic, strategic, risk-based thinking and industrial policy are lessons we must learn again. And no political party in the Uk - except the tiny SDP - has really grasped this.

If it’s non-competitive, it should be nationalised. The market works by having competition drive efficiency. But without competition, it only drives greed. It’s time to nationalise utilities and make them state-run. 🇬🇧

To those geniuses in the @UKLabour and @Conservatives who have been taking us down this dead end for the last 25 years behold the fruits of your labour There was only one political party in the UK who have done their homework and created policies that will bring back cheap energy @SDPhq sdp.org.uk/energy_abundance bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw30…