Russell Brand describes himself as a “comedian and campaigner”. While we might wonder at the first epithet, we can’t argue with the second. The man has built up a huge following among the angry teenage Lefties who dominate Twitter. His theme is that all politics is corrupt, all MPs are plutocrats’ stooges, and all rich […]
Most people like to walk down to the farmer’s market to get some vegetables. Doing one’s groceries at the market feels a bit as if the countryside has come to town, and with it the good old days. The market stands are small, the produce is alluring, the farmers have wrinkles in their face and […]
When the British Prime Minister considers restricting the right granted to EU citizens to freely enter the United Kingdom, he is expressing without qualms a feeling shared by many Europeans. For some, immigrants – whatever country they may come from – are not welcome. Switzerland, perhaps, stands as an exception: Swiss voters have just rejected […]
Is capitalism finally coming to an end? Karl Marx anticipated that moment. Joseph Schumpeter also saw it coming. And just like they predicted (we are now led to believe), capitalism is getting caught in “the perennial gale of creative destruction”. For Marx, capitalism was a system of economic oppression, but like Schumpeter he had an […]
It is a fixed rule of public debate that, when you draw a parallel with another country, however narrow and technical, you are guaranteed – guaranteed – to be told an unrelated fact about that country. You think that we could learn from Singapore’s system of transferable healthcare accounts? “Ah, but Singapore is an autocracy!” […]
Every centre right government redistributes money from the rich to the poor. Margaret Thatcher did. Ronald Reagan did. John Howard did. They all oversaw progressive tax systems. They all maintained a state-funded social safety-net. For pensioners. For the unemployed. For the young. For those in need of emergency medical care. Stephen Harper, Angela Merkel, Tony […]
In the euro crisis, the EU has suspended accountable government, and the rule of (EU) law has become the continuation of politics by other means In his great speech on EU immigration last Friday the Prime Minister called for radical changes in the availability of UK state benefits to immigrants from elsewhere in the EU. […]
When David Cameron used his speech to Conservative party conference to announce that he wants to increase income tax thresholds there was uproar from his critics on the left. How dare the Prime Minister promise a tax cut when the UK is still running a giant deficit and adding to the debt burden with each […]
The recent world of political economy features the deep paradox. By common consent Thomas Piketty’s recent volume Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been hailed of the intellectual triumph of the year. Its bold recommendations make the theoretical case for a global income tax in the range of 54 to 80—a figure that has also […]
Suppose I were to tell you that the world’s super-rich are pulling further away from the mass of humanity. Suppose I were to cite the latest figures, showing that the top one per cent now own half the world’s wealth while the bottom 50 per cent own just one per cent. How does that make […]
There is surely something surreal about watching the vanquished dictate terms to the victors. Yet that is what is happening as the SNP, recently defeated in Scotland’s independence referendum, dictates a new constitutional and fiscal settlement to the rest of the United Kingdom, using the so-called Smith Commission – authors of the most irresponsible document […]
November 30, 2014 might become a date for the Swiss history books. This upcoming Sunday, more than 5 million voters are called to the ballot to decide on three important issues launched by popular initiative: immigration, monetary policy and flat-rate taxation for wealthy foreigners. From an economic point of view, all three are problematic. With […]
“This won’t turn out to be as peachy as it looks,” said my cabbie as he dropped me off. He was finishing a conversation that I had begun shortly after he picked me up on Pall Mall in central London. We were now pulling up at my favourite pub in Hammersmith, so it was a […]
Oil prices, today at $78 a barrel, have fallen from a high of over $115 earlier this year, creating difficulties for a number of producer countries. OPEC will meet tomorrow in Vienna to agree production quotas for its members. Here are 4 things you need to know about tomorrow’s OPEC meeting. 1. Oil producers are struggling to […]
Britain is in the midst of two political earthquakes. The spectacular rise in support for UKIP and the SNP each have the potential to unhinge British politics to a degree not seen for a century. Whether this happens depends upon how the established political parties respond. Neither denial nor panic has worked. They could do […]
If I had to identify the most successful conservative leader of my lifetime, I’d point without hesitation to Australia’s John Howard. Winning four elections (to Reagan’s two and Thatcher’s three), the amiable cricket-lover used his time in office to make transformative changes, giving Australia a growth rate it hadn’t known since the gold rush. Like […]
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