The maxim that one should “never let a good crisis go to waste” is being tested to destruction in Northern Ireland by Sinn Fein. The republican party is an integral part of the power-sharing executive at Stormont, but rather than accept shared responsibility for the province’s response to coronavirus, it has sniped bitterly from the […]
It was said of the financial crisis that it was a once in a century event – and no doubt many of my generation hoped t it would be the only epoch-defining economic catastrophe we would live through. Sadly, the coronavirus means we know have to experience another. Of course, it’s the elderly who now […]
When asked by an NBC reporter whether he takes responsibility for the lag in making test kits available, Donald Trump replied: “No. I don’t take responsibility at all.” As it dawned, excruciatingly slowly, on the US President that America was no more immune to Covid-19 than any other nation, he has aired grievances and assigned […]
We face not one, but two pandemics, both of which have proven themselves to be deadly. The first is a virus, a packet of genetic material that hijacks biological hosts, weakens them, and too frequently kills them. The second is an ideology – authoritarianism – that hijacks democratic polities, weakens them, and too frequently kills […]
Is there anything worse than watching someone being smug about something they’ve actually got very, very wrong? In his parting interview as Labour Leader with the BBC, Jeremy Corbyn took the opportunity to claim the current coronavirus crisis had entirely vindicated him over public spending. ‘I was denounced,’ he scoffed, ‘as somebody that wanted to […]
The last few weeks has seen a great deal of ideological navel-gazing; from the end of globalism to the cancellation of capitalism, pundits are convinced this time is different, everything has changed, and once the dust settles they’ll have been proven right all along. The strawman of their enemy, often called ‘neoliberalism’, finally reduced to […]
As with most crises the world is facing the mother of all dollar squeezes right now, as everyone and their dog is trying to get their hands on the venerable greenback. The eurodollar system — the true ruler of our world — is under extreme strain. Outside America the US dollar is the closest thing […]
For the past week I have been thinking about and speaking to people in and around government about the shape of the eventual recovery from the coronavirus crisis. There is, sadly, no sugar-coating the fact that the future looks pretty grim. The most obvious point is that any return to normality is going to be […]
What, exactly, is the Covid-19 problem that governments are trying to address? That seems a bizarre question, given escalating death numbers and widespread economic destruction. But if forced to, could you say, with clarity, what the aim of your country’s government currently is? Is it to manage the flow of caseloads to “protect the healthcare […]
The latest apparent scandal of these strange times is that Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has been “profiteering” from coronavirus. In a luridly phrased front page splash, the Sunday Mirror reports the shocking news that Somerset Capital Management (SCM), an investment firm in which Rees-Mogg owns a large stake, has been telling investors that this is […]
“This is what a police state is like. It’s a state in which the government can issue orders or express preferences with no legal authority and the police will enforce ministers’ wishes.” What grotesque infringement of our liberties prompted this portentous assessment from the former senior judge, Lord Sumption? It was, it turns out, a […]
Despite the near universal shock and concern over the virus, the responses of national governments to the crisis have been starkly different. Countries like Sweden and South Korea have largely left society intact in a more laissez-faire approach. Others, such as Italy, France, and Austria, have locked down their countries to a point where public […]
No good deed goes unexploited and, at this extraordinary moment in time, the government’s relief schemes designed to keep struggling businesses are no exception to that sorry rule of life. Our old friend Moral Hazard is back in vogue. For an illustration of this we need look no further than the Premier League. England’s top […]
These are the facts. In December 2019, a series of hospital admissions began to be noted in the People’s Republic of China. As deaths followed, a new type of coronavirus, Covid-19, was identified. From the epicentre of Wuhan in China, Covid-19 spread across the world, whilst China fought to suppress knowledge of the scale of […]
Right now the coronavirus crisis is taking over just about everything, becoming the main story across a huge range of subject areas, including turning politics on its head across a lot of the Western world. In the UK last week, polling from Number Cruncher gave the Conservatives their biggest lead while in government (26 points) […]
Though much attention has rightly focused on the plight of tenants during the coronavirus outbreak, the crisis has had a huge impact on landlords too. Contrary to popular perceptions, many landlords are by no means wealthy. Indeed, whether they are among the 45% who own only one rental property or they are full-time ‘portfolio’ landlords, […]
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