The refusal of the Treasury to increase defence spending shouldn’t come as a surprise. This is exactly what HM Treasury is supposed to do: stop spending that it sees as unaffordable, unless the necessary trade-offs are made to unblock it. The point of cabinet government is for Secretaries of State to make their case for […]
The numbers are not in dispute, whatever the spin. Andy Burnham took Makerfield with 54.8% of the vote and a majority of 9,231, on a turnout of 58.7%, the highest at any parliamentary by-election in almost seven years. Labour’s lead over Reform, 13 points at the general election, widened to 20. A seat Reform UK […]
In my new book, Inside the Sausage Factory, I examine four campaigns for ‘public health’ policies in the 2010s and examined all the evidence that was marshalled for and against them. It turns out that the evidence for them wasn’t very good and there wasn’t much evidence marshalled against them, but that isn’t really the […]
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 […]
On July 27, 2025, the US President Donald Trump invited the President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen and other top EU officials to his golf course, Trump-Turnberry on the West Coast of Scotland. Their meeting sealed a trade deal, which von der Leyen described as ‘huge’, but which critics described as a […]
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 […]
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 […]
Ten years ago, the EU referendum created two new political tribes: Leavers and Remainers. As Sara Hobolt and I show in our new book ‘Tribal Politics: How Brexit divided Britain’, both tribes are very much still with us. Even today, about 60% of people in Britain identify as a Remainer or a Leaver, and people’s […]
The British are coming! The British are coming! As the United States celebrates 250 years of independence from the British, millions of Californians wish to put themselves under British rule. The primary is taking place tomorrow, and Steve Hilton, a British-born former adviser to David Cameron, is not only expected to make it through to […]
Admired for his reformist approach to the NHS, Wes Streeting is generally seen as the most market-friendly figure on the British Left. Yet his call for social media companies to be treated like tobacco businesses reminds us that even the best of a bad bunch can still be pretty awful. After resigning as Health Secretary, […]
When the Labour Government gained power in 2024, Matthew Syed proposed in his Times column the creation of a ‘Department for Long-Term Thinking’: a department that would take government out of the fog of the 24/7 news cycle and encourage policymakers to focus on the bigger picture. Although translating that idea into practice would probably […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in south-east London, just for a change… Alright then, where have you brought me this week? We’re in rapidly-gentrifying Peckham, in south-east London. Specifically, we’re by the Aylesham Centre, a shopping centre that has clearly seen better days, and they definitely weren’t recent. Hang on a second, haven’t we been […]
The 6-7 craze is about to turn from a meaningless, but ultimately fun, meme into something decidedly more serious: the number of UK Prime Ministers in the last 10 years. British firms and families are battling spiralling energy bills while our towns and cities are disfigured by rashes of vape shops, epidemics of shoplifting and […]
I walked the dog recently along the Thames Path, around the source (or one of the sources, so as not to cause a fight) of the River Thames. This time of year, much of it is all dried up, and you can walk along the bed of what in the winter is full-flowing river. Wondering […]
