According to the Government, England is about to spend £39 billion on social housing. That may be just the start. Andy Burnham, the frontrunner to replace Keir Starmer if he wins this Friday’s Makerfield by-election, has made a large-scale expansion of social housing central to his pitch. Yet the discourse around this number focuses almost […]
Artificial intelligence is already reshaping policing, and the recent row over the Metropolitan Police’s blocked deal with Palantir shows how far politics is lagging behind operational reality. If we are serious about protecting frontline officers and visible neighbourhood policing, we should embrace carefully regulated AI as a force multiplier that releases cops from analogue bureaucracy […]
Looking For Growth has launched the Emergency Energy Bill – a ready-made piece of legislation that the Government should pass tomorrow. But it won’t. Labour won’t take the radical action necessary to get bills down unless we force them to. This Government, just like many of its predecessors over the last thirty years, has prioritised […]
When John Healey resigned as Defence Secretary last week, there was widespread praise for his principled stand. The financial settlement contained in the final draft of the Defence Investment Plan, believed to offer the Ministry of Defence an additional £10 billion or so over the next four years, was not even close to the resources […]
Every year, I eagerly await a report that confirms what I see before my eyes. KPMG’s ‘Illicit Trade in Tobacco Report’ is a beast of research, conducting in-person ‘pack-surveys’ (where packets of tobacco, whether to be rolled or already neatly packed into paper, are surveyed to find whether they are legally bought or smuggled, counterfeit […]
The World Cup starts today and for the first time in over 30 years it is being held in North America. Not only is this exciting news for football fans, it should also be of interest to free trade enthusiasts, as the last time it was held there the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) […]
September 2023: what a time that was to be alive. Aerosmith began their final ever tour, Kim Jong-Un arrived in Russia for an audience with Vladimir Putin and Rupert Murdoch stepped down from the boards of Fox and News Corp. It was a good month for news. Yet that month another turning point in world […]
In the leafy district of Bassetlaw, council officers want to get tough. Although not in the way you might expect. Last Wednesday night, local politicians weren’t discussing bins, planning or district improvement projects. Instead, they busied themselves going after the humble ‘cake shed’. In recent months, a baked-goods revolution has swept the nation. Stalls have […]
After the Government’s timid attempt to slow the growth of welfare spending collapsed under pressure from its own backbenchers and disability activists, ministers needed a way out. Their answer was to agree to the Timms Review of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) ‘co-produced’ with disability groups. It never stood a chance. With a steering group overwhelmingly […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in Winstanley, in the historical county of Lancashire. But, like certain other people in Winstanley right now, we’ve got our eyes on Westminster… Okay then, why are we in Winstanley. Where exactly is Winstanley, anyway? Well, if you’re part of the southern Westminster elite, you might say that Winstanley is […]
It’s only on the basis of truth that power should be won – or indeed can be worth winning. Margaret Thatcher, 1996 It is a hundred years since Margaret Thatcher was born in Grantham. Fifty years since she took over the Conservative Party. Almost 35 years since she was forced from office. Today’s voters are […]
The scale of the housing crisis is sobering. Britain has the worst housing shortage of any major developed nation. Decades of undersupply have contributed to house prices and rents skyrocketing out of reach. In 1997, the average home cost about 3.5 times the average income. As of 2024, an aspiring buyer must devote nearly eight years’ worth of […]
The battle of essays between Labour Party grandees has given British politics a distinctly retro feel over the last week, as Tony Blair, Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham behaved like competing 18th-century pamphleteers explaining in earnest detail why things will only get better if they’re in charge. The ideas these once-and-would-be-future Labour prime […]
Over the past few months, the TaxPayers’ Alliance sent hundreds of freedom of information requests while researching Prevent, the Government’s counter-terrorism programme designed to stop people becoming terrorists. FOI requests to local councils, questions to the Home Office, requests for the most basic financial breakdowns – where the money went, who received it and what […]
In that bonkers novel, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, Hunter S. Thompson has a great line (well, in some ways, he has several) about crime in America: ‘In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.’ But not even […]
Brace yourself, but I don’t mind Michelle Obama. Sure, she might prattle on about the evils of white, corporate America too much for my liking, but the former First Lady certainly doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and this was on full display at this week’s SXSW festival in London. Addressing the crowd, Obama warned young people […]
