Donald Trump is back. Depending on your disposition, that sentence may fill you with feelings of dread or triumph. The implications of Trump’s comeback on immigration, the economy, the war in Ukraine and myriad other issues are highly unpredictable due to the President’s variable temperament and political positioning. But one thing is clear – Trump’s […]
Last month’s Commonwealth summit in Samoa was not supposed to be about the past. But despite Downing Street’s pledge that the issue would be off the biennial summit’s agenda, the topic of reparations inevitably stole the headlines. All 56 of the bloc’s heads of government, including Keir Starmer, signed a document acknowledging calls for ‘discussions […]
There are very few occasions on which I feel genuinely smug about being one of Britain’s handful of libertarians. For the most part, arguing for principled liberalism gets you a lot of stick. We get lambasted from the Left as advocates of corporate oligarchy, Rightists think we want to put Britain’s social fabric through a […]
Germany marked April Fool’s Day this year with the implementation of its long-awaited legalisation of recreational cannabis. It becomes the 9th country (plus 28 US states and territories, and one Australian territory) to legalise recreational use and it’s one of at least 30 countries to have decriminalised personal use of the devil’s lettuce. If you told […]
Brexiteers have long-argued for the need to restore control over Britain’s laws to the British Parliament and British courts. For too long, the Leavers argued, bureaucrats in Brussels had been tightening their grip on the UK statute book without rigorous accountability from the British people. Leaving the EU was supposed to change that. The Digital […]
‘Venezuela isn’t real socialism, we just want to be like Sweden!’. Anyone naïve enough to have engaged in debate with online socialists will be familiar with this kind of refrain. The idea that the Nordic countries are all run along collectivist lines appears remarkably sticky, despite the ample evidence to the contrary. Take Sweden, whose […]
‘Government contemplating price caps on basic foods’. No, it’s not Soviet Russia or Fidel’s Cuba, this is Britain in the year 2023. In many ways this response is all too depressingly predictable; after all, since the pandemic struck the Government’s reflexive answer to most economic woes has been a mixture of price controls, subsidies and […]
Pretty much every renter in Britain has a horrible landlord story. Whether it’s a mouldy bathroom, exaggerated damage costs after a tenancy, delayed repairs, surprise rent increases or shock evictions, there is no shortage of horror stories. The Government’s newly unveiled renters reform measures are meant to tackle ‘rogue’ landlords by banning ‘no fault evictions’ […]
The Government announced over the weekend that nitrous oxide would be banned. This is long overdue, of course; how long did we really expect the Government to allow people to use such a dangerous substance with such a menacing chemical symbol? Except, of course, we are talking about laughing gas: a mild, short-acting stimulant routinely […]
The Prime Minister has promised caution and pragmatism, and last week’s ‘steady as she goes’ Budget was no exception. But there’s nothing sensible about perpetuating the status quo. Britain is in decline, and we will not escape it by reflexively turning to higher taxes and increasingly elaborate spending plans. We had known for some time […]
Even the doughtiest Brexiteer would have to admit that the opportunities of leaving the EU have, so far, been squandered. From financial services to agriculture, and trade, we have failed to take advantage of the ability to diverge from and compete with our European neighbours. That’s partly because many of these areas in which the […]
