George Freeman MP: UKIP come knocking: what's going on, and how to respond?

George Freeman is Member of Parliament for Mid-Norfolk, founder of Mind The Gap and the Positive Politics! campaign.  Follow George on Twitter.

My constituency of Mid Norfolk is seriously small 'c' Conservative country.  From time on the doorsteps in the last month with local councillors and candidates, it is clear that UKIPs message is resonating loudly with bedrock Conservatives. Far from chiming just with extremists or closet racists or BMP sympathisers - who they clearly are also picking up - Nigel Farage's message is also chiming with decent mainstream Conservatives who have traditionally been the bedrock of the Conservative Party. Feedback from polling stations last night, last night's by-election result from South Shields, and early returns from Essex and other rural counties suggest a low turnout - and that a strong UKIP surge is producing a serious breakthrough.  What's going on?  How to respond?

It's clear to me from listening to UKIP 'swingers' that this UKIP surge is much more than just a mid-term protest vote. It's about much more than a deep and growing concern about the failures of the European project. And it's about much more than a single issue protest about uncontrolled immigration. Its also clear that it is NOT a sign of a hardening of voter opinion to the Right, or a call for more red-blooded right wing policies.  Let's hope the Red Eds mistakenly use UKIP's land- grab of Labour voters as a sign that they need to lurch left, but let's not make the same mistake ourselves and lurch backwards to some mythical right-wing programme which some suggest would sweep us to a majority if we would only have the courage to promise it.  We need courage, for sure - but it's the courage to listen to some tough love from critical friends, and try and understand what lies beneath Farage's appeal.

We need to be clear who UKIP are appealing to and why. It isn't just traditional Conservative voters like those listed above.  It also Old Labour core voters: blue collar, manual and traditional-values trade 'Working Mans Club' Labour.  It's also groups that mainstream parties have struggled to connect with: the young, first time voters; the concerned but apolitical mothers who so often deal in the family with the bread and butter social issues of childcare, education, health, and care, and whose concern used often to express itself as support for those nice Lib Dems Pre-Coalition.

George Freeman MP: www.littleplatoons.com --- Why we must unleash the little guys to drive economic recovery

George Freeman was elected in 2010 after a 15 year career in start-up business in which he founded and raised over £50m for 5 new technology companies.  A founder of the www.2020conservatives.com, he chairs the innovation economy commission.  As Government adviser on life sciences to David Willetts mp at dept business he has been closely involved in shaping and implementing  the Government’s life science strategy and is now coordinating a parallel strategy for the UK agri-food sector. He has written and spoken widely on the need for bold measures to unleash a renaissance of enterprise and innovation to drive recovery.

Follow George on Twitter.

With a predictably fragile economic recovery, Labour 5%-10% ahead in the polls and a growing public doubt about whether we can have both public sector deficit reduction AND economic growth, George Osborne’s mid term budget in 40 days is critically important.  Given the fiasco of last year it is vital that we send a strong signal to boost confidence - in the markets and the electorate – that we are determined to both restrain public sector spending and unleash a private sector recovery – and that the two can feed off each other.

How?  We need a bolder vision of what went wrong in our economy and a bolder vision of how, by unleashing the forces of entrepreneurial small business, we can both reduce the public sector deficit AND create sustainable private sector growth.

Let’s explain to the electorate how the last Government presided over a far too cosy cartel of Big Government, Big Banks, Big Utilities and Big Corporations (across the board but especially in the banking, energy and public sector procurement markets). Let’s set out how we intend to open up these markets to unleash a new renaissance of enterprise to make markets more competitive, drive innovation and get creating jobs and wealth again.

We need to open up markets like banking and energy and telecoms to new entrants, and set out a bold ‘New Deal for New Businesses to help inspire a new generation of entrepreneurs.

George Freeman MP: George Osborne is becoming the entrepreneur’s friend

George Freeman is Conservative MP for Mid Norfolk. Follow George on Twitter.

‘Every problem is an opportunity’ is an expression beloved of entrepreneurs.  Creating value by spotting the opportunity in a problem is what entrepreneurs do.  There’s nothing entrepreneurs like more than big established businesses failing to innovate fast enough and failing their customers.  As Britain seeks to tackle this historic crisis of debt and structural deficits driven by Big Government, damaged banks and uncompetitive and unreformed public services, we badly need to unleash the entrepreneurial mindset.  We can’t borrow our way out of the debt crisis.  We will need to trade our way out by selling to the fastest growing  global markets the goods and services that this country does best.  We need our entrepreneurs like never before.

Having come to Parliament after a 15 year career in start-up venture capital helping entrepreneurs build some of the fastest growing businesses in the technology sector, I’ve seen first-hand how the entrepreneurial mindset, empowered by new technology, an increasingly impatient modern consumer and a spirit of insurgency can transform whole markets.

We need to unleash that spirit of enterprise in, and on, the UK.   Across the public and private sectors we need to release a new entrepreneurialism: empowering citizens and consumers, and the entrepreneurs who champion their needs, to drive innovation, reform, competitiveness and aspiration across our private, and public, sector.

George Freeman MP: We need new models of funding for infrastructure to unlock new sources of finance and for growth

George Freeman was elected MP for Mid Norfolk in 2010 after a fifteen year career in start-up venture capital in the technology sector.  He worked closely with George Osborne's office in Opposition on the Richards and Dyson Reports reviewing innovation and business support policies, and has contributed to the Growth Review.

History shows that leaders often turn to national infrastructure projects at times of historic economic crisis. It normally pays off. Roosevelt’s dams, Churchill’s radar and Kennedy’s space programme all laid the foundations for long term economic advantage. (Kennedy’s space program is still paying dividends as the platform for the US’s global leadership in IT.)

The Chancellor’s announcements on infrastructure in today’s Autumn Statement are important and timely. We need to get the real economy moving again. The collapse of the New Labour credit boom has made it all too obvious that we need a new model of growth. The crash has called time on New Labour’s economic model of relying on debt-fuelled booms in the City, housing market and public sector. The Government is right to insist on a more sustainable model of long term recovery. We need a more regionally balanced, sustainable and globally competitive enterprise economy to generate the long term savings and investment we need. New investment in infrastructure is a key part of turning these phrases into reality.

Why? Some commentators talk of ‘shovel ready’ Rooseveltian infrastructure ‘schemes’ as if this is about buying growth by putting the unemployed to work in donkey jackets on road building. They completely miss the point. The significance of this investment isn’t in the speed of the payback (in fact modern road and rail infrastructure has quite long lead in times) but in the importance of poor infrastructure on holding back our real economy, the potential of new models of infrastructure funding to unlock new sources of finance and new engines of growth, and the opportunity to energise parts of the sclerotic public sector.

George Freeman MP: We don't need an economic Plan B - We need confidence in ourselves to make Plan A succeed

George Freeman was elected MP for Mid Norfolk in 2010 after a fifteen year career in start-up venture capital in the technology sector.  He worked closely with George Osborne's office in Opposition on the Richards and Dyson Reports reviewing innovation and business support policies, and has contributed to the Growth Review.

Tonight the Chancellor will make his second annual Mansion House Speech. Last year’s was seen as a test of his maturity, but the Coalition Government aren’t the new boys and girls of 2010 anymore. Today the debate is whether George Osborne is on the right path. Is Plan A the right course?

For me the Budget’s focus on rebalancing our economy away from over-dependence on debt and unsustainable boom and bust was spot on.
Building a sustainable recovery with a rebalanced economy is the only way that we can move from "rescue to recovery and reform" as the Chancellor put it in his Budget speech.

Big surprise, I’m a Conservative.  But I applaud the Chancellor’s strategy not out of blind party loyalty, but as a former venture capitalist with a 15-year career financing technology start-ups. I have felt first hand the barriers that hold back entrepreneurs in this country and have long campaigned for a more enterprising economic model.

George Freeman MP: There is such a thing as a modern growth strategy - It's just not the same as the failed industrial activism of the past

George Freeman was elected MP for Mid Norfolk in 2010 after a fifteen year career in start-up venture capital in the technology sector.  He worked closely with the Chancellor’s office in Opposition on the Richards and Dyson Reports reviewing innovation and business support policies, and is contributing to the Growth Review.

There can be no more urgent priority than unlocking growth. The outcome of the Coalition’s entire programme will ultimately depend on whether we get the growth we need. The result will determine whether Britain continues down the trajectory to being a depressed, old, debt-ridden, public sector economy or a vibrant place of hope able to compete successfully in an extraordinarily dynamic global enterprise economy. These are high stakes indeed.

What can Government do when it hasn’t got any money? Because that is the challenge baffling Westminster politicians. The lesson that Govnt cant 'buy' sustainable economic growth laid bare in the Blair Brown years is one the Red Eds appear not to have learnt.

The Chancellor’s bold deficit reduction strategy is an essential step in the right direction, as are the NI and Corporation tax measures to help business. But they are first steps. We must go further, faster, harder. The Coalition has shown admirable appetite for reform. Let’s channel more of its reforming zeal into removing the barriers to growth instead of tinkering with our voting system.  The public will not thank us for obsessing about A.V. when real incomes are falling.

To really deliver the vision of a Britain 'Open for Business' again, I believe, as someone who has come to politics from business, that we need to learn some lessons from business. So now that we’ve issued the profits warning, slashed the dividend and reorganized the management, what should the board of UK plc be doing to unlock new revenues?

George Freeman MP: Without the Government's reforms, we run the risk of a University system which is increasingly dependent on churning ever greater numbers of students through ever more mediocre degrees

George Freeman is MP for Mid Norfolk and vice chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Universities.

Our Universities are jewels in the British crown.   As crucibles of the free enquiry and free speech which underpin our demoralised body politic, social mobility, the  innovation and the world class economic growth we so desperately need, it is vital that they are funded properly.

But over recent years our Universities have been led down a blind alley into ever increasing dependence on Government, with all the inevitable consequences that follow as night follows day: politically correct interference, underfunding, and a dumbing down of standards.  In short, allowing Government to do to our University sector what it did to British Steel, British Leyland and British secondary education. We are in danger of creating a University system which is increasingly dependent on churning ever greater numbers of students through ever more mediocre degrees.

We need a reform of University funding that facilitates our top Universities to raise the money they need to invest in research and teaching excellence, unlocks a revolution in philanthropy and endowments so that no academically deserving applicant from a disadvantaged background has to borrow anything, and encourages for the rest a diversity of provision with more part time, vocational, shorter and more applied courses.

Many of our Universities are sitting on huge economic assets in research and Intellectual Property, and philanthropic endowments from alumni. Before coming to Parliament I spent a 15 year career working with our top research Universities helping to fund new technology ventures.  We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of the value our top Universities are sitting on.

We need a package of reform which is bold, ambitious and optimistic about our Universities, is rooted in a profound belief in their independence, and a commitment to combining excellence, innovative new funding and progressive social mobility. 

The Coalition should be congratulated for having the political guts to do the right thing in supporting the Coalition’s plans.  Tomorrow’s graduates will thank them.

George Freeman MP: Prince Charles is leading the way with a new model of funding rural community regeneration

George Freeman is the newly-elected Member of Parliament for Mid Norfolk.

The plight of rural England over the past decade is (sadly) all too familiar. Last week the Commission for Rural Communities announced that in the second half of last year, unemployment in rural areas rose by 73 per cent. Widespread deprivation in rural areas is often hidden by the hedges and the urban-skewed indices of poverty.

Pubs, Post Offices and local services have been closed or reduced. Escalating fuel costs and lower incomes hit rural family budgets particularly hard. Rural enterprises are held back through little or no access to (fast) broadband. Young people are too often forced to move away to find work and afford a home. As Prince Charles said in the Telegraph earlir in the month:

“The church, the village school, the shops and pubs all depend on a local economy ... take all this away and we are left with ghost communities, populated by little more than second-home owners.”

There is no one solution to these problems. However in the ‘age of austerity’ what is obvious is that throwing government money at the problem can no longer be the default response to difficulties. Across the board, the structural crisis in our public finances necessitates new methods of financing regeneration based on private sector free enterprise, philanthropy and local leadership. On this, Prince Charles is to be congratulated for leading the way.

George Freeman: How a new type of regional infrastructure building society could get the economy moving again

George Freeman is prospective parliamentary candidate for the new constituency of Mid Norfolk and is founder of The Norfolk Way, a campaign to promote a new vision of sustainable development in Norfolk.

We need to get the real economy moving again. We won’t do that just by pouring billions into the busted banks and public sector. We need to unlock the debt-free investment to grow our way back to sustainable prosperity. As the policy makers in London cast around for 'Big Ideas' for economic reconstruction, I'd like to suggest one with the potential to really unlock the potential of our regional economies.

It is based on the Victorian model: they invested the equivalent of billions in a rail network funded out of the development gains it helped unlock. Why don’t we do the same for modern infrastructure by creating a new type of regional infrastructure 'building society'?

The collapse of the New Labour credit boom has made it all too obvious that we need a new model of growth. Relying on servicing the City, speculating on housing and cheap credit to fuel consumer spending is not sustainable. We need a more balanced, sustainable and competitive enterprise economy,  generating the long term savings and investment we need. How?