As 2025 draws to a close, I can't remember the country ever being gloomier. People are getting poorer. Unemployment is rising. Inflation is proving sticky and our debt is running completely out of control — with a Chancellor who doesn't seem to have a clue what she's doing.

Worse than that, people are increasingly frightened to walk down the street wearing a watch or their jewellery. And if you say anything rude on Facebook, you may well get a knock at the door.

This year I'll be making my annual New Year's speech in Greenwich, south London. I believe it's an important place to think about what this country used to be, what it represented, and what it can become.

Greenwich was at the very height of Britain's naval power. This handsome district by the River Thames played a pivotal role in our rich history of maritime dominance and global navigation.

And that dominance wasn't just about winning the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It wasn't just about building the biggest Empire the world had ever seen. It was also about a Royal Navy that spent decades, at huge cost, driving slavery off the high seas, something of which British people are rightly proud.

In fact, we have an enormous amount to be proud of, and yet our education system under both of the last governments has been teaching our children to be ashamed of their past. 

One of the first things a Reform government will do is make sure the young are taught correctly about our history.

But beyond Greenwich's magnificent buildings such as Sir Christopher Wren's Old Royal Naval College, you can see the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf. Here, not just traditional stocks, shares and bonds are being traded, but a whole new world is developing: a world of AI, financial innovation and digital assets such as cryptocurrencies. 

I know many feel hopeless, but we're the party offering hope. We're the ones offering change

This year I'll be making my annual New Year's speech in Greenwich, south London. I believe it's an important place to think about what this country used to be, what it represented, and what it can become

Alaa Abd El-Fattah is a guy from Egypt who's put out the most abominable, hateful tweets about killing Jews and white people and fighting the police. And yet this man was given citizenship by the Conservative Party and welcomed back into Britain by Labour

And neither the Conservative nor Labour parties seem to understand this world in any way at all.

Let me promise you that we do. These are the technologies of growth as we all head forward in this century. But none of it can be harnessed unless we produce our own energy, lots of it, and at cheap rates.