As an Anglo-Scot, I had a dog in the fight that was the Scottish independence referendum 12 years ago. I was a visceral opponent of the dismemberment of the United Kingdom, which, I believed, would damage everyone in the British and Irish Isles. As the UK’s ambassador to the UN in 2014 put it, ‘it […]
A quick show of hands. How many of you have a working torch in the kitchen drawer, and not just on your phone? Candles, matches or a working pack of AA batteries? What about a week’s worth of tinned food, a camping stove, a full jerry can? A generator? Most readers will have answered no […]
The Government has finally bowed to common sense and given the green light to the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea. It’s the sensible move and a good start, although a decision on Rosebank is not yet forthcoming. Given the resistance both projects have faced, it’s worth setting out why Jackdaw’s approval is good […]
When John Healey sits down next Wednesday, the press gallery will focus hard on his headroom against the fiscal rules. In March the OBR put this at £23.6 billion against the main rule, which requires day-to-day spending to be covered by revenue by 2029/30. A recent Reuters poll of economists suggests it has since shrunk […]
The lifeblood of the economy. The backbone of Britain. When it comes to small businesses, it’s easy to lapse into cliché. But that’s because they really, really matter. The overwhelming majority of businesses in Britain are small businesses. They employ more than 13 million people. And it’s almost impossible to exaggerate how tough things are […]
Let’s go fly a kite? There has been rather less briefing about proposals to be announced in next week’s Budget than in recent years. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Healey, has been far less forthcoming than his predecessors, Rachel Reeves and Jeremy Hunt, whose plans were dribbled out weeks in advance. Some have suggested […]
Britain was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution – where cheap, abundant coal fuelled the inventions that built the modern world. Those breakthroughs – railways, modern medicine and electricity – transformed humanity. But we often forget that it was energy, our ability to produce it and (crucially) to store it, that made all of this […]
Today the Tax Foundation updates its annual International Tax Competitiveness Index. It’s not great reading for the UK, which comes 30th out of 38 countries. This is one place better than last year but two places worse than 2014, the first year of the Index. The Index aims to measure how well a tax system […]
There wasn’t much to like about the previous iteration of this Labour Government but airport expansion was one of them. Rachel Reeves committed early on to expanding City airport, opening the baffling spare runway at Gatwick, expanding Luton and Stansted and building a third runway at Heathrow. It was an aviation extravaganza for London aimed […]
Should banks be taxed more? That seems to be one of the routes that the Chancellor will go down in the Budget, according to news reports from Bangkok, where he is attending the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Thousands of bankers will be in attendance and he is likely to […]
It’s never easy being young. The hormones, the debt, the uncertainty: the burden hangs heavy. Under Labour, it’s become even harder. In the period April-June this year, there were 981,000 Britons aged 16-24 classed as not in education, employment or training (NEET). This is both morally and fiscally unconscionable. Being a NEET is not fun, […]
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 […]
The IMF has just published its biannual World Economic Outlook. The report appeared to be modestly good news for the UK, predicting higher-than-expected economic growth of 1.3% in 2026, up from a 1% forecast in July. But one thing that caught my eye was the way that the IMF reported that the UK would see […]
For the past 10 years, the European Centre for Entrepreneurship and Policy Reform (ECEPR) has been mapping Europe’s knowledge-intensive jobs in a recurring study, with a particular focus on how the geography of knowledge is shifting. The 2026 index shows the UK ahead compared to other large nations in Europe, but also reveals that smaller […]
‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,’ says Michael Corleone in ‘The Godfather Part III’. A decade after we voted to leave the European Union, much of the establishment is still in denial about the verdict that was delivered. Andy Burnham has been absolutely shameless. Campaigning in the Makerfield by-election, […]
What explains prosperity? That is the most important question in economics. It was this question that led Adam Smith to write ‘The Wealth of Nations’. Before Smith, the physiocrats like Turgot explored it in works like ‘Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth’. It is this question that makes economics not only interesting, but […]
