The people have spoken. Yesterday's election was the largest Conservative majority since Thatcher’s 1987 landslide and the largest majority overall since Blair’s landslide in 2001. The Conservative Party now has what is being described by many as a 'stonking' or 'thumping' mandate with a majority of 80.
In case you're in any doubt, this majority means the Withdrawal Agreement Bill will pass through the House of Commons before the Christmas recess and we'll leave the EU at the end of January.
After this, there are three paths forward for the full exit on 1st January 2021: A hard "WTO" rules Brexit; a "Canada-minus" deal; and an "extend and pretend". Experts disagree on what will happen. Economist Jonathan Portes has a bet with Ivan Rogers, the former Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union, that Boris will opt for the latter.
Labour the point
Yesterday felt decisive, but as Tom Clark writes in Prospect on six reasons why the Left need not despair: "On a day like this, I realise all these arguments for hope on the Left and Centre may sound naïve at best or deluded at worst. But recall how all-conquering Thatcher was when she won a slightly bigger majority in 1987; she was gone in a little over three years. Labour was said to have blown its last ever chance in April 1992, and yet within the year the victorious John Major was ruined. And as recently as 2015, the David Cameron/George Osborne duo was said to have locked-in a new majority for modern Conservatism, and yet a year later both were crushed by the Brexit vote. Progressive Britain has been routed by nostalgia this week, but nostalgia will not provide a recipe for navigating the future forever."
Even blue rinse dyed-in-the-wool Conservatives must see the value of having an effective opposition to hold the new Government to account. And there's no inherent reason it couldn't back Britain's entrepreneurs. As archcritic of Corbynomics Dr Kristian Niemietz wrote a few years ago: "You can easily combine support for high levels of income and wealth redistribution with support for a laissez-faire economic policy. You can take the view that the state should redistribute wealth, but it should not get too involved in its creation. Related to that, you can take the view that the state should fund a generous welfare state, but that it should not itself be the main provider of welfare services."
What next?
We'll continue to act as a bridge between entrepreneurs and politicians and policy makers across the political spectrum, inviting some of the new MPs to join as Officers and Members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Entrepreneurship. And we'll continue to make that case to government and opposition alike that our vision of a more entrepreneurial society is a noble one.
Of Korski
Entrepreneur and former special adviser to David Cameron has a Twitter thread on how to make UK public services fit for the 21st century. Following the Science Committee's criticism of the slowdown in digitising government services, Korski calls for a Department of Technology and Innovation led by a world class venture capitalist or globally-known entrepreneur; the merging of the Government Digital Service with parts of the Cabinet Office like the Crown Commercial Service to create a Government Transformation Agency reporting to the Prime Minister; a replacement of G Cloud for procurement; and much more besides.
Korski is spot on. A govtech revolution is one of our asks in our recently published Startup Manifesto, and an issue that we will do more work on next year.
Read the full newsletter here, and subscribe to our newsletter here.