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Paul Howard Davies's avatar

Actually being part of the EU single market and customs union,but out of the Euro and Schengen area and with a massive rebate negotiated by Thatcher had a big part to play in our prosperity..

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John Bowman's avatar

British Conservatives? Are there any? Even Reform UK is a pale immitation - it still will preserve the Socialist welfare state with its Stalin-era NHS State collective.

“including Reform - has not yet broken free from 1980s global free market liberalism.” Free market liberalism was mid 19th Century with Repeal of the Corn Laws, Richard Cobden and the highly successful free trade Cobden-Chevalier Treaty which hugely boosted trade between Britain and France.

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Jonathan Sidaway's avatar

Didn't know that the former MP for ... Carlisle (was it? Somewhere in the admirable bit of Blighty anyway) had piped up like this, although I knew she was Red Con.. The argument was won by the Anti-Corn Law people 180 years ago; it's nowadays the real job of governments to deal with things such as training up our own people where the in-flow of the free market is (I and many others wd say) culturally unacceptable. If we were richer, govts wd be able to do this without putting up inflation unacceptably.

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Brettbaker's avatar

In about a decade, Britain will be able to ask her former colonial possessions (except the US and Ireland), "Do you want to be ruled by the King, or the Chinese?" With The Empire back, growth should skyrocket!

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