DEBATE: Is the government right to focus on obesity as its top public health issue? July 28, 2020 Is the government right to focus on obesity as its top public health issue? Dr Keith Klintworth, managing director at VitalityHealth, says YES. The pandemic has made the case for action on obesity stronger than ever, with research showing that it is the second biggest risk factor for hospitalisation from Covid-19. Not only that, but [...]
Corruption in politics? It’s just business as usual July 28, 2020 Robert Wood Johnson IV is not a name which necessarily springs even to the more well-informed lips. “Woody”, as he is far better known, is the American ambassador to London — a post he assumed almost three years ago at the request of Donald Trump. His background is not in diplomacy: he is part of [...]
A property wealth tax is the only fair way to pay for the Covid-19 crisis July 28, 2020 Two years ago, the director of the Office for Budget Responsibility wrote the following: “Broadly speaking, the fiscal position is unsustainable if the public sector is on course to absorb an ever-growing share of national income… The baseline projection in each of our reports — since the first was published in 2011 — has pointed [...]
Boris Johnson’s calorie labelling plan is well-intentioned but economically inept July 27, 2020 Let me start with a concession to the Prime Minister: not all the policies in his anti-obesity drive are outright objectionable. Banning food advertising and telling shopkeepers where they can and can’t stock their products are obvious and unacceptable intrusions, whatever their intended goal. But as a liberal economist, I am prepared to consider some [...]
Why the UK should rethink its restrictive rules on dual-class shares July 27, 2020 The ability to have a dual-class voting structure can be an important consideration for high-growth, innovative companies (especially those in the technology sector) when deciding on an IPO venue. These structures are not possible for a premium listing in London, whereas they are available on other major stock exchanges, meaning that the UK risks missing [...]
Want a recovery that works for everyone? Fix the injustices in the tax system July 27, 2020 The lockdown shone a spotlight onto a two-speed, two-nation Britain, where better-paid white-collar professionals worked from home, while less well-off key workers had to keep travelling to work, often on crowded public transport, to do riskier jobs. Even worse, it turned out that those less well-off key workers were paying much higher tax rates than [...]
A grown-up Japan marshals the world’s anti-China coalition July 27, 2020 Intellectual coherence has its advantages. While much of the western world has recently taken a holiday from history — as the US is weighed down by the melodrama of Donald Trump, the EU by the sleep-deprivation soap operas of its summit meetings, and the UK by profound confusions about how to respond to coronavirus — [...]
Sowing the seeds for the next stage of fintech success July 27, 2020 Fintech in the UK has grown at breakneck speed. In 2010 it accounted for just four per cent of venture capital investment in the UK. A decade later, this figure has risen to 28 per cent, with a record $4.9bn of capital investment landing in the UK in 2019 — a year-on-year increase of more [...]
Don’t believe the Scottish independence hype — I’d bet on Johnson’s tortoise to beat Sturgeon’s hare July 24, 2020 For his first significant political event outside the Westminster bubble, timed for his one-year anniversary of becoming Prime Minister, Boris Johnson chose to go to Scotland. The significance of that choice cannot be overestimated. Politics is as unpredictable as ever, and despite chancellor Rishi Sunak hosing Scotland with the billions confected by the Bank of [...]
Where is the no-deal planning we need to extract a deal from the EU? July 24, 2020 The UK ended its fifth round of negotiations this week, and still there has been no agreement on the principles of a future trading deal — let alone an actual deal. This was all too predictable. The EU is seeking a deal founded in ideology, and the UK simply wants to trade. Back in January, [...]