The remarkable thing about Britain’s tax burden is that however high it rises, the government always manages to spend more than it can afford, and John Healey’s first Budget looks unlikely to be any different. Businesses are expected to swallow higher taxes, workers are expected to give up more of their earnings and anyone lucky […]
I moved from New York to Britain and I keep getting asked when I’m going back. Not by my family, or my friends back home, but by British people. They tell me about flat wages, looming youth unemployment and an air of decline throughout the country. But no one talks about lunch, because everyone here […]
There are certain things I expect very few people to care about. For example, if someone found a counterexample to an obscure mathematical conjecture from 1939, I would expect approximately three people in my group of friends (all three maths academics) to even pretend to care. And that is a very niche and self-selected group […]
Putting support services such as cleaning, security, and building maintenance out to tender has been a significant success since the policy was first introduced in the 1980s. Starting in local government but extended to central government, such services have cost less and been delivered to a higher standard as a result of competition. Yet Labour, […]
Britain has built a tribunal system so sprawling and risk-free that it now consumes the very people who should be running organisations, improving products and services and designing more productive companies. What was meant to be a quick, low-cost alternative to the courts has become a parallel bureaucracy that traps skilled workers in disclosure exercises […]
Here’s something people of all parties and of none ought to agree about. If we could raise public sector productivity we could have better service for less money. Could we also agree that the failure of the public sector to raise its productivity so far this century is something we should be able to change? […]
Britain is stuck in a growth ‘doom loop’. Public spending has ballooned, taxes are at a 70-year high and the same pattern repeats each year. The result is a country that works harder, pays more and gets less. It’s a policy environment that is hitting business hard at all levels, and is toxic for young […]
Before Covid, flexible work was an unusual perk. But as lockdown upended our way of life, the drive for working when, where and how an employee chooses accelerated. Insofar as there has been a return to the pre-pandemic era, it has been limited. In some quarters, the idea that workers might be obliged to follow […]
Everyone talks about growth. How we don’t have it. How we desperately need it. From the Global Financial Crisis to war-induced energy crises to trade-crashing tariffs at the clicks of American fingers, our economy seems forever at the mercy of worldly vicissitudes. International onlookers could not be faulted for thinking that, for the past 18 […]
This is an excerpt, reprinted with permission, from ‘The Origins of Efficiency’ by Brian Potter, published by Stripe Press. In his book, Potter argues that finding ways to produce goods and services in less time, with less labour, using fewer resources is the force behind some of the most consequential changes in human history. Here […]
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here: Only Thatcher-sized reforms will end Britain’s malaise Britain’s benefits system is unfair for all involved Labour’s change to Ofwat doesn’t hold water The fiscal farce that’s […]
Stand back and look at the economic trends across the decades and it’s evident that the UK is stagnating at best and collapsing at worst. Because of this, you are £10,700 a year poorer, Britain faces being a diminishing country in the world and for the first time ever the younger generation(s) are set to be […]
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