This week saw a south-Atlantic gale of outrage after Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding President Javier Milei repeated his country’s entirely bogus claim to the Falkland Islands, with President Donald Trump twisting the knife by saying the USA’s view of the issue was ‘under review’. It came just weeks after Argentina’s footballers brandished a ‘Malvinas’ banner at the […]
The Victorian economist William Stanley Jevons was clearly a worrier. When, in 1863, the Tyneside arms-maker Sir William Armstrong calculated that Britain’s coal would run out in 212 years, Jevons checked the sums. Armstrong had assumed the country’s appetite for coal grew by the same tonnage every year. But it actually grew by the same […]
The verdict is clear. The Right has woken up to the innate statism associated with a statutory Net Zero target. Reform UK reject it outright, and the Conservatives have pledged to scrap the 2050 deadline and the 2008 Climate Change Act by which net-zero targets are enforced. Both accept the approach is a millstone around […]
Late on August 28, trade talks between Canada and the United States broke down, an escalation in the trade war that the Trump administration began with Canada in early 2025. This escalation isn’t because Canadians favour tariffs as much as the US president, but because they refuse to quietly acquiesce to American demands. It might […]
This morning, John Healey delivered his first major speech as Chancellor. He set out his vision for the economy and, while it was encouraging to hear his determination to drive growth and solve the NEET crisis, all while claiming to be committed to fiscal discipline, it was quite light on detail. However, one specific point […]
The last time I wrote about Reform UK’s annual conference I was doing it as the Deputy Editor of this fine publication. A year on, how much has changed? Greeting you as you enter the conference hall is the familiar fare for the familiar fee. Chicken and chips stands sit next to anti-Labour propaganda, accompanied […]
The ‘moron premium’ is back with a vengeance this week, with 10-year gilt yields approaching 5.30%, their highest since 2007, while the 30-year is again threatening 6%. Pantheon Macroeconomics estimates that higher borrowing costs have cut the Chancellor’s fiscal headroom from £23.6 billion to around £13 billion. Meaning almost £11bn has disappeared before the Budget […]
When Andy Burnham arrived at No 10 in July he came with a bold message of change. 40 years of neoliberalism have left Britain hollowed out: wealth has drained from those with the least to those with the most; capital ran riot while the state stood back and watched. It’s a powerful story, and evidently […]
If you spend enough time in politics you learn to spot a familiar mistake dressed up as a novel dilemma. In the 1980s, Xerox forbade the American programmer Richard Stallman from so much as fixing a glitch in his own printer, on the grounds that the code inside it was proprietary. It was this small, […]
Alan Greenspan was always attacked by the Left because of his belief in market forces. John Kenneth Galbraith, at a White House conference, made fun of him, saying that the cure for inflation is always the same for ‘Bolsheviks and the devoted supporters of Ayn Rand’. But each and every government learns the hard way […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in Axminster, because where else would you go to talk about the technologies of the future? Alright then, where are we off to this time? In this edition of Nimby Watch, we’re focusing in on Axminster, where – Oh, I love that we’re finally doing something different! I’m a huge […]
Between all the usual August silly-season news stories about how the Prime Minister makes tea (milk first, apparently) or his go-to Greggs pie (it’s the sausage, bean and cheese melt, since you asked) was something altogether more serious: where the Government plans to build 70,000 of its promised 300,000 new affordable and social homes. It […]
People argue endlessly about Britain’s tax burden – now the highest since the Second World War – but almost nothing is said about the time businesses lose to compliance. No Chancellor stands at the despatch box and tells firms they are about to spend another few billion pounds’ worth of working time satisfying new rules. […]
Few people enjoy gazing into the crystal ball more than economists. Attempting to divine the future, otherwise known as forecasting, is a numerically intensive pastime of many people in the profession. It is also a common mandate of many state institutions. For instance, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) produces aggregate forecasts of government receipts, […]
Andy Burnham may have stumbled on the most effective way yet of prolonging Britain’s managed decline: make people feel that something fundamental has changed when much of the machinery underneath has not. His first speech as Prime Minister was full of ‘common purpose and positivity’, getting Britain to ‘start to believe again’ and ‘bringing back […]
Here’s a fun fact for you: Ireland, a country of just over 5 million people, is one of the top five largest exporters of pharmaceuticals on the planet. Ireland’s exports are estimated around 100 billion euros, with 19 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies having a significant footprint employing roughly 50,000 people. This has translated […]
The Roman historian Livy can claim to have invented an entire genre. Midway through his vast History of Rome, he breaks off from the narrative to ask a question nobody had thought to put in print before: what would have happened had Alexander the Great turned his armies west and marched on Italy? It is […]
In his first days as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham announced a series of populist pledges that purport to address the cost of living, but fail to address the deep structural issues afflicting the British economy. Burnham will soon discover – like the four short-lived predecessors who held office before him – that the voters of […]
I’m 23. Like many of my friends, I endured the British education system all the way to university: GCSEs, A levels and then an undergraduate degree. Now, with little opportunity to progress in the small town we grew up in, those same friends are now looking to move to a city for work. For some, […]
Last week, Andy Burnham inaugurated ‘No 10 North’, his signature project, by working for the first time from the government’s new Manchester base, a self-styled ‘situation room for growth’. The symbolism was clear: power would no longer be concentrated in Whitehall. But the rhetoric remains stronger than the detail. The detail we have is concerning. […]
Britain’s spending and tax choices now fall to John Healey. My expectation? Higher spending, higher taxes and meaningless tweaks to welfare reform. Tuesday’s decision to cut VAT from domestic electricity bills could save the average household around £45 a year. Fine as far as it goes. But it will do nothing to boost productivity, stimulate […]
The media headlines all tell a consistent story about AI and employment: We’re doomed! ‘Robots may shatter the global economic order within a decade,’ says The Telegraph. ‘A World Without Work’ is coming, The Atlantic predicts. ‘The brave new world of robots and lost jobs’ is upon us, The Washington Post says. Most gloomily, Forbes […]
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