INVENIRE

Foreign aid is a disaster. It often acts against the interest of the British people, while also doing little to help the intended recipients. I will outline why we should discontinue our foreign aid budget, and instead pledge the money to ensuring the welfare and protection of the British people. As the result of a 1970 UN resolution, the United Kingdom, amongst many other developed nations, pledged to spend 0.7% of its gross national product on official development assistance, which is usually referred to as foreign aid. The goal of 0.7% was supposed to have been achieved by the middle of the decade. However, almost 50 years after the resolution was officially recognised, the UK is one of just six countries that are currently observing the resolution; the other five are Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark and the Netherlands. This means that, in 2017, the UK gave over £14 billion in economic aid to other nations. In contrast, France, which has a similarly sized economy to the UK, ...

The preservation and revival of British wildlife is an element of conservatism that has been forgotten. In contrast, so-called conservatives have concerned themselves more with corporate profits than the heartlands of our nations. The free market and the subsequent Industrial Revolution have been the cause of many major successes for humanity. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, the world’s first middle class began to develop, steam engines were developed, and cities began to expand at unprecedented rates. Libertarians are quick to look at this material improvement and conclude that an eternal industrial revolution would make us happier. They assume this means we're on the right path. But they couldn’t be more oblivious. In a 2018 YouGov survey on young people, technology and happiness, 27% of young people, despite the material prosperity of our age, felt that their life had no meaning. The destruction of our environment is almost certainly instrumental in this. Numerous ...

The days of laissez-faire politicians are over. This news is disappointing to many, including myself; will we be forced to abandon tried and tested economic truths for the hope of a single vote in the North? Alas, the problems we find in democracies . The causes of this are twofold: although the collapse of the Soviet Union was a great victory for the capitalist right, it also manifested itself as a problem for the Right. The Right no longer had a great ideological enemy, it could no longer talk about the threat of a communist imperial regime occupying the West; they could no longer defend capitalism by talking about the failures of communism. In 1975, President Reagan spoke of communism as "a disease" and most are familiar with his 1983 Evil Empire Speech. Moreover, the fall of the Soviet Union also manifested itself as an opener for debate concerning economic policy. As increasingly more people grew up without a communist state being a world superpower, increasingly, people...

Those who answer affirmatively to the question would reason that those who have become privileged and prosperous under a system have a greater incentive to conserve the rules that protect their position. This position stems from the wider idea that ideologies are born for specific groups; it would similarly say that socialism is for the working class, that corporatism is for businessmen, that feminism is for women and so forth. This diminishes the intellectual case for conservatism; if conservatism is merely a defence for the privileged and prosperous, there is no rational defence for it. In order to answer the question, I will first define conservatism, and then see whether this definition would have it to be a defence of the privileged and prosperous. Conservatism, in the words of Heywood, is “defined by the desire to conserve, reflected in a resistance to, or at least a suspicion of change.” [1] This would explain why conservatives are more likely to be religious than their lef...

Democracy, usually in its representative form, is something of a sacred cow in Western societies. One of the primary arguments made by Brexiteers following the European Union referendum in 2016 is that leaving the EU is simply respecting democracy; respecting the will of the people, and fundamentally, the people themselves. Advocates for lowering the voting age to 16 argue that this will expand and strengthen democracy. But why do we hold it so sacredly? It doesn't guarantee better debate, or better decision-making. I will argue that democracy reduces the standard of democratic debate, ultimately reducing the possibility of good ideas being shared in the political arena. It is incredibly contradictory for us to both value the rigorous debate of political ideologies while also valuing democracy. The two are mutually exclusive. During election campaigns, politicians often compete (compete, not converse) in live, televised debates. Following the debate, we often hear complaints that...

Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party have defeated Labour in a convincing victory in the early hours of this morning, forcing Corbyn to announce future plans for resignation. The Labour Party lost a number of votes in leave-voting constituencies, due to their ambiguous stance on Brexit, in addition to Jeremy Corbyn's general unlikability. We will examine how devastating Corbyn might have been, had he won the election. The Conservatives have kept one of their campaign promises: Corbyn neutral by Christmas. In the tradition of all great socialists, Corbyn and the Labour Party have framed their economic policy as "social justice", attempting to appear somewhat moral. Nevertheless, Labour's policies, founded upon greed and economic ignorance, would hurt businesses severely. A strong example of this is their plan to give company profits to workers. Of course, they argue that they are giving workers "a share of the profits they help create". This statement, a...

Aristocracy has become a dirty word; I would argue rightly so, given its association with the landed gentry, unearned seats in government and regressive social hierarchies, such as pre-revolutionary France and  pre-Reform Act Britain . However, in its first usage, it referred to its literal definition; rule by the excellent. In theory, it refers to rule by an individual, or group of individuals, chosen for their excellence. All states are at some point aristocracies; the best of a people are chosen to be military and political leaders in times of crisis.  In The Republic, Plato describes rule by a philosopher-king, chosen for his wisdom and logical thinking. He defends the concept of vesting so much power in one person with his famous Ship of State analogy. The leader of the state is represented by the captain of the ship. Plato describes the current captain as being "a little deaf and having a little infirmity in sight". Consequently, the men on the ship begin to quarrel a...