The UK Government is proposing a 6% levy on international student fees to finance the re-introduction of maintenance grants for some students. The idea was trailed in its migration White Paper of June 2025. It has been reaffirmed more recently. The higher education sector is not always admired by politicians. It is also not well […]
If you ever talk to a civil servant, or even an MP, who knows something about economics, they are often keen to respond to free market arguments by citing the problem of ‘market failure’. They do this with no sense of irony or any apparent awareness of the failure of governments. Governments do not have […]
Why are academics so fond of misrepresenting economic liberalism? Take the recent New Statesman article co-written by Adrian Pabst, a highly respected political theorist at the University of Kent, and the writer and researcher Ron Ivey. The authors are, of course, perfectly entitled to tear into what they call “market fundamentalism” – but in doing […]
The Government has appointed a panel to review the future of public service broadcasting. We can be wholly confident that they will report that little should change. The panel is made up largely of industry insiders and ex-insiders, and they tend to revere the status quo. The licence fee stops the BBC competing effectively for […]
There is no doubt that California is in a big fiscal hole. It relies heavily on income taxes from wealthy taxpayers making tax receipts volatile. Even before the covid crisis struck, commentators were predicting problems for the state which has some of the highest taxes in the US. Like practically every US state and city, […]
In the run-up to his big speech yesterday, all the talk was of the Prime Minister promising a ‘Rooseveltian’ New Deal for Britain. Fortunately, when it came to it, he wasn’t promising anything of the sort. Why fortunately? A tale of two countries provides the answer. Despite all the hardship that was endured (especially in […]
Every pillar of a free society is under threat during this pandemic. To avoid bad long-term economic outcomes and further threats to our liberty, we need to diagnose what kind of economic event this is. Covid-19 is a supply shock that has taken huge amounts of capacity out of the economy. It would not be […]
The two economists Hayek and Keynes agreed on one thing. They both believed that ideas and the climate of opinion determined how politicians behaved. Indeed, the Institute of Economic Affairs was set up as a result of advice from Hayek. He told Antony Fisher that a body was desperately needed that would change the climate […]
Philip Hammond’s decision in this week’s budget to abandon the Private Finance Initiative has been regarded by some commentators as the adoption of a “Corbyn-lite” policy by the Conservatives. Such a claim misses the point. After all, PFI has been used to fund a huge expansion in government spending whilst pushing the costs, in an […]
