For people who are able to use technology, shifting everyday life online has been strange and unexpected, but not exactly a leap in the dark. For the millions of people who can’t, the lockdown means loneliness and social isolation. And sadly, millions is no exaggeration. There are currently 11.9m people in the UK who lack […]
Modern states are mighty states, especially in the developed world. This might, of course, does not make them omnicompetent — there is a crucial distinction between power and its skilled exercise — but they can do many things, both good and bad, and do them well. For this reason, people fear the state, and have […]
On Friday, the credit rating agency Fitch downgraded the UK’s sovereign credit rating by one notch, from AA to AA-, citing worries about the economy and a jump in government debt. Bond investors at least are shrugging this off. But the announcement has revived long-standing concerns about the role of rating agencies during crises, and whether they actually […]
According to the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, we may be looking at a strict lockdown until June, with significant restrictions for as long as six months. GDP is forecast to be down 15% this quarter on some estimates and the longer the lockdown, the deeper this slump will get. The scale of the economic collapse […]
The Covid-19 crisis is approaching its economic peak. Most Western economies are largely closed. Stock markets have been in freefall for several weeks, and may yet test deeper lows. Companies are in shell-shocked reaction mode, scrambling to protect what remains by cutting commitments across the board. Yet that instinctive reaction – to conserve by reducing […]
No Justice Secretary, least of all a Conservative one, wants to be in a position where they must authorise the early release of jailed criminals. Robert Buckland has not ruled out doing so, but is apparently resistant to throwing open the prison gates as a way of easing the threat from coronavirus. Concerns about public […]
It’s the dream that fires revolutions and hot-takes alike: tomorrow everything will be different. Sometimes it is; more often the dawn breaks while everything else remains largely intact. In the midst of a global pandemic moving at bewildering speed, it can feel as though there’s little to hold on to. Easy therefore to give up […]
We’re all looking for things to cheer us up in these apocalyptic times when even a trip to the supermarket is fraught with potential danger. We live online to an even greater extent now than ever before, and it is in the online realm that many are sharing their heart-warming stories of individuals doing good […]
At this rate we shall soon find it easier to count the evenings when Rishi Sunak is not announcing multi-billion economic rescue packages. Last night, finally, it was the turn of Britain’s self-employed and gig economy workers. Mirroring the wage subsidy scheme for employees, taxable grants will now cover 80% of a self-employee’s average profit […]
This week we launched the Centre for Brexit Policy, a new think tank focusing on identifying, researching and developing the thinking and policies needed to take maximum advantage of Brexit. This is a vital new contribution to the think tank landscape and the CBP will be a great asset to government as they steer the […]
After the 2008 financial crisis, there was no shortage of “hindsight sages”, who, supposedly, had been warning us about this for years, and had now been tragically vindicated. But whenever you looked up the actual publications of any of these wannabe Cassandras, you would invariably find that they had not “predicted” anything. They had just […]
“Inflation,” wrote Harold Wilson in his account of his government of 1974-6, “is father to unemployment.” To those too young to recall the 1970s (a strange era matchlessly described by Francis Wheen in his cultural history Strange Days Indeed), it may seem curious that political debate of the time was so focused on inflation. After all, […]
While most look on a crisis like this with worry, and view it as a challenge to be overcome, there are extremists who consider troubling times to be a gift. Far-right extremists across the world – both abroad and closer to home – are exploiting Covid-19 to peddle unfounded conspiracies and intensify forms of hatred […]
Given that even ‘profit’ now seems to be dirty word, it is no surprise that being accused of ‘profiteering’ during a crisis is about as bad as it can get. But there are some circumstances when an increase in prices in response to exceptional demand can actually be a good thing. By definition, ‘profiteering’ is […]
As the old saying goes, “never let a crisis go to waste”. And there’s certainly good evidence that some on the radical left see this pandemic as a chance to expand the scope and power of the central state. If this is indeed a war, then the hope is the aftermath might resemble a modern […]
A Prime Minister appears on every channel at primetime. He’s announcing a national lockdown to stop the spread of a deadly pandemic. It feels like a dystopian movie plot. But the threat of this virus, and the steps being taken to prevent its spread, could not be more real. Police will shortly have the power […]
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