Chris Coghlan

Last year I attended the funeral of my step-grandmother, Diana Faure Walker. I adored her, and I was so proud that she had been decorated in the war for her service as a nurse after D-day. She believed that Britain was a hope for the world. That was not naive idealism, but the resolve of the generation who won the war. Today, liberal democracy in Europe is under threat from a dictator again, and too many of our generation are turning to fear. We are facing a Reform party Government, consisting of the same people who cost us £100 billion a year with the Brexit vote. Put them in government and the current chaos will seem like nothing. But there are still three years until the next election: enough time to set a new national mission, achieved with a new economic model to bring new hope. Of course we must restore economic relations with Europe, but we must also dramatically increase defence research and development to power economic growth and defend liberal democracy. Academics now agree that the economic dominance of the United States is powered by public research and development, especially in defence. It was through American and British research and development that we learned how to mass-produce penicillin, which saved thousands of lives after D-day, yet for the last 30 years we have failed to use at scale the No. 1 policy to maximise growth. The Government have made some progress, but today we spend £22 billion a year on public research and development while the fastest-growing advanced economies spend double that. The Government are rightly concerned about more borrowing, but we can remove most of the credit risk for defence research and development borrowing by issuing bonds jointly with our European and Canadian allies. We should follow the advice of Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, who urges the EU to reduce debt by borrowing for R&D at scale. Even with additional borrowing, the debt-to-GDP ratio falls as growth takes off.