The Great Depression was bad, but how bad was it exactly? In its early days, people spent a lot of time arguing over specific metrics like steel output or share prices, but the US Congress wanted a way to quantify how bad things were for the economy as a whole. In 1932, Congress commissioned Simon […]
Schools do not exist in isolation from the economy. The number of young people who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) is, in large part, a function of the economic conditions in which they leave education. When growth is weak, entry-level opportunities are scarce, employers are cautious and the public finances that pay […]
Britain is in a growth emergency. But our political class refuses to act like it. Government after government, prime minister after prime minister, it has failed to take the radical action required. Economic growth has been on a downward trajectory for 70 years. We have gone from one of the richest countries in the world […]
Across the UK, millions of people rely on the railways to travel. From 2024 to 2025, there were 1.7 billion passenger rail journeys, of which 1.08 billion were completed within a single region. And yet all too often, local rail has been neglected, with funding prioritised for London and the South East. As a result […]
Nigel Farage, the Member of Parliament for Clacton and leader of Reform UK, has resigned, triggering a by-election in the constituency. This follows weeks of speculation regarding an undeclared £5 million gift Farage received before he became an MP, as well as other gifts he allegedly should have declared. Farage intends to stand in the […]
Most of those who, despite all discouragement, continue to invest in the UK have a sense of foreboding over an Andy Burnham premiership. We know that he will try to reconcile two irreconcilables. First, he will offer bold, exciting change from the uninspiring couple of years under Keir Starmer. Second, he will resist holding an […]
There was as much doubt about Labour’s leadership nominations as there was at the Accession Council in September 2022. Like the Privy Counsellors before them, Labour MPs have declared Andy Burnham leader with ‘one voice and consent of tongue and heart’. Although he won’t officially be declared Labour’s new leader until July 17, by securing […]
Andy Burnham is not a forward-looking man. His musical interests stop at around 1998, his approach to industry is straight out of the 1970s and his favourite football team hasn’t won a trophy for over thirty years. It’s little surprise then that he takes a dim view of the ongoing tech revolution. It was reported […]
Rachel Reeves has found another group of taxpayers to squeeze: graduates who still think they have a student loan rather than a second income tax. At the 2025 Budget, she froze the Plan 2 student loan repayment threshold at £29,385 for three years from April 2027, rather than uprating it with earnings. Freezing a threshold […]
Clacton is regularly noted as a ‘left behind constituency’, receiving little government support, with few jobs and poor educational attainment. One must only walk down Pier Avenue in the town centre to see the empty shops and occasional homeless person. But to so many in Westminster it has been a constituency of intense political fascination. […]
The OBR’s latest Fiscal Risks and Sustainability report, published this week, gives a blunt assessment of the UK’s public finances: we can’t go on like this. If nothing changes, government debt will rise to an unsustainable 300% of GDP in 50 years’ time. How did things get so bad? Well, there’s one big demographic challenge […]
Josiah Quincy Jr., who was the mayor of Boston in the middle of the nineteenth century, wrote in his Last Will and Testament that his son should read ‘John Locke’s works, – Lord Bacon’s works, – Gordon’s Tacitus, – and Cato’s Letters. May the spirit of liberty rest upon him!’ Indeed, there is nothing closer […]
For many people, there is a brilliant piece of music or an inspiring novel that changes their life. For a freak like me, it was obviously a documentary. And of course it was a documentary about Margaret Thatcher. Released just after she died, ‘Margaret, Death of A Revolutionary’ set me on the path of believing […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in for a reckoning… Hey, you. Excuse me? Are you talking to me? Yes, you. I’ve got something you should read. Hang on a minute, shouldn’t you be asking me questions? Are you breaking the format? Damn right I am. Every fortnight, you take me somewhere in the UK, show […]
You don’t expect to hear national policy being made on Reddit, and yet last week Andy Burnham did just that in an Ask Me Anything. When asked what he will do to fix the housing crisis, he pledged to ‘launch the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period’ and that ‘nothing else will […]
Talk about reforming the machinery of government often sounds like a wine tasting. One expert raises the glass, considers the latest initiative and says: ‘An interesting effort, but not enough depth.’ Another detects ‘promising notes of delivery, rather spoiled by departmental silos’. A third finds ‘hints of innovation and accountability, but with a disappointingly familiar […]
