Luke Graham was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Ochil and Perthshire South from 2017 to 2019, the candidate in Perth and Kinross-shire in 2024, and a former head of the Downing Street Union Unit.
I was hoping my final ConHome column of 2025 would be full of festive cheer, with a positive outlook for our country for 2026.
Alas, with the Reeves budget and the Conservative’s first Lord’s defection to Reform, I’m putting the champagne on ice.
The much-anticipated budget delivered exactly what we, as Conservatives, expected – a Labour budget for welfare. A budget that ducked every hard decision, baked in billions more on welfare, piled on more debt and promised no meaningful increase in economic performance. This from a government with a 160+ seat majority – pathetic.
The most damning assessment is from the OBR, who made clear that the Labour budget will deliver debt 2 percentage points higher than predicted in March and twice the level of the average advanced economy. Meanwhile, the OBR also confirmed that productivity growth has been cut from 1 per cent to 0.3 per cent and that the budget will deliver no demand-side boost by 2030 – condemning millions of Brits to stagnant wages, fewer opportunities and making us more dependent on the state.
And it’s not just the OBR or Kemi’s take down of the Chancellor that are stinging this government, the ONS figures released in the past week show a significant increase in emigration – not of OAPs rushing off to spend the rest of their days in the Spanish sun, but of young people – 21–35-year-olds. These aren’t just young Brits seeking a gap year, they are graduates and qualified professionals, often from the fields of finance, tech and engineering looking for a better life, taking with them the talents we need in the UK to build up the country (and our tax base).
Thanks to Chancellor Reeves, these young people are voting with their feet and heading to the zero-income tax of Dubai, the higher pay of Singapore or the better quality of life in Australia and Canada. This Labour budget does nothing to address this. Worse still, it incentivises welfare over work, at a time when we have millions of working aged people that could work but aren’t. This cannot be the way forward. It isn’t a fair course, a moral course or a British one.
And this is where the reignited Conservative & Unionist Party can focus its energy, in redefining and claiming a conservative economic model that serves our nation and its people.
Reform often cites that the “conservative party isn’t truly conservative” and that somehow, we don’t have the courage to support small business or struggling families, but in the last Conservative manifesto we were clear that we would cut taxes for businesses and for working people through reductions in national insurance. It was clear, costed and achievable. Although it didn’t get the airtime it deserved during the election. But there was no doubting the philosophical and practical roots of this policy.
We now need to put forward a radical economic package that puts our philosophy back in the spotlight.
We need to build policy around addressing the big challenges that Labour, the SNP and Reform are too cowardly to confront: soaring welfare bills; pathetic productivity improvements; over-priced energy and unaffordable housing. These challenges cannot be addressed by a cut here or a small tax rise there, as we have seen from Chancellor Reeves, tweaking around the edges does not boost growth, productivity or significantly improve wellbeing. We, as the Conservative & Unionist Party need to unveil not just retail policies but a credible narrative for conservative economics, showing how they worked in the past and will work again in the future. Making clear that our solutions are not just about pounds and pence but the moral and just cause to provide more opportunity for our people and restore the social contract that the next generation should expect to have a better life than the last.
The Shadow Cabinet have already started doing this – the £47bn of cost savings identified ahead of Conservative conference combined with the introduction of a “golden rule” to split savings between new tax reductions and reducing the deficit and longer-term debt.
We have started the journey to reboot Thatcherism for the 21st Century, taking on the big fights, making the tough calls and actually leading rather than following political debate on the economy.
So, despite Lord Offord’s defection, we are ending the year a lot stronger than we started it – we have a clear economic opportunity, our Party’s finances are looking strong, we have a new HQ in the pipeline and most importantly, Kemi is getting into her stride and showing the House of Commons and the wider country the leader many of us have known for years.
This all might just be enough to raise a glass this Christmas (conservatively).
