Britain is making a very American mistake. Eight years after the United States used ‘national security’ concerns to justify sweeping steel protectionism that ended up hurting steel users far more than it helped steelmakers, Westminster has reached for the same, depressing script. The Government’s new steel strategy might not be a blanket tariff, but its […]
Amid some brief research about the new MP for Gorton and Denton, Hannah Spencer, I came across her campaign against a boutique poverty measure I hadn’t previously been aware of: ‘furniture poverty’. The campaign ‘End Furniture Poverty’ defines someone in furniture poverty as being unable to access or afford furniture or appliances that are ‘essential […]
Labour is leaning hard into ‘affordability politics’. Ministers don’t use the phrase, but the governing theme is clear enough: promise to ‘cut the cost of living’ by fiddling with headline prices. We’ve had pledges to ban ticket resale for profit, freeze regulated rail fares, cap prescription charges and give tenants new powers to challenge rent […]
Little unites Rachel Reeves, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Tony Blair Institute. But a shared desire for more robots in Britain somehow has. In 2019, Reeves stated: ‘The real danger for the UK economy and for future jobs growth is not that we have too many robots in the workplace but that we have […]
Has Thomas Piketty been vindicated? The Economist just declared that inheritance is now the key to financial security, a claim that seemingly echoes the French economist’s central thesis. Donald Trump surrounding himself with billionaires is also reigniting concerns stateside about how the super wealthy could capture democracy and entrench themselves. And with left-leaning policymakers searching […]
The effects of Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office are already being felt at His Majesty’s Treasury. On inauguration day, President Trump signed an executive order instructing his government to ‘notify the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] that any commitments made by the prior administration on behalf of the United States with […]
British politics is suddenly dominating conversation on X for all the wrong reasons. Tech titans like Elon Musk have stumbled onto the grooming-gangs scandal – a series of truly horrifying crimes that were downplayed or ignored by various authorities, in part because of fears about anti-Muslim backlash. Musk, Bill Ackman and other Americans are lighting […]
In her recent Mais lecture, UK shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves criticised Nigel Lawson’s belief that fighting inflation was a matter for macroeconomic policy. ‘In a world that has been repeatedly shaken by supply-side shocks’, she said, ‘it is inadequate to see the fight against inflation as a matter of macroeconomic policy alone. Our resilience in […]
In his ascent to Argentina’s presidency, Javier Milei was distinguished not just by his libertarian ideology but also for his pedagogic approach towards economics. On the campaign trail, he would regularly articulate the basic principles of market economics. Now in government, the fiery libertarian’s ‘shock therapy’ is turning those lessons into hard case studies. Within […]
An occupational hazard for politicians is having their remarks misrepresented by newspaper headline writers. Yesterday’s Daily Express front page offers a humdinger of an example. Reporting on Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s reaction to inflation falling, the paper’s splash declares, ‘Prices Must Drop Now Inflation Has Fallen‘ (their emphasis). At best, this is hugely misleading. At worst, it’s […]
Lord Frost’s resignation has reignited the internal Tory battle for the party’s economic soul. In his resignation letter, Frost spoke of his concerns about the ‘current direction of travel’ and his hope that the Government would ‘move as fast as possible’ to ‘a lightly regulated, low-tax, entrepreneurial economy’. Conservative opinion is, to put it mildly, […]
Just a week ago, I asked on Twitter: How much money would you need to be paid to voluntarily accept being locked down from December 23 to January 3, alone with your household? It was a semi-serious question. News of the omicron variant was filtering through. Plan B measures were being talked about, including a return […]
Faced with a wave of Covid-19 cases, EU countries are reintroducing significant restrictions. Belgium has made working-from-home compulsory four days per week. Austria has imposed a lockdown on the unvaccinated and looks set for a full one in certain areas of the country. The Netherlands has forced early closure of shops and restaurants and even banned […]
What is the biggest barrier to rolling back the state? Yes: the views of voters seems an obvious answer. But that begs the question: why are voters reluctant to consider it? Libertarians have theories. These usually involve the role of interest groups or bureaucracies. But there’s perhaps a more all-encompassing explanation we should consider. Government […]
Dominic Cummings is a people person. Not in the traditional sense of enjoying being around folk the whole time. His testimony on Wednesday showed the contempt he sees for those he deems fools, including many involved in politics. No, Cummings is a people person in the sense that his worldview of government centres on the […]
What will be the economic legacy of this pandemic? The IMF believes US GDP will now be larger by the end of 2022 than predicted back in 2019 – in other words, there will be no persistent impact from this past year’s turmoil on American output. The Office for Budget Responsibility, of course, is still […]
Throughout this pandemic, we’ve seen how crucial an appreciation of context is to good decision-making. Judging whether to pause life-saving vaccines because of a blood clot risk requires first understanding the risk of stopping the rollout itself. Likewise, the high fiscal cost of advanced purchasing orders of vaccines by governments can only be understood in […]
“The scary thing is, I have no idea how I caught it.” We’ve all heard variants on that sentiment in recent months from those infected with Covid-19. While there is always uncertainty, and even those taking sensible precautions can be unlucky, I worry that one unexplored explanation is a widespread lack of understanding about how […]
Covid-19 has stress-tested government quality and many Western states have been found wanting. So conclude John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge in their new book, The Wake Up Call. An uncontroversial observation, some might say. But the pair review the cross-country wreckage to try to identify lessons from the successful and unsuccessful countries. Their conclusion: the […]
Joe Biden is running a quiet campaign when it comes to policy. His messaging focuses on the state of discourse in the US, or on Donald Trump, or on the need for national unity. His pitch is that this election is both a referendum on the current President, but also a test of the “character […]
