The bond market has finally lost patience with Labour. The 10-year gilt yield this week is back above 5% – around 5.09% as I write – its highest since the 2008 financial crisis. The 30-year gilt has touched 5.81%, its highest since 1998. Labour’s credibility is being repriced in real time. And the omens are […]
This was not the King’s Speech Keir Starmer imagined it would be. The crisis engulfing the Prime Minister has become so terminal that Buckingham Palace even questioned whether it would be appropriate for the King to speak at all. But Starmer hasn’t maneuvered himself to the top job for nothing, and he patently won’t go […]
If we were to bring UK income taxes closer into line with those in Europe’s major economies, it would cost the average taxpayer £1,015 per year. One argument often stated nowadays is that Britain should move towards European-style taxation. But given this cost to the taxpayer, it is certainly not a policy I would advocate. […]
The longer he is in office, the more I realise what an odd and atypical politician Keir Starmer is. With his tenancy of 10 Downing Street under genuine threat after last week’s disastrous local and devolved election results, the Prime Minister is pursuing his own internal form of the madman theory: respond to criticism in […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in Bushey, a town near Watford that’s been around since the Domesday Book… I see we’re in Watford. What brings us here, then? Hang on for a second, we’re in Bushey – it’s been its own town for 1,000 years, which is long enough that we shouldn’t just smush it […]
Even though the final local election results won’t be declared for a while yet, it’s clear there are glum faces in our two traditionally-biggest parties, an enormous trademark grin from Nigel Farage at Reform UK, and that Zack Polanski’s Greens are on the march. The populist parties aren’t gaining because they discovered a magical […]
Three C-17 Globemasters. Eight shipping containers. The first nuclear reactor in history to be moved by air. While it feels like the opening of one of those special-forces slop series on Amazon that I count as one of my guiltiest pleasures, this is the very real Operation Windlord. The operation, conducted by the US Air […]
Most capital cities in Europe are led from the Left. London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Rome all have left-wing mayors. Their tenures have seen the imposition of rent controls, restrictions on tourism markets, higher taxes and more subsidies for social housing. There is, however, one city that stands apart from the rest. The Madrid Community […]
Youth unemployment is one of those issues that politicians across the spectrum agree is a scandal. The debate tends to focus on training programmes, welfare incentives, employer subsidies. These things matter. But a report published today by the Jobs Foundation points to something more fundamental: the businesses that would employ young people are not growing […]
The British investment industry wants everyone to be familiar with a cartoon squirrel. Savvy, the character fronting a 20 million pound advertising campaign, is the latest attempt to boost investment in the UK. The government-backed ‘Invest for the Future’ initiative, launched last Thursday, is supported by some of the biggest financial services firms in the […]
Here is an idiotic question for an England football fan this summer. Which would they prefer winning? The World Cup itself? Or the FIFA Fair Play Trophy, awarded to the side with the best disciplinary record during the tournament? The answer: it might be nice if England plays decently, but all of us would hugely […]
In the pantheon of destructive, counterproductive laws of the last few centuries, Labour’s new Renters’ Rights Act, which starts today, must be up there with the worst. Perhaps alongside the Corn Laws of 1815, or the Trade Union Act of 1906 that allowed unchecked industrial unrest and economic decline, or the Town and Country Planning […]
On Monday, it seemed that Rachel Reeves had crossed the Rubicon into complete economic ineptitude. It was reported that the Government was considering a one-year rent freeze for private tenants to soften the financial blow of the Iran war. Under the plans, landlords would be prohibited from raising rents for a limited period of time, […]
Britain stands at a rare strategic inflection point, embrace AI or continue on a path of sluggish economic growth for the foreseeable future. The International Monetary Fund recently forecasted that the energy shocks from the Iran war will hit the UK the hardest of the world’s advanced economies, cutting its estimates for UK growth this […]
The House of Lords is trying to help the Government recognise the dangers of the mandation powers it wishes to include in the wide-ranging Pension Schemes Bill. It has asked the Commons to reconsider three times. How did we reach this impasse? Ministers believe investing in private assets will enhance workers’ long-term returns. Most large auto-enrolment […]
The following is an edited transcript of Lord Wolfson’s keynote speech at the 2026 Margaret Thatcher Conference on Prosperity, organised by the Centre for Policy Studies, in which he argues that replacing Britain’s failed planning system would be the first step towards a freer, faster-growing economy. My father actually worked for Mrs Thatcher as her […]
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