Does the corona crisis expose the failings of capitalism? A comparison of two recent rankings confirms that the opposite is true. Socialists around the world have been very busy of late in their efforts to brand the corona crisis a failure of capitalism. The Index of Economic Freedom, which has been compiled annually since 1995 […]
9/11 revisited Six months ago, almost to the day, I was at a family christening at the Episcopal, or Anglican, church of St. Thomas in Manhattan. St. Thomas’s does these things in such a way as to compel the attention: with warmth, with friendly flair and with seriousness rather than sententiousness. What’s more, having arrived […]
The coronavirus pandemic is of course primarily a social crisis, but the fiscal costs are also important. A sharp and sustained deterioration in the public finances could have major implications for future government spending and taxation. Fortunately, there are also some good reasons to be sanguine. Let’s begin with the bad news. A slump in […]
Sharing an office with a historian has its pros and cons. You can certainly learn a lot, but you also become painfully aware of how much truth there is in the old cliché that “there is nothing new under the sun”. That was certainly my experience when I used to share an office with my […]
The world’s going to pot, the economy’s suffering the worst contraction in recorded history, people are dying in their tens of thousands – and the stock market is up. It just goes to show that the capitalists will try to profit from anything, huh? Given that I’m not Owen Jones I’ll not now call for […]
The media is a key part of a free society. In order to hold power to account, citizens need information. But in most cases they don’t collect that information themselves – the flow of information is instead mediated. But how much are the mediators trusted? It’s important at the outset to distinguish between levels and […]
In the midst of a crisis, it’s natural to reach for historical comparisons. This time, the go-to analogy seems to be the Second World War – not least because the Prime Minister is a well-known devotee of Winston Churchill. Even the Queen weighed in with her TV message, with an unexpected tearjerker on evacuees and […]
“The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.” –The Dalai Lama From the Dalai Lama to my grandmother The Dalai Lama is right. At […]
As soon as B&Q announced it would reopen some of its DIY stores, their website crashed and long queues started forming. Traffic this last week was up 10-15% on the previous week, according to the AA, who announced that callouts had quadrupled. The sun is shining. Many aren’t giving each other quite such a wide […]
The Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILs) was launched to much fanfare, with people lining up to praise the far-sighted, generous nature of the programme and proclaim how much it would do for small business. A staggering £330 billion was set aside for interest-free loans, with the Government willing to sit behind 80% of the […]
The world faces a major contraction in economic activity. The scale of the likely decline, and the timing and magnitude of any upturn, are hotly debated. But of even greater importance are the long-term effects of the crisis. The 2008–09 financial crash illustrates the risks. In its wake, growth in the advanced world has run […]
Let’s face it, the coronavirus has been and will be a gargantuan challenge for every government around the world. Few were sufficiently prepared for it, even though every expert in infectious diseases knew that a pandemic was a matter of when not if. I applaud more than I condemn the Government’s management of the crisis, […]
For critics of this government, news that Dominic Cummings attended meetings of a key scientific advisory panel was a smoking gun – proof that coronavirus policy was being guided by vulgar politics, rather than the considered views of the experts. In truth, a senior government advisor attending such a meeting during the greatest crisis in […]
Over 80 COVID-19 vaccine trials are currently underway. If one or more of the vaccines eventually makes it to market, how should it be used to stop or even eradicate the virus? You might think the obvious answer would be to vaccinate everyone, but that is neither practical nor feasible. Vaccination has often been used […]
We will get through this crisis, albeit at a far higher human and economic cost than necessary. We will prepare better for future pandemics. It need not cost much, if we do it in advance. But the biggest risk now is failing to address the fundamental reason why the virus hit us so badly. Partly […]
Wartime analogies litter our conversations around the Covid-19 crisis. We’re “mobilising” resources to increase testing, opening “field hospitals” and politicians promise that we will “beat this disease”. The Queen’s televised speech saw her reference the era’s most famous song when she said “we’ll meet again”, but the real giveaway was the fact that she had […]
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