Conservative manifesto: Extending right-to-buy will transform the prospects of low income families April 14, 2015 The centrepiece of the Conservative Party manifesto, unveiled yesterday, was a significant expansion of the right-to-buy scheme. Giving families the ability to own their own home is a wonderful thing, and extending the scheme to housing associations, as the Conservatives propose, will certainly do that. The broad economic benefits of home ownership are well established, [...]
The 38 per cent rule: There’s a limit to how much the state can tax the people April 14, 2015 Ed Miliband’s proposal to tax non-doms more harshly may be good, populist politics. But does it make economic sense? At most, the yield will be around £1bn, even if people do not alter their behaviour in response to the change in policy. The actual amount generated could even be negative if enough non-doms leave the [...]
Hillary Clinton will make it to the White House if the Republicans remain divided April 13, 2015 Hillary Clinton announced on Sunday her intention to run to become the first female President in US history. She is the overwhelming favourite to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, despite recent controversies over her personal email use when she was US secretary of state between 2009 and 2013. Although general election day remains [...]
On tax and spending, the voters are right: Our politicians are all the same April 13, 2015 There are still 23 days to go, and the signs are bleak. Astonishingly, the rest of this election campaign could be even more trivial, insubstantial and tedious than we have witnessed to date. This week, the political parties unveil their manifestos. This will have the effect of locking them all into a pattern of endless [...]
Politics and business must collaborate to solve UK ills April 13, 2015 We are in the run-up to the most unpredictable election of the modern age, having also experienced a seismic shift in the economic and technological environment. But what does this mean for business, and what can policymakers do to create a competitive market for UK firms within an ever-changing global arena? Today, we are hosting [...]
As the Chinese economy sees exports plunge in March, are fears of a hard landing justified? April 13, 2015 Alessandro Theiss, an economist at Oxford Economics, says Yes Slow starts to the year are not uncommon in China – and the timing of the Lunar New Year makes it hard to draw inferences from just a few months’ data. But plummeting exports and a contraction in import volumes suggest that Chinese domestic demand has [...]
General Election 2015: Introducing the business wish list April 12, 2015 As we enter the final days of the election, we have decided to ask a select group of business leaders what would make them vote for one of the parties. We’ve not asked them to name the party they support because for many this would count them out of giving an opinion. [...]
The Eurozone will remain mired in crisis unless it faces up to the facts April 12, 2015 During my years in the trenches in Washington, my staff christened one of my favourite analytical canaries in the coalmine the “we are where we are moment”. That is, you can determine whether a crisis is actually being dealt with simply by looking at the rhetoric of the opposing forces involved. If they hadn’t moved [...]
Why politicians should stop using employment law as an electioneering tool April 12, 2015 Faced with stubbornly unchanging polls and less than a month before the General Election, what can a party leader do to prevent the nation drawing the duvet over its collective head on 7 May? Into the arena is pulled employment relations law. All the main parties have something to say here – the coalition points [...]
A strong partnership between the City and Scotland benefits all April 12, 2015 As the Easter weekend fades into distant memory, my programme of visits to the City’s key trading partners kicks back into action. Instead of a far-flung, emerging market on the other side of the globe, however, my travels this week take me to economic partners a lot closer to home – the cities of Edinburgh [...]