This weekend the Telegraph ran a story with the striking headline ‘Burnham told to trade nuclear umbrella for access to single market’. The idea is the brainchild of Nick Boles, the former Conservative MP who quit the party in 2019 over Brexit, switched his allegiance to Labour and helped to advise Keir Starmer on the […]
Zia Yusuf has announced his proposal for a ‘Deliveroo law’ which would make it a criminal offence for CEOs and company directors to use or employ illegal immigrants, i.e., they’d face jail for non-compliance. And if that were not enough to discourage them, 10% of their global turnover could be seized for repeated breaches. Irrespective […]
When a household pays £450,000 for a new home in England, a striking share of that price is not paying for bricks, mortar or even land. It is paying for planning obligations, biodiversity rules, regulatory overhead and delay-driven finance costs – none of which is itemised for the family that ultimately bears the cost. Stamp […]
During the 1979 general election campaign, Margaret Thatcher famously said: ‘I can’t bear Britain in decline. I just can’t.’ If you’re a seasoned research professional who shares that sentiment, and who wants to fight for a high-growth, low-tax, small-state Britain built on personal and economic freedom, then I have just the job opening for you. […]
When I was born in 1998, Britain had reached an optimistic point. It was the era of ‘Cool Britannia’: Tony Blair had won a landslide majority the year before to the tune ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, business was confident in our economy, employment was rising and we had low inflation. Yet by the time […]
Let me give Andy Burnham his due. For the best part of a decade he was the most persuasive voice in the country for letting go – for the plain truth that a decision taken in Whitehall about a town no official has ever visited tends to be worse than the one the people who […]
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. […]
When Waitrose suspended mackerel sales over fears of overfishing, it was a warning. Weeks later, M&S followed suit. And as stocks continue to plunge, retail giants like Sainsbury’s and Morrisons sit poised to take similar action. The crisis in our seas has finally hit the supermarket shelves, but in reality, it runs far deeper. Today, […]
As Andy Burnham stood outside Downing Street on Monday to launch his new regime, our new Prime Minister did his best to prove to his 349 parliamentary backers that they had made the right decision. Much of his speech was rhetorical filler. ‘I will put the care of people at the heart of everything I […]
John Healey is the eleventh chancellor since the 2008 global financial crisis. Some of his predecessors served only briefly, but the direction of travel has been clear, regardless of who occupied Number 11. Growth has been modest, living standards have stagnated and the public finances have deteriorated. The pandemic made matters worse, but the direction […]
In his first full day as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham has announced that VAT on household energy bills will be removed from October. While no doubt well intentioned, this would be a mistake. First, it is risky for the public finances. VAT on energy bills brings in a significant amount of revenue. The Government has […]
London is delivering the fewest number of homes since the Second World War. Over the past two financial years, London has started just 15,040 homes in total. Over the same two years, London’s housing target was 175,984. That means housing starts were only 8.5% of the target, a truly dreadful figure. London’s housing shortage stands […]
Almost lost between this week’s national mourning (in England anyway) over the World Cup, and the endless Westminster fantasy-football speculation about who’s going to be in or out of Andy Burnham’s first cabinet, was an oh-so-British announcement about Dartmoor ponies. The endangered breed had been put in further peril by Natural England’s plans to protect […]
Below is a speech incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham could give – one that would unite the country around a shared vision of prosperity. Prosperity for All My fellow citizens, Today, as I stand before you as your Prime Minister, I want to cut through the political noise and give you the unvarnished truth about […]
The way we as consumers engage with news, TV and online media is continually evolving. Traditional TV has been increasingly usurped by streaming services. Apps like YouTube are taking up a greater share of viewers’ time and are now successfully competing with the likes of Netflix. It is natural that in this environment competition is […]
For a nation of Nimbys, Britain – or at least London – is remarkably fond of its skyscrapers. We love them so much we give them cutesy diminutives like ‘The Gherkin’, ‘The Cheesegrater’ and the ‘Walkie Talkie’. We boast about vistas from which you can see them, marketing properties for their ‘stunning view of The […]
Barring some form of constitutional crisis, Andy Burnham will become Prime Minister. We do not even know who his new Chancellor will be, let alone what their policies and priorities are. However, whoever gets the top job at 1 Horse Guards Road, they should make tax reform their top priority if they want to bring […]
Schools do not exist in isolation from the economy. The number of young people who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) is, in large part, a function of the economic conditions in which they leave education. When growth is weak, entry-level opportunities are scarce, employers are cautious and the public finances that pay […]
Across the UK, millions of people rely on the railways to travel. From 2024 to 2025, there were 1.7 billion passenger rail journeys, of which 1.08 billion were completed within a single region. And yet all too often, local rail has been neglected, with funding prioritised for London and the South East. As a result […]
Andy Burnham is not a forward-looking man. His musical interests stop at around 1998, his approach to industry is straight out of the 1970s and his favourite football team hasn’t won a trophy for over thirty years. It’s little surprise then that he takes a dim view of the ongoing tech revolution. It was reported […]
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