In her Mais Lecture earlier this month, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced: A new industrial strategy to […] get Britain firing on all cylinders again. It’s not about picking winners, propping up failing industries, or bringing old companies back from the dead. It’s about identifying the industries that are of strategic value to our economy and […]
Free-marketeers are often accused of a crude anti-statism. According to our critics, we fail to understand that markets don’t exist in a vacuum, but are underpinned and supported by a functioning state. I have never seen much merit in that criticism. Anarcho-capitalists aside (and I’ve had pints with all twelve of them: I really wouldn’t […]
On 4 December, the LSE Hayek Society organised a panel debate between Gary Stevenson and Kristian Niemietz on the question ‘Are the super-rich destroying the UK?’. The article below is based on Niemietz’s opening remarks. The British economy is not in great shape, and it has not been for quite some time. This is a […]
For Trumpians, tariffs have become an all-purpose tool, which supposedly achieves multiple policy objectives all at once. Tariffs are presented as an easy way to raise revenue (‘a tax on a foreign country’). They are also presented as a tool to discourage imports, and thereby stimulate domestic production. Thirdly, tariffs are also presented as a […]
Yesterday, the Government published its policy paper ‘Fit For The Future: 10 Year Health Plan for England‘, which announced: [I]nvestment has to be accompanied by reform. The NHS has to be redesigned around the needs of the patient. Local hospitals cannot be run from Whitehall. There will be a new relationship between the Department of […]
The year is 1980, and 44 years have passed since Britain’s socialist revolution. A new generation has grown up, which has no active memories of capitalism, and only a hazy concept of what ‘capitalism’ even was. This is the premise of the book ‘The First Workers Government‘ by Gilbert Mitchison, published in 1934. An unnamed […]
I have previously criticised the Starmer government’s NHS reform plans as reheated Blairism. They rediscover reforms that were already implemented 20 years ago, repackage them a bit, and pass them off as novel and bold. After the new plans announced today, I still think ‘reheated Blairism’ is a fair description – but I’m starting to […]
I wish we could simply ignore everything Jeremy Corbyn says and does. At this stage, Corbyn should be a has-been (as well as a never-should-have-been). He stepped down as Leader of the Opposition four and a half years ago, and while he will probably still be the MP for Islington North in 2049 at the […]
Half a century ago today, the Austrian economist Friedrich August von Hayek delivered his Nobel Prize lecture, after being awarded the 1974 prize for economics alongside Gunnar Myrdal. This was, as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained, a recognition of Hayek’s ‘theory of business cycles and his conception of the effects of monetary and […]
I have never been on Bluesky, but I already hate it. The fast growth of this new social media platform seems to be primarily driven by the most annoying and irritating characters on X. But that is also precisely the reason why I believe that Bluesky is more than a passing fad: it has the […]
In the abstract, almost everyone would agree with the idea that it is important to be exposed to a range of opinions, rather than retreat into an echo chamber where everyone agrees with us. It’s just that, if you spend any time on social media, you will know that most people do not actually behave […]
It is still early days for the Starmer Government, and at this stage, we can only really judge it on the basis of vibes rather than specific policies. But with that caveat in mind, it already looks as though, from a classical liberal perspective, this administration is going to be very much a mixed bag. […]
Here’s a stylised, exaggerated version of a type of debate I have had many times with market-sceptical, interventionist conservatives: Them: ‘The state should control the price of ice cream’. Me: ‘That’s a bad idea. It would cause shortages of ice cream’. Them: ‘Well, yes, in your simplistic, Econ101 textbook world. What people like you, with […]
Political arguments are often 80% about framing and vibes. A common rhetorical strategy in political debates is to present your own view as ‘the common-sense position’, the position that any fair-minded, reasonable person would adopt, while presenting your opponent as a deluded, wilfully blind ideologue. Rent controls are a good example. Opinion polls consistently show […]
Twenty years have passed since the publication of the Barker Review of Housing Supply, the final report of an expert inquiry into the British housing market commissioned by the Blair government, and led by Bank of England economist Kate Barker. The Review issued a stark warning: if Britain wanted to limit future increases in real […]
Last week, Renato Moicano, a professional martial artist who competes in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), made a rather unusual announcement after a fight: ‘I love private property, and let me tell you something, if you care about your […] country, read Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian Economic School […]!’ […]
According to the latest forecasts by the Office for National Statistics, the population of the UK is going to increase to 73.7m by 2036, with net migration accounting for over 90% of that increase. The usual suspects are up in arms. Nigel Farage describes it as a ‘population crisis’ which is ‘rapidly getting worse and […]
1997 was, in lots of ways, a watershed year for Britain. I’m not just talking about Princess Diana and Tony Blair. One could also think of 1997 as the last year of the pre-internet and the pre-mobile-phone age. Both technologies already existed, but for most people, it was still possible to ignore them, or even […]
Why did the Industrial Revolution start in Northwestern Europe? Why did the West industrialise so much earlier than the rest of the world? Most economists would argue that this happened because the West developed a set of institutions that were uniquely conducive to economic growth, especially the rule of law, secure property rights, impartial and […]
Last month, the Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, Robert Colvile, tweeted about a CPS publication from 1990 which was far ahead of its time: NIMBYism – The Disease And The Cure by Richard Ehrman. Although written in the early stages of (what we now call) Britain’s housing crisis, the author already demonstrated a […]
