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Cllr James Craig is a newly elected councillor for Northcote Ward on Wandsworth Council, and Chairman of the Battersea Conservatives. In May 2026, I was elected to Wandsworth Council for the first time. It should have been an unambiguously happy day. We wrestled back control of the council from Labour by just 16 votes, after four gruelling years in opposition, and my ward colleague and I won our own ward with a significantly increased majority. It was the culmination of years of hard work.

Joe Walker-Cousins MBE is a Middle East and defence specialist based in Riyadh. What goes on in the Gulf does not stay in the Gulf. The attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport show that Saudi Arabia is not a passing regional story, and Britain’s relationship with the Kingdom cannot be managed through short-term reactions. Britain needs a long-term Gulf strategy and… the political leadership to deliver it. I know King Khalid International Airport well.

Rafe Fletcher is the founder of CWG. I am now a Permanent Resident (PR) in Singapore. My stay in the country is no longer tied to an employment visa. That newly granted status means making obligatory contributions to my Central Provident Fund (CPF), Singapore’s social insurance plan, which chiefly covers one’s retirement provisions. Those contributions will gradually increase until they meet the standard 17 per cent of the first S$102,000 (c.£60,000) of gross salary.

Ed Davey is a joke. I could leave the article there and wash my hands of my editorial duties for the day, but I have grudgingly been informed that I need to up the word count. Ed Davey is a colossal joke that brings immense shame and embarrassment to the party that once produced political titans like that of Asquith and Lloyd-George. There. That’s better. Let us not hide behind the shield of naivety. We all know it to be true.

Katie Lam is the Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and the MP for Weald of Kent. At last week’s Conservative Party Conference, Kemi laid out the clear dividing lines between us and Labour. They’ll always take more of people’s money; we want to let people keep what they earn. They’ll always think that the state has all the answers; we know that our country does best when people have more control over their own lives.

Ben Ramanauskas has worked in academia and as an adviser to the government. He is currently writing a book on the UK economy. The Shadow Chancellor, Andrew Griffith recently announced that if the Tories were to win the next General Election, that they will halve Employers’ NI for 21-24 year olds. I admire the motivation and thinking behind this: it’s a cut to a very economically damaging tax and it aims to end the NEET crisis by making young people relatively less expensive for firms to hire.

Natacha Tannous Ritchie is a Conservative councillor in Kensington and Chelsea (Pembridge Ward) with a background in finance. Britain’s GDP growth in the second quarter was 0.5 per cent while the US grew 2.2 per cent. How can Britain possibly grow again in such a dire business environment, with its high cost of capital, high cost of energy and high cost of employment?

Leonardo Fennell is a research intern at Civitas. The viral controversy surrounding Ed Sheeran in recent weeks has, once again, reopened the debate around cancel culture, throwing another log on the fires of the culture wars and renewing the conflict between free speech and a supposed right not to be offended. Yet, the Sheeran controversy is particularly revealing because it is difficult to identify exactly what form of cancellation is taking place.

Donna Jones is the Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight and  the Conservative Candidate as Mayor for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Recently, as a group of Conservative Police and Crime Commissioners, we wrote to the Home Secretary setting out the clear links between unmet educational need and vulnerability to crime. The letter makes a fundamental point: SEND reform is not an education-only issue.

Andrew Gilligan is a writer and former No10 adviser.