Another year, another Conservative Conference, another action packed ThinkTent.

While mischievous journalists were commenting on empty arenas, our events were almost without fail standing room only. From discussions on ways to radically transform the tax system to open and frank conversations about welfare, migration, spending and local government, our events and fantastic selection of star panellists covered it all. And stars indeed they were.

Let’s catch up on some of the best moments:

We kicked off with a panel on our proposals for a single income tax, which would abolish a plethora of taxes and replace them with a single 30 per cent tax on all distributed income above a personal allowance. 

Matthew Elliott, our founder and chief executive at the time of our single income tax proposal, opened by reminding the packed room that in the late 1970s the tax code stood at around 2,000 pages long, but had soared to 7,000 pages by the late 1990s and an astonishing 14,000 pages by 2010. It’s now up to 25,000.

And our former chairman, Andrew Allum, followed up by pointing out that while entrepreneurs may not think that much about tax, “they will need capital, and investors always do think about taxes… what return will I get and will it compensate me for my risk? Capital needs a good return to fund the opportunities. Therefore it needs low, simple taxes.” Our head of campaigns, Elliot Keck, posted a quick thread on X to summarise our single income tax proposals.

Next up was a detailed discussion on Britain’s quangocracy, an evergreen topic of conversation for us at TPA towers but one which is particularly pressing given some of the revelations from our Britain’s Quangos Uncovered campaign.

We were honoured to have Lord Francis Maude in the tent, to give his insights on a long and successful career on the issue of how to rewire the state. He noted that “concern about quangos goes back a long way” and gave some useful pointers as to what the Conservative opposition needs to do by way of preparation for government. Reflecting on his own time in opposition pre-2010 he commented “we gave a lot of thought to this. The first interesting thing was that the government did not know how many quangos there were, and we had a better count than the government did.”

In a particularly refreshing contribution, Alex Burghart MP, a shadow cabinet minister who is deeply involved in the policy process of Kemi Badenoch and her team, noted that “there is a growing consensus… that we have to move back to a world in which ministers can make decisions.”

And in what was surely one of the most star-studded panels of the whole conference, we were blessed to be joined by some of the Conservative Party’s biggest hitters for our panel on migration, namely Katie Lam MP, Nick Timothy MP and shadow home secretary Chris Philp MP. Also present were Melisa Tourt of the Centre for Policy Studies and our very own chairman Rory McGregor.

Laying out his and the Conservative’s view of immigration policy, Chris said “we intend to deport all foreign criminals and anyone with no right to be here. We will do that by doubling resources, getting out of the ECHR and stripping away all the legal nonsense that has frustrated our attempts to remove dangerous foreign criminals in the past.”

Alongside our own fascinating events we were honoured to be able to host events from a range of other sound organisations all of them doing the Lord’s work in making the case for a smaller state, greater personal liberty, lower taxes and higher economic growth. This includes the Prosperity Institute, Popular Conservatives, the Growth Commission, Global Warming Policy Foundation and Forest

If you want to catch up on our events and see what our panellists had to say, make sure to check out the livesteams here.

Our head of campaigns, Elliot Keck, went through the best bits of the policy agenda in a blog in which he highlighted the “golden rule” of using one of every two pounds saved to reduce the deficit and the other to boost economic growth; the proposals to reform welfare; and the pledge to abolish stamp duty among other policies. As Elliot put it: “It’s incomplete, which is unsurprising given the amount of time until an election. But it’s an impressive start to her policy programme.”

Read the blog in full.

With our podcast studio currently looking like a construction site as we rebuild it fit for the 21st century, we decided to take the podcast on the road, this time to Conservative Party Conference. Podcast host Duncan Barkes joined us in Manchester for a live recording of a nation of taxpayers. We were delighted to host none other than shadow chancellor, Sir Mel Stride.

Sir Mel Stride was quizzed by Duncan and our chief executive John O’Connell about the opposition’s plans for spending, tax, welfare, the triple lock and a range of other issues. In an illuminating chat, Stride argued that their plans will “give us the ability to get the debt down and look at things such as tax and lowering taxes in order to get growth going in our country.”

If there is one thing that all the experts agree on is that, however much the Conservatives let the country down on issues like immigration and tax, they did a pretty stand-up job in terms of education. No longer does Britain languish in the league tables on maths, literacy and science, although most of the boost in performance comes in England, not Labour-run Wales or SNP-run Scotland. 

And if there is another thing the experts agree on it is that Labour’s education policies risk turning back the clock on those successes, with an education policy more focused on what’s in the best interests of the unions than students. Just look at their ideological campaign against private schools, unpicked in a devastatingly incisive thread from our researcher Anne Strickland. Given this, we feel it’s now more important than ever that parents have access to the best possible data. Which is where our schools dashboard comes in.

For the first time, parents are able to directly compare, in detail, the GCSE and A-level results of secondary schools in their area, including a breakdown by subject. Schools can be compared within either local authorities, postcodes, or certain geographical areas.

Take a look here.

This week our researcher, Jonathan Eida, jumps back onto his favourite hobby horse, namely the (over)regulation of our financial sector. Taking a deep dive into the Financial Conduct Authority’s latest survey of the firms it is responsible for regulating, Jonathan found that there is simply no link between more regulation and smarter regulation. Half felt that the FCA made more data/information requests than it needed to, and fewer than one in five felt the FCA made effective use of the data it received.

As Jonathan puts it “businesses are being drained of resources to provide complex data that, in many cases, appears to deliver minimal benefit. The result is a costly, bureaucratic exercise that undermines competitiveness and delivers little in return.” A disaster for growth, and for taxpayers who want to see a well-regulated, not over-regulated financial services sector.

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