In 1943, a Post Office engineer called Tommy Flowers built a codebreaking machine out of 1,500 thermionic valves, partly out of his own pocket. Within a year Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, was cracking Nazi High Command ciphers at Bletchley Park. Britain had invented the data centre, in a large shed, and chock-full […]
Ukraine has recently stepped up its campaign of long-range missile and drone attacks against Russian critical infrastructure. Last week, after confirmation that some of the drones used in these operations were British-made, the Kremlin attempted to intimidate the new Prime Minister away from continued support for Ukraine by warning of ‘consequences’. Russia accused the United […]
In 1920 a Scottish Unionist MP Noel Skelton coined the term ‘property-owning democracy’, arguing that widening the base of property ownership among the working class would stabilise democracy and counter socialism. The term came to the forefront of political discourse when Prime Minister Anthony Eden used it at the Conservative Party conference in 1946. However, […]
President Trump’s imposition of ‘economic D-Day’ against Iran – a series of sanctions against any nation dealing financially with Iran, as well as banks and businesses – has already been dismissed by the usual suspects whose knee jerk response is always to attack any new measures against the Tehran regime. When it comes to Iran, […]
The elevation of an AI Minister to the Cabinet Office appears like a triumph for the technology. But Kanishka Narayan is, essentially, on his own island, floating between Andy Burnham’s inner circle and the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) – unmoored from AI’s former home, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology […]
The Prime Minister has announced that economic policymaking will be led by No 10 North. Does this mean that the so-called ‘dead hand’ of the Treasury will no longer be able to frustrate worthwhile projects which will boost the UK economy? Or does it run the risk of expenditure and borrowing getting out of control […]
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 […]
Depending on who you ask, the welfare state is either the only thing left in Britain worth fighting for or a byword for state failure, waste and deceit. A cursory look at the statistics will leave readers under no illusion as to which is the correct interpretation. In the 2025/26 financial year, we are projected […]
Britain and America have spent a decade arguing about Nimbyism as if it were a housing problem. It is much bigger than that: our inability to build, in a broad sense, has grown into a source of geopolitical weakness. The economic argument has been made already. Growth controls add anywhere from 17% to 38% to […]
More than 20 million people across England and Wales are currently under hosepipe bans. This should be no surprise following the driest July on record, with the Met Office provisionally recording just 5.6mm of rain across England, less than half the previous record, set in 1911. But how much of the blame can be laid […]
People argue endlessly about Britain’s tax burden – now the highest since the Second World War – but almost nothing is said about the time businesses lose to compliance. No Chancellor stands at the despatch box and tells firms they are about to spend another few billion pounds’ worth of working time satisfying new rules. […]
What do Richard Tice, Kevin Hollinrake and Peter Kyle all have in common? I wish I had a wittier answer to what sounds the set-up to a poor joke, but unfortunately I only have one answer – they all own an electric vehicle (EV). If three men, who have wildly diverging political views, lifestyles and […]
The reforms of Michael Gove represented a profound shift in England’s educational landscape, based upon the belief that outcomes improve when there is freedom with accountability. During his tenure as Education Secretary (2010-14), it became possible for all publicly funded schools to become academies, free schools could be created, and there were substantial reforms to […]
‘A Waiter in Paris’ is the story of a young Englishman who graduated from a good university in London with a humanities degree, trained and educated for a world that no longer exists. ‘All while I applied for other, more “prestigious” jobs. Jobs that didn’t appear to exist anymore.’ That’s how Edward Chisholm puts it […]
Few people enjoy gazing into the crystal ball more than economists. Attempting to divine the future, otherwise known as forecasting, is a numerically intensive pastime of many people in the profession. It is also a common mandate of many state institutions. For instance, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) produces aggregate forecasts of government receipts, […]
Andy Burnham may have stumbled on the most effective way yet of prolonging Britain’s managed decline: make people feel that something fundamental has changed when much of the machinery underneath has not. His first speech as Prime Minister was full of ‘common purpose and positivity’, getting Britain to ‘start to believe again’ and ‘bringing back […]
