The judges’ scores are in: Wise’s decision to float in New York is surefire proof that London is in the doldrums. Empty rhetoric and ‘get Britain building’ aside, as a financial centre our capital is stooping deeper and deeper into uncompetitiveness. Without a concerted, active effort from our Chancellor to fix our regulators, I’m afraid […]
For over a decade, British governments have been repeating the same line: that small and medium-sized enterprises – the lifeblood of the economy – must have a fairer shot at winning public contracts. It began with David Cameron’s coalition pledging to direct a quarter of government spending to SMEs. This was then upped by Boris […]
In this edition of ‘Nimby Watch’, we’re going to Borough, in South London, and we’re talking about the urgent issue of food halls… Where are we off to this time, then? Quite a nice spot, for now! We’re visiting Mercato Metropolitano, an open-all-hours food hall with 40 or so independent traders, operating on a site between […]
The fact that there are currently over nine million adults in the UK economically inactive, including over 3m people on long-term disability benefits and nearly 1m people aged 16-24 not in employment, education or training, is a national scandal. Thinkers like Fraser Nelson have done an impeccable job at highlighting the explosion in inactivity since […]
During my years as a start-up founder, I had the dubious pleasure of navigating the spoken and unspoken procurement rules of Network Rail. To my dismay, I found that discretionary budgets didn’t sit with the operations managers who were the direct clients, nor with the Central Innovation team but under the auspices of the multi-million […]
The UK has a tech scale-up problem. Too often we fail to support our most innovative and successful startups to grow into global competitors within the UK. Instead, we’re seeing a trend of ‘UK begins, elsewhere cashes in’. Our brightest companies pursue greater growth potential in other markets or seek acquisition by foreign companies. Two […]
One of the great benefits of working in think tank world is that you can have genuinely robust conversations in the office. From euthanasia to the price of a pint, there are few topics I haven’t debated at some point with a colleague sat opposite me. While enjoyable, I understand that not all working environments […]
For a reason I can’t quite fathom, small businesses in the UK are routinely attacked by the government. You’d think the opposite might be true, given they employ two-thirds of the workforce (excluding the public sector), many of whom are active voters. Successive governments, latest flavour included, are missing a trick by not actively supporting […]
I do not generally indulge in what Eleanor H Porter’s Pollyanna called ‘the Glad Game’, although the current political climate makes it tempting, as ideological opponents become poisonously irreconcilable enemies. Counterintuitively, however, amid the rising polarisation, there is still one idea to which most mainstream political opinion subscribes: that the key to making Britain great […]
In the age of the identity crisis, it can be difficult to know where you stand. Am I a man? On balance, probably. Am I white? I’m sure I’m guilty enough to be. Am I a ‘working person’? Apparently that’s also a matter of contention. In yet another attempt to justify the tsunami of tax […]
President Eisenhower once remarked, ‘Farming looks mighty easy when your plough is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the cornfield’. As someone whose first job was on a farm, I concur with Mr Eisenhower. This quote also encapsulates Labour’s evolving relationship with business, particularly courting investment; it looks and feels very easy when […]
Much has been written about the ‘death of the high street’, with commentators bemoaning the fact that it is mainly ‘pound shops’ flogging tat alongside the ubiquitous betting shops and fast food chains frequented by gangs of teens smoking weed who intimidate passers-by. The high street in my hometown of Huddersfield is no exception to […]
Britain’s rich regional diversity makes our country an immeasurably more interesting and appealing place. But not all of our intra-national differences are a source of pride. One in particular is the widely varying economic fortunes between parts of the UK. Across a range of metrics, businesses in some regions clearly perform better than average, while […]
How time flies. The general election race is almost up and the competing parties have rolled out their manifesto pledges. While issues such as migration and defence have dominated headlines, a critical area that must not be overlooked is how to strengthen foreign investment. Over the past few years, the UK government has shown that […]
Labour has announced plans to introduce a drastic change to the secondary ticketing market that will drive legitimate, safe, transparent (and already highly regulated) ticketing platforms out of business – and force customer transactions to the unregulated black market. The policy is ill-thought-through and will lead to predictable and preventable outcomes for customers, leaving them […]
There are few small pleasures in life that the Government has not lately committed itself to curbing, but one of them is beer. While Scotland and Wales recently introduced minimum unit pricing, only last year, Westminster cut back on alcohol duty – defending the role of pubs in British life. Indeed, if there is an […]
