There is nothing left and not much right

I promised myself I’d never write to you about religion, telepathy, the end of the world by self-destructing assassination robots (ah, that one fell through the cracks)… or English football success. Er… OK… so instead, I’ll give you something even more grubby and divisive: Politics.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere, it looks very much like there is nothing left. And not much right either. The left has run out of ideas and is now rummaging down the back of the sofa for loose grievances and an image change, whilst the right has run out of nerve and is mostly arguing with itself in the car park.

And somewhere in the middle, the rest of us are paying the highest taxes in seventy years for the privilege of watching this debacle.

So, purely as a thought experiment (Donna has firmly vetoed the reality), I asked myself a dangerous question: what would happen if I stood as an independent MP? No party. No whip. No focus groups telling me which tie tests well with swing voters in Stevenage. Just me, a rosette in a colour that offends nobody, and a manifesto.

And here’s the confession… I actually downloaded the ones from the last election and wrote my own. All of it. Properly.

Want the highlights? Of course you do. You’ve read this far.

First up: Net Zero. Scrapped.

• Before you spit out your oat-milk latte, hear me out. The UK produces roughly 1% of global emissions. China produces around 30%. The USA about 13%. India is rising fast and shows no sign of slowing down for anyone. So the current plan is: bankrupt British industry, hand us some of the highest energy bills in the developed world, and ask Granny to choose between heating and eating… all to shave a rounding 0.1% off global carbon while Beijing quietly opens another coal plant. This is self-harm with a certificate. You cannot build a green future on a bankrupt economy. Prosperity is what funds everything - the flood defences, the insulation, the next-generation nuclear, the actual innovation. Growth first, then resilience. Adaptation over hysteria. It’s not anti-planet. It’s pro-arithmetic.

Second: immigration, done the Australian way.

• The Australians have a points-based system, and it works. They ask the questions any sensible household would ask before handing someone a key: What are your skills? Do you speak the language? What will you contribute?Think of it as a nightclub bouncer with a clipboard. Firm, fair, and completely transparent. If you arrive legally with skills we need - welcome, delighted to have you, the kettle’s on. If you arrive illegally and can’t demonstrate you’ll add value - it’s a no. That’s not hostility. It’s fairness: to the legal migrants who queued, to British workers, and to the taxpayer quietly picking up the tab. A country that can’t control its borders can’t control its future, and no amount of wishful thinking changes that. Oh, and for the asylum seekers waiting for the courts to decide, get them working straight away, not festering in a hotel in Basingstoke. Oh, and anyone who breaks the law gets deported by tea time.

Third: Cut Business Rates and Promote Business Growth.

• Taxing the super-rich simply drives them out of the country and passes the tax burden onto the rest of us. Keeping them here drives growth and jobs. We should be promoting entrepreneurial endeavour in the UK, not strangling it with high costs and red tape. Get rid of the Whitehall nonsense and put business owners - people who’ve actually run a payroll - in charge of economic policy, instead of career bureaucrats who think a P&L is a boyband.

And the rest of the manifesto?

• Monthly town halls, face to face, in actual rooms. No screens, no algorithms, just humans disagreeing over tea and biscuits the way nature intended.

• A quarterly Honest Assessment report telling voters the truth, including the ugly bits… treating the electorate like intelligent adults, a strategy so radical no party has dared try it.

• And the full embrace of AI, obviously. You knew I’d get it in somewhere.

Now, why am I telling you all this?

Because whether or not I ever stand (see: Donna’s veto), the principles are the same ones I bang on about here every single week. You are not a victim of your circumstances - you are the architect of your future. You don’t get richer by tearing down whoever’s doing well; you get richer by building something yourself. And nobody is coming to save you. Not Westminster, not a party machine, and certainly not a quango with a lanyard.

Building up, not tearing down. It works for a business, it works for a life, and I suspect it would work for a country… so no, I probably won’t be on your ballot paper any time soon. But if a rosette ever does appear at the top of this newsletter, you’ll know Mum finally talked me into it.

She’s already promised me her vote. That’s one at least…