Economic growth has become the defining issue of our time. After years of stagnating productivity, squeezed living standards, rising taxes and ballooning government debt, the key question that our politicians are grappling with is whether we can reverse this decline and kickstart economic growth once again. This centrality of this to our politics is evidenced […]
Britain has a long and proud history of innovation – stretching from the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions right through to modern successes in the fintech and life sciences sectors. Unfortunately, in recent years another trend has emerged, of start-ups incubating ideas in the UK before listing their businesses overseas, primarily in the US. Of the […]
Enshittification is everywhere. When the term was coined in late 2022 by the author Cory Doctorow, it swiftly went viral and became embedded in the lexicon. By the end of last year, it had been added to several dictionaries. The neologism describes the way online platforms degrade in quality as they prioritise profit. Sites lock […]
Angela Rayner’s resignation has left Britain’s housing ambitions at a crossroads. Her successor, Steve Reed, inherits a sector already in steep decline and faces an urgent choice: change course, or risk Labour’s central pledge of 1.5 million new homes slipping out of reach before the first brick is laid. The urgency could not be clearer. […]
Marx was wrong, Burnham was right: capitalism wasn’t replaced by communism, but by managerialism. In ‘The Managerial Revolution’ (1941), James Burnham wrote that the bourgeoisie weren’t sinking into the proletariat – they were being replaced by ‘administrators, technicians, managers’. If, like me, you love Edmund Burke, this might remind you of his mournful line: ‘The […]
Even though it was introduced by the previous government, the Football Governance Bill – which MPs passed yesterday and will create an Independent Football Regulator (IFR) – attracted strong opposition. Critics say that a regulator will damage the innovation so critical to making English football (especially the Premier League) such a powerful economic generator for […]
Britain is facing a crisis of confidence – a pervasive regulatory culture driven by the belief that whenever something goes wrong, no matter how minor, it must be regulated out of existence. This mindset, which seeks to eliminate risk at all costs, may sound protective, but it is profoundly destructive. Eliminating all risk means suffocating […]
On departing office in 2010, Labour’s Treasury chief secretary Liam Byrne infamously left a note pointing out that there was no money left. It’s a pity that the incoming coalition government did not have its attention drawn so explicitly to another poisoned inheritance – that of New Labour’s swansong legislation the Equality Act 2010 (EA). […]
There is a reliable rule in Whitehall that if you do not want people to pay attention to something, you should make it sound as boring as possible. A case in point: today the House of Commons will consider for the first time the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, a compact, 15-clause proposal which originated […]
2. Ownership and nationhood: the fight for economic belonging 4. The unchecked and the unaccountable: seizing the economic levers 5. A family big bang: putting children at the heart of growth 6. Trust is the precondition for economic growth 7. Out of the shadows: a Conservative tax revolution . The Friendly Giants: Breaking Free from […]
Michael Gove was, without a doubt, the most able secretary of state produced by the last 14 years of Conservative government. This sounds like praise, and of course it is. But great ability is a two-edged sword. When an able individual sets themselves to good purposes, they can do great things, as Gove did at […]
Yesterday our Prime Minister wrote in the newspaper of record that he will ‘kick down the barriers to building, clear out the regulatory weeds and allow a new era of British growth to bloom’. The Chancellor of the Exchequer later stood in front of a TV camera and promised ‘to grow the supply-side of our […]
The Chancellor’s big growth speech on Wednesday morning was so widely trailed that it contained few surprises. But it was still the clearest and most coherent statement of her economic philosophy and plans so far. Before diving into the detail, it is only fair to welcome the change of tone. It has been refreshing to […]
As Los Angeles burns, with ten dead and over 10,000 homes destroyed, a deeper story emerges about how well-intentioned red tape has turned a natural disaster into a regulatory catastrophe. The fires raging through Pacific Palisades and beyond aren’t just revealing the physical vulnerability of California’s hillside communities – they’re exposing the fundamental weakness of […]
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 […]
President-elect Donald Trump recently announced a commitment to abolishing the federal Department of Education. This announcement, coupled with the news that Elon Musk will be running DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), suggests that Trump is keen to remove what many of his supporters consider to be burdensome, costly and culturally corrupt institutions. Amid the recent […]
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