Kit is a Conservative because he believes that the best societies are built from the bottom up, not the top down. That people, given the freedom to work hard, take risks, raise families and look after their neighbours, will create more wealth, more kindness and more progress than any government ever could.

He believes in the extraordinary power of free markets and capitalism, the greatest engine for human progress ever devised. In two centuries it has lifted billions out of poverty, doubled lifespans, cured diseases that once carried off whole generations, given mobility and independence to the disabled, helped feed a growing world, and put the sum of human knowledge in the palm of every hand. Kit believes a Conservative government's job is to keep that engine running: to back enterprise, reward risk, encourage investment, and trust that prosperity, once created, will find its way to every corner of the country. He also believes that capitalism has its natural excesses, and that a sensible state has a duty to temper them, so that markets serve people rather than the other way round.

But Kit is no corporatist. He is naturally suspicious of large organisations of every kind, whether sprawling government departments, supranational bureaucracies, or vast consolidated companies that have grown too big to be answered back to. Power that drifts away from the people it governs tends, in time, to forget who it serves. That is why Kit voted to leave the European Union. He believes in sovereign nations, accountable parliaments, and competitive markets full of small firms and challenger businesses, and he is sceptical of any arrangement, public or private, that quietly hands authority to people the public cannot remove.

He believes too in the transformative power of a good education. Kit is the product of one, and so were his parents before him. A great school, a great teacher, a real chance to learn, can change the arc of a family's story in a single generation. He has seen it. That is why he campaigns for high standards, strong discipline, and a school system that gives every child, whatever their background, the same shot at a flourishing life.

He believes in low taxes, because the money you earn is yours first. In an orderly border, because only a country in calm control of who enters it can be genuinely compassionate to those it chooses to welcome, and make considered decisions about who should come here and on what terms. In safe streets, because they are the foundation on which everything else is built. And in a state that does a few important things well, rather than many things badly.

Above all, Kit believes in the quiet virtues that have made Britain what it is: enterprise, family, freedom under the law, good manners, a sense of fair play, service to your community, and a deep respect for the institutions handed down to us. Conservatism, for him, is not an ideology. It is the common sense of generations, applied to the problems of today.

It is why he started a business before he entered politics. It is why he campaigns for more homes, safer streets and a stronger economy. And it is why, in Parliament, he argues for a country that rewards effort, protects the vulnerable, and trusts its people to get on with their lives.