There are many challenges in forecasting, but predicting the likelihood of a case of a winter crisis for the NHS isn’t one of them. Every year, people wait for hours to be seen in A+E, operations are cancelled and, at worst, patients are left to die in corridors. Thanks to a surge of Covid cases […]
A terrible disease is stalking Britain. No, not that one, but what some call ‘Treasury Brain’ – an inability to see any benefits from assets on the government balance sheet, while being petrified of any ‘wasteful’ spending. The patient becomes obsessed with the national debt, but blind to growing the economy to help deal with […]
Although thankfully not all of us have lost a family member in this pandemic, everyone has lost the freedom to choose how to live our lives. Even leaving the house has been subject to state approval – a stricture now removed primarily due to the rollout of vaccines. But given how much of our lives […]
Arguably the saddest words in the English language are “Diane Abbott is right”. Unfortunately, when the Labour MP said yesterday that the Government’s new plan to tackle crime was a “checklist of gimmicks to get Priti Patel good headlines” she wasn’t far off the truth. The permanent return of stop and search is certainly headline […]
“Data not dates” the Prime Minister declared, as he announced a series of dates on which the country will cautiously return to normal. The Government is planning a slow and staggered reopening to allow scientists to analyse how well vaccines work faced with a spreading virus and mutations. In short, the roadmap is primarily a […]
When predicting the future, some of the world’s best forecasters always make sure to leave at least some room for rare events to upset their predictions. This time last year, the main focus of the British political system was the changing relationship with the EU, and there was little to no attention given to the […]
Imagine that to escape the torment of the pandemic, an adventurer decided to trek through the Amazon and discovered the Fountain of Youth. You would surely expect a bitter fight over who should be able to drink from it, until its properties could be studied and replicated. Back in the grim darkness of January 2021, […]
Throughout the EU referendum campaign, David Cameron ordered that the civil service conduct no contingency planning for the scenario in which Britain voted to leave the EU. He did so for narrowly political reasons, fearing leaks and the legitimisation of the Leave campaign. No doubt this in part contributed to the years of chaos following […]
War is a great teacher. In its classroom, armies learn new tactics, discard old doctrines, and often replace their pre-war commanders with remarkable rapidity. The school of war, however, comes with exceptionally high tuition fees. Rather than paying, far cheaper to simply observe other people’s wars and learn from those – especially when you’re as […]
After failing to stop the spread of Covid with contact tracing, quarantines, or lockdowns, Britain’s last hope for ending the coronavirus crisis in 2021 is a vaccine. The good news is that there are dozens of plausible candidates in development, with six in the late stages of the large-scale clinical trials needed to prove efficacy […]
In a narcissistic world obsessed with self, the hardest thing to find is the outside view. A friend who will tell you hard truths is a treasure beyond price. And what is true of individuals is also true of nations. That’s why the UK should put Caprice Bourret – businesswoman, model, and long-time reality TV […]
Compared to war, peace has many benefits. Actual fighting comes with all sorts of awkward inconveniences: mass death, grieving relatives, and great expense for the Treasury. Perhaps the most underappreciated benefit of peace, however, is all the fun debates it enables about the military equipment you aren’t using. In a real war against a competent […]
Imagine a commercial airline company whose planes are all approaching the end of their working lives. The ageing of the planes is well known and understood, the need for a replacement obvious. Yet company management spend twenty years bickering and dithering over what replacements to buy, spending billions on abortive attempts to solve the problem. […]
