With persistent inflation, Conservatives exhausted and a Labour government with no ideas, the ghosts of the 1970s have returned to haunt Britain. Now, just as then, a comprehensive reboot of the right is required, says Sir Simon Clarke

We live in a time of ghosts. The spirits of the 1970s are stirring across the UK, with the Chancellor and the City alike haunted by the grim phantoms of stagflation and concerns over sterling and gilts. Fifty years ago, an exhausted Conservative government led by Ted Heath had just been ousted, replaced – without enthusiasm – by a Wilson-Callaghan Labour government which, it quickly became apparent, had no answers to the UK’s problems. The parallels with 2025 are obvious.

We face three fundamental challenges: economic sclerosis, unsustainable demographics and a misfiring state that is simultaneously overmighty and inefficient. None of these seem likely to be remedied by Keir Starmer – a man who it is cruelly said campaigns in prose and governs in ChatGPT.

In 1975, of course, the Conservative........

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