Our housing crisis will become a catastrophe without a national crusade to fix it September 24, 2014 HOUSING is a basic human right, and we are denying it to our children. If current house price rises continue, babies born today will pay £6.3m in 2048 for a one bedroom London flat. Already, at around £428,000, the average London house price is over 16 times the average national salary. There is a vast [...]
As Cameron recalls Parliament, should Britain join an open-ended campaign against the IS? September 24, 2014 Hannah Stuart, research fellow at The Henry Jackson Society, says Yes. Suggestions from the Pentagon that military action against the Islamic State (IS) could take years should not deter the UK. Neither should they come as a surprise – the fight against global jihadists is already a generational struggle. For years, militant Islamist groups have [...]
Labour’s misdiagnosis: A larger state is not the way to raise living standards September 23, 2014 To paraphrase the economist John Maynard Keynes, Ed Miliband’s speech yesterday to the Labour Party conference was an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end in Bedlam. For Miliband, the market has failed to deliver rising prosperity, and it is now time for big government to get back in [...]
Low inflation isn’t abnormal: It’s a feature of a competitive market economy September 23, 2014 FEARS of deflation are rising across Europe, as inflation keeps edging down to lower and lower rates. Eurostat estimates the rate of inflation in the Eurozone in the year to August to be only 0.4 per cent, compared to 1.3 per cent in the year to August 2013. Negative rates were observed in eight EU [...]
Name-dropping won’t cut it: Miliband must do more to rouse his party September 23, 2014 Colin, Gareth, Elizabeth, the two young women in the local park… it sounds like the beginning of that song by The Beautiful South, which is apt, given the track was called Song for Whoever. Instead, the names were part of a list of people Ed Miliband has recently met in the street, trotted out yesterday [...]
As the public finances deteriorated in August, has Osborne given up on tackling the deficit? September 23, 2014 Scott Corfe, senior economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research, says Yes. One of the great myths of the current parliament is that it has been dominated by austerity. The figures show that this clearly isn’t the case. The government is struggling to get the deficit down. Borrowing in the fiscal year to [...]
How Labour will transform politics – and public services – by devolving more powers to London September 22, 2014 ANYONE who campaigned in the Scottish referendum felt the strength of anger directed towards Westminster. And it’s not confined to Scotland. The same anger is felt in London, Manchester and across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. People feel Westminster and Whitehall are completely out of touch with their lives. This is no surprise. Britain is [...]
Cost of living crisis myths: How Miliband could deliver a real pro-poor agenda September 22, 2014 Labour’s party conference will see Ed Miliband try to shift public focus away from the Scottish referendum fallout and back towards the choice at next year’s general election. In particular, he’ll seek to refocus our minds on the “cost of living crisis” narrative that he’s been composing since 2011. Policy announcements over the weekend suggest, [...]
Tesco can still win back shoppers by slashing prices: Investors may now be harder to convince September 22, 2014 EVEN before the announcement of accounting irregularities yesterday, Tesco was a company beset by problems. Once the darling of the British retail scene and the undisputed leader of the grocery pack, Tesco has faced years of falling sales and profits, combined with some high profile failures, like the disposal of its costly Fresh & Easy [...]
Is Tony Blair right that we shouldn’t rule out deploying ground troops against Islamic State? September 22, 2014 Robin Simcox, a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, says Yes. Since the US and the UK have only recently withdrawn combat troops from Iraq, redeployment is politically challenging. However, Tony Blair is right to say that it may be necessary. US President Barack Obama says he intends to “destroy” IS. But his strategy [...]