Arise Sir Idris Elba, Sir Christopher Dean and Dame Jayne Torvill. This year’s New Year Honours list had a host of well-deserved gongs for famous and not-so-famous names, alongside the usual criticisms about back-scratching cronyism too. Whatever the rights and wrongs of last week’s list, the idea of getting a gong or a title feels […]
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here. This week, the Government announced a multi-million-pound boost for apprenticeships in an attempt to improve young people’s life chances with a smoother transition from school into education, work […]
When the Office for Budget Responsibility had finished grovelling and prostrating itself for leaking the entire Budget in advance, it made a genuinely eye-popping admission about what was actually in it. They said that, after they’d downgraded their growth forecasts to match Britain’s lacklustre economic performance since the 2008 banking crisis and the Covid pandemic, […]
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here. Wes Streeting wants you know that he really, definitely isn’t plotting against Keir Starmer. Honest. In fairness, with NHS productivity flatlining since the pandemic, resident (formerly known […]
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here. Most UK families, business leaders and investors will spend the next month trying to ignore the ever-darkening economic clouds that are gathering in the run-up to Chancellor […]
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here: Only Thatcher-sized reforms will end Britain’s malaise Britain’s benefits system is unfair for all involved Labour’s change to Ofwat doesn’t hold water The fiscal farce that’s bankrupting […]
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here: Only Thatcher-sized reforms will end Britain’s malaise Britain’s benefits system is unfair for all involved Labour’s change to Ofwat doesn’t hold water The fiscal farce that’s […]
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here: Only Thatcher-sized reforms will end Britain’s malaise Britain’s benefits system is unfair for all involved Labour’s change to Ofwat doesn’t hold water The fiscal farce that’s […]
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here: Only Thatcher-sized reforms will end Britain’s malaise Britain’s benefits system is unfair for all involved Labour’s change to Ofwat doesn’t hold water The fiscal farce that’s […]
The slow, warm days of August are traditionally when Treasury spin doctors start floating ideas for an upcoming Autumn Budget. This year’s kite-flying included replacing stamp duty with a property sales tax which, sadly, is the economic equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig. Stamp duty is already a kind of sales tax, so replacing […]
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here: Only Thatcher-sized reforms will end Britain’s malaise Britain’s benefits system is unfair for all involved Labour’s change to Ofwat doesn’t hold water . American political strategist […]
This article is the third in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here: 1. Only Thatcher-sized reforms will end Britain’s malaise 2. Britain’s benefits system is unfair for all involved Sewage in rivers, hosepipe bans, spiralling bills, fat cat bonuses […]
The Government’s screeching u-turn on reforming Personal Independence Payments has distracted attention from a more fundamental problem with Britain’s broken benefits system. Regardless of whether the right people are getting the right kinds of benefits or not, too few of them stop claiming once they’ve started. We’ve got a ‘Hotel California’ system where people check […]
This article is the first in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. ‘Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything’. This famous aphorism, coined by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, should send shivers down every British spine. UK productivity trails France, Germany […]
Labour’s bonfire of the quangos is barely smouldering so far. The run-up to last month’s ‘Spring-Statement-that-honestly-wasn’t-an-Emergency-Budget’ included a big anti-red tape fanfare, with lots of worthy rhetoric about tackling bureaucratic complexity and regulatory risk-aversion. But it always starts this way, because talk is cheap. Governments promise to slash red tape and, for a while, hopes […]
With all the fuss about Labour’s ‘heat or eat’ decision to means-test pensioners for their winter fuel allowance, and the ‘did-she-or-didn’t-she’ media hyperventilation about Kemi Badenoch questioning the future of the pension triple lock, it’s easy to forget that Britain’s state pension is basically broke. It was set up when most people only lived a […]
Rachel Reeves is in a bind. Not just because of ‘did they or didn’t they’ arguments about whether Labour fibbed about long-planned tax rises during the election, or because all those bushy-tailed new Labour MPs and battle-scarred union bosses want the Chancellor to raise public sector spending even higher. But because she’s promised ‘sound money’ […]
We may have a new Government, but the big questions around Net Zero are still with us. Families and businesses are facing enormous energy bills that are much higher than they should be and, while the recent fuss about cuts to the Winter Fuel Payment dominates the headlines, it’s easy to forget the bigger, broader […]
Politics is like plumbing; everyone knows it’s essential and wants it to work properly but, frankly, we’d rather not spend too much time thinking about the details. Quiet efficiency is what most of us want, and the tumultuous weeks since the mini-budget have been anything but that. So a return to unflappably competent, calm normality […]
The new Prime Minister will inherit an in-tray from hell: double-digit inflation; a predicted recession; anaemic productivity growth; a war in Europe; and the ticking time-bomb of the Northern Ireland Protocol to boot. With the next General Election no more than 2 years away, there’ll be no opening heats or warm-up laps. They’ll have to […]
