The scale of the housing crisis is sobering. Britain has the worst housing shortage of any major developed nation. Decades of undersupply have contributed to house prices and rents skyrocketing out of reach. In 1997, the average home cost about 3.5 times the average income. As of 2024, an aspiring buyer must devote nearly eight years’ worth of […]
The battle of essays between Labour Party grandees has given British politics a distinctly retro feel over the last week, as Tony Blair, Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham behaved like competing 18th-century pamphleteers explaining in earnest detail why things will only get better if they’re in charge. The ideas these once-and-would-be-future Labour prime […]
If you have argued in favour of market-based solutions in some area of society which is under government control, you may have received objections along the lines of ‘I don’t believe the market can handle X’, ‘companies only look at the short term’ or ‘companies are motivated by greed and cannot be trusted to handle […]
Over the past few months, the TaxPayers’ Alliance sent hundreds of freedom of information requests while researching Prevent, the Government’s counter-terrorism programme designed to stop people becoming terrorists. FOI requests to local councils, questions to the Home Office, requests for the most basic financial breakdowns – where the money went, who received it and what […]
In that bonkers novel, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, Hunter S. Thompson has a great line (well, in some ways, he has several) about crime in America: ‘In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.’ But not even […]
Brace yourself, but I don’t mind Michelle Obama. Sure, she might prattle on about the evils of white, corporate America too much for my liking, but the former First Lady certainly doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and this was on full display at this week’s SXSW festival in London. Addressing the crowd, Obama warned young people […]
Should universities have a say before speakers are excluded from the UK? The Government has cancelled the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) of a controversial left-wing US political commentator, in a move that prevents him from appearing at one of the UK’s oldest debating societies and raises renewed questions about broad and discretionary powers used to […]
According to reports over the weekend, Rachel Reeves is considering whether a new generation of public-private partnerships (PPPs), the modern successor to the old Private Finance Initiative (PFI), could help Labour’s ambitious plans for a new generation of towns. With borrowing constrained by Labour’s own fiscal rules, debt interest costs elevated and public finances under […]
On June 12, SpaceX is expected to launch what could become the largest IPO in history. In its prospectus, the company states: ‘We believe that our current space efforts will catalyse transformative breakthroughs that could reshape terrestrial industries and lead to the emergence of new trillion-dollar markets on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.’ This vision […]
Ten years ago, the EU referendum created two new political tribes: Leavers and Remainers. As Sara Hobolt and I show in our new book ‘Tribal Politics: How Brexit divided Britain’, both tribes are very much still with us. Even today, about 60% of people in Britain identify as a Remainer or a Leaver, and people’s […]
The British are coming! The British are coming! As the United States celebrates 250 years of independence from the British, millions of Californians wish to put themselves under British rule. The primary is taking place tomorrow, and Steve Hilton, a British-born former adviser to David Cameron, is not only expected to make it through to […]
What have Rachel Reeeves, Yvette Cooper and Ed Miliband got in common? Yes, they are experienced politicians, with a combined total of 66 unbroken years in the House of Commons. Yes, they occupy some of the key posts in Keir Starmer’s Government and will probably still be Cabinet members after a change of leadership. I […]
Modern monetary theory (MMT) is an economic theory that has become popular in the blogosphere and heterodox academic circles. It’s also caught the eye of some politicians. Notably, Zack Polanski has been learning about MMT and using it to answer questions about government debt. According to MMT, the Treasury should use higher deficits – funded […]
As Britain debates Net Zero, energy security and the future of North Sea drilling, an older argument has returned with renewed force: that the UK squandered its oil wealth while Norway built a sovereign wealth fund worth more than a trillion dollars. It is an appealing story. If only Britain had saved its North Sea […]
Rachel Reeves probably did not expect regulatory reform of ring-fencing rules to become one of her more significant achievements as Chancellor. But credit where it’s due, the Government is right to pursue serious, common-sense reform of ring-fenced banks (RFBs) in order to free up capital for investment in British businesses. Since the 2008 Global Financial […]
This week I was fortunate enough to sit down with the Rt Hon Liz Truss. We discussed the usual things you expect. The state of the UK economy, the Bank of England, the Civil Service, and to quote Truss, how ‘Power was taken from the elected and given to progressive bureaucrats and judges’. I must […]
Admired for his reformist approach to the NHS, Wes Streeting is generally seen as the most market-friendly figure on the British Left. Yet his call for social media companies to be treated like tobacco businesses reminds us that even the best of a bad bunch can still be pretty awful. After resigning as Health Secretary, […]
When the Labour Government gained power in 2024, Matthew Syed proposed in his Times column the creation of a ‘Department for Long-Term Thinking’: a department that would take government out of the fog of the 24/7 news cycle and encourage policymakers to focus on the bigger picture. Although translating that idea into practice would probably […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in south-east London, just for a change… Alright then, where have you brought me this week? We’re in rapidly-gentrifying Peckham, in south-east London. Specifically, we’re by the Aylesham Centre, a shopping centre that has clearly seen better days, and they definitely weren’t recent. Hang on a second, haven’t we been […]
The fate of the high street, and support for local communities, has just come into even sharper focus following the local election results and their consequences – of which more later. Everyone thinks the high street is important, right? Voters constantly complain that the high street is full of vape shops. Shop owners say the […]
When I went to Manchester last year, there was one place I particularly wanted to visit: the Free Trade Hall. The building was constructed in the middle of the 19th century to commemorate the repeal of the Corn Laws. Manchester was then the heart of manufacturing, the Industrial Revolution and, most importantly, the struggle against […]
You’ve done it. After 15 years of staring at a screen and someone else’s quarterly KPIs, you have finally resigned. The dream is close. Your own coffee shop. Your other half is on board, if a little nervous. The bank, after a polite interrogation, has approved the business loan. You scout a unit on a […]
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