Option Zero: Why Britain should embrace unilateral free trade post-Brexit August 25, 2016 Sherlock Holmes said that, when you’ve exhausted all other possibilities, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. In last week’s column I explained why the assumed roads forward for Brexit (the Norwegian, Swiss, Turkish and conventional World Trade Organisation tariff models) all had major stumbling blocks and should be seen as non-starters. This week [...]
GCSE results: Why a laser-like focus on grades is damaging the UK’s economy August 25, 2016 This morning, hundreds of thousands of teenagers will be opening their GCSE results, accompanied by the usual attention on grades and whether As and A*s are up or down. But this relentless focus on just one metric is contributing to a pressing skills crisis that could be profoundly damaging for the UK’s economy. It’s clear [...]
Free movement is gone – but business can still persuade the public of the benefits of migration August 25, 2016 Britain may have a new home secretary and a new PM, but the quarterly immigration figures, out today, look set to tell the same old story. The government remains nowhere near meeting its “tens of thousands” net migration target and new polling shows the public doesn’t think it’s likely to. But business voices hoping Amber [...]
Is Labour’s Owen Smith right that there should be another referendum on the Brexit deal? August 25, 2016 Chris Rumfitt, founder and chief executive of Field Consulting, says Yes. “Brexit means Brexit” declared our new Prime Minister Theresa May upon taking office. The only problem with that statement is that at no point during the referendum campaign did that word Brexit get defined. Single Market membership? European Economic Area membership? Basic World Trade Organisation [...]
Nissan and National Lottery struck gold at the Rio Olympics – here’s proof August 24, 2016 As another Olympics ends and the British public basks in the glory of an unprecedented medal haul, sponsors are reflecting on how their own marketing efforts resonated with the public. Our brand tracking research allows us to explore whether they have managed to benefit both from their association with the event and their sporting ambassadors. [...]
The economy appears to be coping just fine after June’s Brexit vote – but the real test is yet to come August 24, 2016 Two months ago today we were waking up to the frankly astonishing news that 52 per cent of the electorate had voted to leave the European Union. The pound had crashed overnight and the FTSE soon followed suit, losing 200 points on fears of a sharp downturn. In recent weeks we have been treated to [...]
Forget discrimination: The gender pay gap is driven by our (free) choices August 23, 2016 The IFS is an excellent think tank but its latest paper adds nothing to the debate. It’s on the gender pay gap, which it slices in various ways, but none of these slices tells us anything new about discrimination in the workplace. The gender pay gap is actually driven by choices men and women make, [...]
The blob is wrong: Competition between schools raises standards the world over August 23, 2016 The A-Level results released last week confirm the dominance of schools in London and the South East. Provisional league tables have only appeared so far for state schools, but these two regions have two-thirds of the top 100. South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, and Wales did not have a single school between them in the top [...]
With monetary policy in the frame at Jackson Hole this week, are negative interest rates a looming disaster? August 23, 2016 Ben Habib, chief executive of First Property Group, says Yes. Since the late 1980s, the principal weapon used against economic setbacks by the central banks of western developed economies has been ever looser monetary policy. This approach initially worked well, serving to support both real economies and asset prices. Those of us who were lucky enough [...]
Economics holds the smoking gun for why e-cigarettes shouldn’t be discouraged August 23, 2016 Smoking and other tobacco use is not a disease, it is a consumption decision. So attempts to understand it through the lens of medicine, rather than that of welfare economics (the science of consumer preferences, choice, and welfare), create confusion, absurd claims, and bad public policy. These errors are particularly harmful in discussions about low risk [...]