Society and politics are forged by movements. The evolution of our country, and its state today, is a consequence of these movements, and their influence on our institutions. When people think of politics today, they think of parties, but parties have constraints that movements do not. Britain’s history has made this clear time and time […]
The footage emerging from Iran – scant as it is, due to the regime’s imposed blackout on communications – is gut-wrenching. Security forces firing on unarmed protesters; rows of black bodybags, with screaming relatives scouring morgues for loved ones. As violence to suppress the protests escalates and with the death toll reportedly having surpassed 500 […]
Another year, another Government U-turn. From welfare cuts to scrapping the two-child benefit cap, Labour have consistently adhered to policy positions, only to subsequently reverse them. In the first U-turn of 2026, the Government is expected to say it will make changes to how pubs have their business rates calculated, resulting in a smaller tax […]
Back in the 1980s The Beastie Boys famously sang that ‘you gotta fight for your right to party’. Fast forward to 2026 in London, and perhaps it’s never been harder to take advantage of that ‘right’. The house party has become one more casualty of the housing crisis. While there’s no hard quantitative evidence (those […]
When Labour took office in July 2024, Britain’s unemployment rate stood at 4.2%. Today it is 5.1%, the highest level since early 2021 and rising in a way that should trouble any Chancellor, especially one who has produced two tax-raising Budgets in succession. Ministers say the labour market is simply normalising, but the pattern now […]
Just before Christmas, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) walked out of HMP Swaleside on the Kent coast to issue a rare red flag warning to Ministers. The ‘Urgent Notification’ painted a dystopian picture of an institution no longer in the control of the state, wracked by staff shortages, violence and drugs. The prison was […]
‘Britain doesn’t need to become great again – it already is.’ That’s the flattering verdict of the former Polish ambassador to both the UK and USA, Piotr Wilczek, writing in the Spectator. After the year-long gloom fest that was 2025, Wilczek’s positivity will come as a surprise to many. Descriptions of Britain as ‘one of […]
The UK is the place where free markets first unlocked what the economist Deirdre McCloskey calls the ‘Great Enrichment’ – the extraordinary wealth and human flourishing made possible by the industrial revolution. Yet today, the UK – as well as much of the rest of the western world – is economically stagnant, and has drifted […]
The Jobs Foundation recently commissioned a poll of 1,150 family firms. The results are grim reading for Keir Starmer. Asked which political party they trusted most to support their business, 43% of respondents said none. Far behind in second place was the Conservative Party on 20%, while 16% named Reform UK. Labour tied with the […]
The United States’ decision to intervene in Venezuela and bring a foreign leader before its courts reflects a wider shift in the character of the international order. Western power is no longer exercised solely through deterrence or diplomacy, but through increasingly direct forms of intervention. Yet behind this display of strength lies a more troubling […]
Kemi Badenoch had a rough start to her time at the Tory helm. When she was elected leader, the party had a net favourability of -30%. Yet after some time in the job, she has seemingly steadied the ship – with many Tory insiders declaring a ‘Badenoch bounce’. And now, as we head into the […]
According to Ernest Hemingway, there are two ways to go bankrupt: ‘Gradually, then suddenly.’ It’s a lesson the UK would do well to remember. Rather than fixing our frayed social contract, successive governments have merely tinkered with the public finances, doing just enough to keep the ship afloat. This deck-chair rearranging cannot continue forever. New […]
Zohran Mamdani and Zack Polanski have brought back the politics of ‘hope’. Many of their voters do not even know the policies involved or their unintended consequences; they vote based on vibe. The vibe of something new, something different, something that promises change. But this politics of hope is not new – and it is […]
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 […]
New year, new Nimbys – it’s the first Nimby Watch of 2026, and we’re kicking off the year in the picturesque surroundings of West Yorkshire. It’s a new year! The world is alive with possibilities; we can create everything anew and afresh – so where shall we start? How about the open market in Huddersfield, […]
Rachel Reeves cannot remain as Chancellor of the Exchequer. What makes her unfit for office is not that she has raised tax, swollen the welfare budget or set the country on the path to economic ruin. It is that she has done all this in open contempt for the letter and the spirit of the […]
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