These are the convictions the UKJP is built on, drawn from what the British public tells us and stated plainly so they can be argued with.
1. Sovereignty
The British people govern themselves through Parliament. The laws that bind them should be made, and able to be unmade, by people they can vote out.
Where a court, a treaty or an unelected body can overrule Parliament on who may live here, how the country is powered or what it can afford, that power should come home. Britain cooperates with other nations by choice, and keeps the right to decide for itself.
2. Borders and citizenship
Who may come to Britain, and on what terms, is for the British people to decide through Parliament, and for no court or treaty to overrule. Net migration should be at or below zero, with arrivals no greater than departures and capped each year by a figure Parliament votes on, and those who come to work should be chosen for the skills and wealth they bring.
No one who arrives by an illegal route should be allowed to stay: the way into Britain is through proper channels. Those with no right to be here should be removed, promptly and lawfully. Foreign nationals convicted of serious crimes should be deported as a matter of course. Citizenship should be earned, and it should mean something.
3. Equality before the law
One law for everyone, including those who make it and those who enforce it. In the courts and in policing, the law should ask what a person did, not who they are, and it should bind ministers, officials, officers and companies exactly as it binds anyone else.
Protection from crime and abuse is owed to every citizen equally, and so is freedom of speech: lawful speech is protected whoever it comes from, and unlawful speech is dealt with whoever it comes from.
4. Accountability
Power answers to the people, and failures are answered for. Every public body should have a named person responsible for its results, figures anyone can check, and consequences when it fails. That applies to ministers, officials, hospital chiefs and the directors of companies that run public services alike.
Promises should come with their costs. No policy should be put to Parliament without its price, and no party should ask for votes without publishing its sums.
5. Liberty
The state exists to protect the freedom of its citizens, not to manage it. Free speech comes first, because every other liberty is defended with it: the law should punish threats and incitement, never opinion.
What people earn, own, say and do in private is their own affair until it harms someone else. Every new power the state takes should have to justify itself, and should lapse unless Parliament renews it. No citizen should have to carry a state identity card, digital or otherwise.
6. Democratic reform
Decisions should be taken as close to the people they affect as possible. Parliament, not officials or courts, should vote on the numbers that shape the country: how many people come, what carbon budgets cost, and what is spent. Local people should have a real say over what is built where they live.
Parliament should reflect how the country votes, through a proportional system that keeps a local MP for every constituency. The House of Lords stays as a revising chamber. And voters should be able to remove an MP who breaks the promises they were elected on, without waiting for the next general election.
7. Work and contribution
Work is the foundation of a free and self-respecting country. Welfare exists for those who genuinely cannot provide for themselves, and it should protect them properly. It should not support those fully able to contribute, and a system that cannot tell the two apart fails both.
What people draw should reflect what they have put in, and newcomers should contribute before they claim. In return, the state owes every citizen a real route into work: skills worth having, and an economy that makes here what it can make here.
8. Law and order
A law that is not enforced is not a law. Police time belongs on the crimes that harm people, such as violence, burglary, theft, fraud and drug dealing, not on lawful speech, whoever it comes from.
Officers should use the powers Parliament gives them fully and confidently, and be backed when they act in good faith. Because power answers to the people, the police do too: real misconduct is dealt with quickly, and in public.
These principles are not settled doctrine. They are argued openly in the Principles & Manifesto category of the forum, and they are open to challenge there by anyone, member or not.