Best of this week in our opinion pages: from the call for a more inclusive job market to flooding and big tech mergers December 4, 2021 As the tense exchanges between the UK and France over migration remain on top of the news, Eliot Wilson looks at Home Secretary Priti Patel’s management – or mismanagement – of the Channel crisis. To achieve a long-term solution and avoid further tragedies, the government should firstly stop the dangerous crossings, and secondly modernise the [...]
Less tax, higher public services, Singapore-style December 3, 2021 IT’S possible to have your cake and eat it too: high quality and universal public services at a fraction of the cost to taxpayers along with a strong economy. This is not just some figment of my imagination. It’s the country where I grew up: Singapore. The Singapore government spends about £3,500 less per person [...]
Business rates are an outdated tax which threaten to bury our high streets and shops December 3, 2021 Businesses have been through hell and back over the last two years. From on-off lockdowns, to a botched trade deal with the EU which failed almost every sector of our economy, the business community is suffering. With the Omicron variant creating a new cloud of uncertainty that is hanging over our economy, businesses are facing [...]
The CMA’s showdown with Facebook over Giphy foreshadows a crackdown December 3, 2021 You probably don’t think of GIFs and think of showdowns with tech giants. Mostly, these short clips decorate people’s texts and social media profiles. Now, they are at the forefront of regulators’ efforts to rein in big tech. On Tuesday, the UK’s competition regulator – the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) – told Facebook (now [...]
The old crowd of New Labour won’t save Keir Starmer’s skin December 2, 2021 Four days after Tony Blair published his hymn sheet for Labour to win another election, Keir Starmer had a reshuffle. Packing the front benches with familiar names and talent from the old New Labour crowd, Keir tried to assemble a cabinet to eventually win a ballot. Today’s by-election in Old Bexley and Sidcup will be [...]
Open the floodgates: Britain’s planning reform needs to defend our homes December 2, 2021 Brits have been told to brace for flooding with an exceptionally wet January and February forecast by the Environment Agency. In England, there are 5 million properties – one in six – at risk of flooding. Overflows are a complex issue encompassing planning and resilience, climate change and housing. But it is not one taken [...]
Nicola Sturgeon can huff and puff but she won’t get a new independence referendum December 2, 2021 Scottish independence is not even in the top half-dozen priorities for voters in Scotland, yet once again Nicola Sturgeon used her speech to the SNP conference this week to bang the drum for another push for independence. She is obsessed. Fixing the economy post-Covid? The mounting crises in the Scottish NHS? The appalling decline in [...]
Fears of privatising the NHS are stopping us from saving our health service – and lives December 2, 2021 The United Kingdom is becoming a health service with a country attached. The National Health Service is on track to command almost half of all state spending. For all that, British healthcare outcomes come in at the bottom of the pack among comparable western European countries. Waiting lists are the biggest issue facing the NHS, [...]
Another Labour reshuffle to forget December 1, 2021 Opposition reshuffles are difficult to manage: no one really cares, they make little impact and can distract your party with days of infighting. It is all the more unfortunate, therefore, that Sir Keir Starmer is so bad at them. His attempt at a shakeup in May was designed to clip the wings of his fiery [...]
The supermarket wars are in full swing and Tesco is beefing up to fight its turf December 1, 2021 I last saw Sir Terry Leahy in 2013, two years after his messy divorce from Tesco. He agreed to a chat about retail on the condition he wouldn’t have to talk about the supermarket juggernaut he helped to create or his successor, Philip Clarke, who’d begun to question the state of the business he’d been [...]