Terrel Mollel is an undergraduate at Queen Mary University of London studying Comparative Literature. He is a Young Conservative who has interned in Parliament, for the former Solicitor General, Robert Courts.

I first came to Parliament at 18-years old, unsure of how to negotiate my ideological position within our broad party.

I expect that some Liberal-Conservatives may share this challenge too. However, now at 22-years old I have made some headway to understanding how I fit in our broad-church Conservative Party. This journey involved considering another ideology, as well as (One-nation) Conservatism: New Liberalism. In summary, I weigh up aspects of One-nation Conservatism against New Liberalism to discern the value of the centre-right ground.

On reflection, identifying as a One-nation Conservative can appear like preferring a liberal persuasion within a traditional Party. So, this can prompt an important question: why choose the Conservative Party over the Liberal Party, if you’re more Liberal than traditional Conservatives? I have an answer, shaped by a comparison of the two liberal branches within these Parties. Yet a comparison of One-nation Conservatism and New Liberalism is due – to arrive at my answer. I begin with the former.

‘Young England’ originally featured in the former Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s novels (such as the Two Nations of 1845). A term referring to the energetic economic activity of England – stimulated by talented individuals. Disraeli was certainly optimistic about an England united under One-nation Conservatism. However, what does One-nation Conservatism amount to now? For example, before the 2024 general election the Times suggested that this branch of Conservatism may pervade the Parliamentary Party. But this powerful One-nation force has not manifested.

For instance, the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch MP, is adamant about prioritising the “common ground” over the “centre ground”. Therefore, an appraisal of the Party’s relationship with its One-nation Conservative heritage is important. It can provide insight on how centre-right Conservatives can navigate political thought. Key to doing this is reconciling One-nation Conservatism with its ideological counterpart: New Liberalism.

The ‘Young England’ ideal – a meritocratic society, in which every citizen can harness their talent as an economic agent – is contentious because it does not address inequality. So, this dream of England when applied to reality appears like a collision that incurs extensive collateral damage. For example the 1897 Rowntree and 1902 Booth studies validated the Liberal Party’s concerns about inequality.

So, an alternative vision to ‘Young England’ was shaped. In particular the New Liberals, valuing the primacy of the individual, sought to ‘wage war against poverty’. Their 1909/1910 People’s budget was emblematic of a progressive approach to social security. It created a safety net through its liberal reforms. Meanwhile, the Conservatives – persuaded by the centre ground – were in the process of expanding the franchise substantially that same century.

I digress, following the Rowntree and Booth studies, the New Liberals identified a range of vulnerable people in Britain who could not be economic agents: the young, the elderly, the sick. Indeed, the liberal reforms sought to redress these peoples. But the legacy of One-nation Conservatism is more abstract than British New Liberalism. While thinkers like Benjamin Disraeli and Edmund Burke supported reform, One-nation Conservatism in comparison with Liberalism defines its reform tenet less clearly. This problematises an edifice that attempts to reconcile ‘two nations’ (the upper and lower classes respectively).

However, notably Burke advocated for a state to change and permit preservation of other aspects of its apparatus (in their book Reflections on the Revolution in France). In this way, One-nation Conservatism seems to value the stability of the polity as much as social cohesion. Therefore, ‘Young England’ is emblematic of more than just a free-market creed (‘Young England’).

One-nation Conservatism is a free-market and a dynamic state, whereas New Liberalism reduces everything to the primacy of the individual. Particularly as to Burke the logical progression from ‘Young England’ led to an ambition for a dynamic state. Such a society can accommodate the liberal reforms. Indeed, after the 1922 Conservative meeting that decisively defeated the Liberals, the Conservatives retained the Liberal’s ‘safety net’.

Young Conservatives like me value One-nation Conservatism. Particularly as Benjamin Disraeli’s ‘Young England’ ideal can be traced as the antecedent for much more than just a meritocratic creed. New Liberalism can appear more ambitious than the One-nation Conservatism on economic terms alone, but that does not account for everything. One-nation Conservatism is oriented around a different – greater – aim, rather than one prescriptive policy platform (the safety net).

One-nation Conservatism can appeal to our aspirations toward agency and our concerns about social cohesion. In contrast, New Liberalism just offers a reductive imagination of our capacity. While One-Nation Conservatism derives from an economic creed, ‘Young England’ was just the origin of a dynamic ideally that can be advanced. By reappraising our understanding of the two ideologies discussed, I believe that the value of the centre-right can be advanced. In summary, One-nation Conservatism remains a promising product of political thought. We must engage with it.

Photo Courtesy Of Doris Dario

Photo Courtesy Of Doris Dario

“Raising children is not about protecting them from change; my role is to show them how to move through it.”

The band Franz Ferdinand has angrily hit back after the Israeli Defence Forces used their song Take Me Out in a propaganda video posted on social media.

Franz Ferdinand calls IDF ‘warmongering murderers’

The video shows fighter jets and explosions as Israeli soldiers celebrate Israel and the US’ recent attacks on Iran. The caption reads ‘Operation Roaring Lion – this is how it’s done.’

To reiterate, this was all happening while fucking Take Me Out played

Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos took to his own Instagram stories to condemn the genocidal IDF:

These warmongering murderers are using our music without our consent. This makes us both nauseous and furious.

Kapronos also pointed out just how typical of the IDF this is:

Kind of typical though, isn’t it? To strut up and take what isn’t theirs with a vile arrogance…

With the British Media pumping out warmongering propaganda, it’s important that everyone with a voice does speak out against Israel.

History of speaking out

The band are no strangers to standing up for what’s right. In 2016 they released Demagogue as part of 30 Days, 30 Songs, protesting the election of Donald Trump. This was an independent campaign created by Artists for a Trump-free America.

The song included the lyric:

Those pussy grabbing fingers won’t let go of me now.

We can’t possibly ignore the fact that the band is named after Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination led to World War 1.

It’s absolutely bizarre that his namesake is fighting against true evil harder than the British government

If I had a nickel for every time Franz Ferdinand was involved in the precursor events of a world war, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice https://t.co/feAbNuGJr8

— Adam Smith (@adamndsmith) March 8, 2026

Featured image via the Canary

Jeremy Corbyn joins demonstrators at Parliament Square protesting against US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, February 2026 (Credit: Waldemar Sikora / Alamy Live News)

3 min read1 hr

At a meeting of the party’s central executive committee (CEC) on Sunday afternoon, 14 members voted to appoint Corbyn parliamentary leader, with zero against. He will now lead the party’s cohort of four MPs in Westminster.

Your Party insiders hope the development will provide clear leadership after much turmoil, as the new initiative has been beset by persistent infighting since the start.

Two of the Independent Alliance MPs –  Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed – who were co-founding Your Party quit the project over internal tensions, and just two – Shockat Adam and Ayoub Khan – are still involved.

Zarah Sultana, who quit the Labour Party to join Corbyn’s party last year, has now been effectively sidelined after recent internal elections saw her slate of candidates – ‘Grassroots Left’ – win only seven seats on the CEC. ‘The Many’, the Corbyn-linked slate, secured 14 seats, and independents won three.

A source close to Corbyn had warned during the voting period for the CEC that Your Party would not survive unless his supporters won power.

The Coventry South MP is the only Your Party MP so far according to Parliament’s listings, having self-declared as such some months ago, but PoliticsHome understands that Corbyn is set to follow suit.

Corbyn officially becoming a Your Party MP is a formality that needs to go through the necessary CEC and parliamentary procedures, a source close to him explained. It is understood that, as a YP MP, he will continue to work with the Independent Alliance group.

Members of Your Party voted narrowly for a ‘collective leadership’ over a ‘single leader’ model during its founding conference in November. They decided that the party as a whole would instead be led formally by a 16-member committee, including a chair and deputy chair who must be lay members.

Jennifer Forbes, a Corbyn ally, was elected chair of the party on Sunday. Members of Corbyn’s ‘The Many’ won all eight leadership positions up for grabs in the CEC’s first full meeting. Former Labour MP Laura Smith was elected as vice-chair, and Palestine campaigner and National Education Union activist Louise Regan as political officer.

Sources now say the focus of Your Party will turn to the May elections. During the founding conference, members voted to endorse independent council candidates in England who are politically aligned to Your Party, and to prioritise potential gains over number of candidates endorsed.

Insiders are confident they can help to defeat Labour candidates in urban areas previously considered safe for the governing party, such as in east London and Bradford.

Reacting to his new leadership role, Corbyn said: “It’s an honour to be elected the parliamentary leader of Your Party. From now on, everything we do must serve the people we seek to represent.

“That means campaigning fearlessly against poverty, racism and war. That means building power everywhere: in our workplaces, in our communities and in Parliament. That means taking the fight to Starmer and Farage with a message of hope.

“We have a precious opportunity to unite our movement around a bold alternative – and I’m looking forward to campaigning alongside all members to build the mass, community-based, socialist party this country needs.”

Forbes said: “I’m delighted and honoured to have been elected chair of Your Party. The Westminster political class are failing us, delivering nothing but more wars, higher bills and a country falling apart.

“Your Party will build a genuine alternative, organising our mass membership to campaign on the big issues, from the cost-of-living to opposing militarism. With Jeremy leading us in Parliament, Your Party will now be laser-focused on the people’s priorities.”

James Lawson, is chairman of the Adam Smith Institute.

Traditionally, the Conservative Party is the party of sound money and free enterprise.

From Pitt the Younger to Thatcher, its best leaders understood that prosperity stems not from state direction but from free individuals operating under the rule of law. When the party strays by embracing the mixed economy, accepting soft socialism, or losing the confidence to champion markets, the country suffers and the party loses.

The 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published on the 9th of March 1776, is the perfect moment to remember where these principles originated, and to ask if the party is ready to champion them again.

The Wealth of Nations was the first systematic work of economics. Smith showed specialisation is the engine of prosperity: ten workers in a pin factory, dividing tasks, produce forty-eight thousand pins a day; one alone barely manages a single pin. He demonstrated that self-interest serves the public better than government diktats: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Competition harnesses this motivation to deliver better, cheaper goods. Prices carry information no bureaucrat possesses; markets allocate resources more efficiently than any civil service committee.

The implications remain as relevant today as in 1776. Shun protectionism: a country refusing to buy from efficient foreign producers taxes its citizens for worse goods. Reject industrial planning: the enterprise of millions, not the wisdom of ministers, creates growth. And do not mistake money for wealth: what matters is what a nation produces, not what it hoards.

Conservatives grasped this first. Edmund Burke praised the book as “an excellent digest… with many valuable corrective observations.” In 1792, Pitt the Younger told the Commons that Smith’s research would “furnish the best solution to every question connected with the history of commerce” and proceeded to cut tariffs. Peel repealed the Corn Laws, quoting Smith’s observation that farmers are “of all people the least subject to the wretched spirit of monopoly.” Thatcher rolled back the frontier of the state and joked, when accused of ideological novelty: “You are totally wrong. I learned it from Adam Smith and he was a long time before me!”

But Smith did not just argue for free markets in theory. A recurring theme of The Wealth of Nations is his assault on entrenched interest groups: merchants lobbying for tariffs and guilds restricting entry to inflate prices. His warning is famous: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Here, the modern Conservative Party is weakest. Believing in free markets as a slogan is insufficient. You must confront the vested interests that distort them, even when they are your own voters.

Britain’s planning system, the developed world’s most restrictive, is a machine protecting incumbent homeowners’ property values at the direct expense of the young. The pension triple lock acts as a state-mandated wealth transfer from working-age taxpayers enduring stagnant wages to a largely insulated pensioner class. The net zero lobby has rebuilt mercantilism in green clothing. Billions in subsidies flow to politically connected firms, saddling consumers with Europe’s highest electricity prices, while we could instead have abundant nuclear power, revived North Sea oil, and American-style fracking. Smith would recognise every one of these as a conspiracy against the public.

The economic consequences are dire. In the eighteen years since the financial crisis, Britain’s real per capita income grew by roughly 2 per cent in total. In the eighteen years prior, it grew by nearly 50 per cent. Adjusted for purchasing power, average British living standards have slipped behind Mississippi, America’s poorest state. Strip out London’s outsized output, and our comparative decline is even starker.

The electoral consequences are predictably bleak. At the 2024 election, just 8 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds voted Conservative. The median Tory voter is now 63. How can we expect younger generations to become conservatives without a stake in capitalism? Priced out of homeownership, unable to build, taxed to subsidise wealthier retirees, and squeezed by high energy bills, why would they vote for the party that presided over this settlement?

Yet there are reasons for optimism. As the then Trade Secretary, now Leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch spoke against “hosing industries down with subsidies or slapping tariffs on products from abroad.” That is the authentic voice of the Smithian tradition. But the wider party must follow.

The Wealth of Nations turns 250 today. For most of that time, the Conservative Party was its most effective champion. It can be again, but only if it challenges its own coalition’s vested interests with the same vigour Smith challenged the mercantilists. The party can either reclaim its free-market inheritance or continue managing the decline it recently presided over. Smith told us what works. The question is whether the party still has the courage to do it. Anything less is just nostalgia.

What are “goblet squats”?

What are the benefits of goblet squats?

How do I do a goblet squat?

Jonathan Portes and John Springford share their new analysis that estimates how the number of foreign-born workers would have evolved had the UK remained in the EU. They argue that while leaving changed the composition of migration flows dramatically, it did not materially alter the underlying balance between labour demand, demographic pressures and political constraints.

When the UK voted to leave the EU, much of the economic debate focused on two channels: trade and migration. While there has been extensive work on Brexit’s effects on trade and GDP, its impact on immigration – particularly on the size and composition of the workforce – has been less systematically examined.

In a new analysis, we estimate how the number of foreign-born workers in the UK would have evolved had the country remained in the EU. The results suggest that ending free movement and introducing a new immigration system in 2021 led to a modest rise in the number of foreign born workers in the UK, but a dramatic shift in their countries of origin.

Before and immediately after the 2016 referendum, most forecasts suggested that Brexit would reduce overall immigration. The end of free movement was expected to cut EU inflows, only partially offset by a more liberal regime for non-EU workers. The Home Office, for example, estimated that the post-Brexit system would reduce work-related migration by around 40,000 per year.

What happened instead was more complex. Following the introduction of the new system in January 2021, net migration rose sharply, reaching record levels in 2023. That surge prompted successive Home Secretaries to tighten visa rules. Combined with a weakening labour market, this has led to a sharp fall in work visas issued, including dependants – from 541,100 in 2023 to 186,000 in 2025, with further declines in recent months.

The political debate has often treated these developments as clear evidence either of regained “control” or of policy failure. Our findings point to a more nuanced picture.

It is not possible simply to attribute post-2016 changes in migration to Brexit. The pandemic, post-pandemic labour shortages, the war in Ukraine and the visa route for Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas) all influenced flows. To isolate the effect of Brexit, we apply a synthetic difference-in-differences approach. In essence, we construct a “counterfactual UK” using a weighted average of comparable EU-15 and EEA countries that closely matched UK trends in foreign-born employment before the referendum. This method improves on simply assuming existing trends continue, and avoids relying on a single comparator country such as Germany.

We focus on foreign-born employees rather than immigration flows. UK flow data have been repeatedly revised, and the Labour Force Survey has had well-documented sampling issues for migrants. Instead, we use HMRC data on non-national employees for the UK and Eurostat data on foreign-born employees for comparator countries. Concentrating on workers also reduces the influence of country-specific shocks to asylum and refugee numbers, which might distort the results.

We estimate effects separately for EU-origin and non-EU-origin workers. For EU workers, we treat the referendum in June 2016 as the start of the “treatment”, reflecting the immediate political and economic uncertainty, including sterling’s depreciation. For non-EU workers, we treat January 2021 – when the new system came into force – as the relevant break point. However, using either 2016 or 2021 for both does not hugely change results

For EU-origin workers, the divergence between the UK and its counterfactual is substantial. By 2024, the number of EU-origin workers in the UK had returned roughly to its 2016 level. In our counterfactual UK, it had risen by around 30 per cent. That implies that Brexit reduced the number of EU-origin employees by about 785,000 by 2024 – equivalent to roughly 2.6 per cent of the total UK workforce. Most of this effect had materialised by 2023, with both the actual and counterfactual series flattening thereafter.

This confirms that ending free movement had a substantial and lasting effect on EU labour supply to the UK.

The story for non-EU workers runs in the opposite direction. After 2021, non-EU employment rose sharply in the UK – far more than in the counterfactual. By the end of 2024, non-EU employment in the UK had reached about 225 per cent of its 2016 level, compared with about 150 per cent in the synthetic control. We estimate that Brexit increased the number of non-EU employees by around 992,000 in 2024. Unlike the EU effect, this divergence continued to grow through 2024, consistent with a sustained increase in work-related migration under the new system.

However, more recent data, not included in our analysis, suggests that this expansion appears to have peaked. Visa data indicate that work-related non-EU migration slowed sharply in 2025 as the government tightened rules and labour shortages eased. The additional boost to non-EU employment seen in 2024 is therefore unlikely to persist at the same pace.

Combining these two large but offsetting shifts, we estimate that the net effect of Brexit in 2024 was an increase of around 207,000 non-UK-origin employees – approximately 0.6 per cent of the total workforce. In other words, Brexit substantially reduced EU-origin employment and substantially increased non-EU-origin employment. But the overall number of foreign-born workers in the UK was only modestly, although significantly, higher than it would have been had the UK remained in the EU.

The broader political economy challenge remains. Across Europe, ageing populations are increasing demand for migrant labour, even as public and political pressures push governments to reduce immigration. The UK is not unique in facing this tension.

Our analysis suggests that leaving the EU did not resolve that dilemma. It changed the composition of migration flows dramatically, and it restored nominal “control” over the nature of those flows, but it did not materially alter the underlying balance between labour demand, demographic pressures and political constraints.

By Professor Jonathan Portes, Senior Fellow, UK in a Changing Europe and John Springford, Associate Fellow, Centre for European Reform.