DEBATE: Is now the time for the UK to trial a temporary Universal Basic Income? March 18, 2020 Is now the time for the UK to trial a temporary Universal Basic Income? YES, says Julian Jessop, an economics fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs. In normal times, cash payments regardless of individual need would be too expensive, poorly targeted, and distortionary. It is therefore right to use existing means-tested benefits (notably universal [...]
The three-year university degree is heading for a failing grade March 18, 2020 A report last month by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that, although higher education is a very good investment for most, a fifth of students — around 70,000 every year — actually make a net financial loss from going to university. Not every student factors in potential earnings when deciding what to do [...]
Female entrepreneurs are breaking down doors and lighting a path March 18, 2020 International Women’s Day, which took place less than two weeks ago, always provides an opportunity to reflect on the progress that business has made towards gender equality. Over the last decade, I have seen an increase in opportunities through a tidal wave of new businesses led by women, driven by a growing trend towards people [...]
The Tories risk becoming an irrelevant party in the capital March 18, 2020 The decision to postpone May’s London mayoral election a full year due to the coronavirus pandemic offers an opportunity for parties to reflect on a to-date lacklustre campaign. For the current mayor Sadiq Khan, generally good poll ratings have sat uneasily alongside persistent questions about seemingly out-of-control knife crime, the long-delayed completion of the new [...]
To pay for this crisis, the government must keep in mind Ricardian equivalence March 18, 2020 John Maynard Keynes could certainly craft a neat phrase. In the Second World War, he wrote in his pamphlet How to Pay for the War: “It is only in a free community that the task of government is complicated by the cause of social justice.” The impact of the coronavirus pandemic is similar to a [...]
Peacetime is over — and the war has only just begun March 18, 2020 We are still in the very early stages of this crisis and already we risk becoming desensitised to the kind of language deployed by our leaders. The Prime Minister says he’s running “a wartime government” while the chancellor tells the country “never in peacetime have we faced an economic fight like this one”. The words [...]
Time to fight the power: How we should reform the Civil Service March 17, 2020 Coronavirus means that any prospect there was of an economic “Boris bounce” has gone. Instead we are looking at a dramatic downturn, both in Britain and across the wider world. Dealing with this pandemic is, rightly, the focus of the government’s attention at the moment. How effective the government is in dealing with the immediate [...]
Our obsession with George Orwell has robbed his name of all meaning March 17, 2020 The very first rule for writing set out in George Orwell’s 1949 essay “Politics and the English Language” is: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print”. It’s therefore amusing that “Orwellian” has become one of the most widely used figures of speech in English-language [...]
‘Levelling up’ is as important for London as it is for the rest of the country March 17, 2020 For many years there have been calls to bridge the UK’s stark north-south divide. These have come under many badges, from “rebalancing the economy” to “building a Northern Powerhouse”. Now, “levelling up” is the choice term for a government ambitious to deliver for voters who tore down Labour’s so-called “red wall” in December’s election. It [...]
The coronavirus crisis calls for a two-week stock market trading holiday March 17, 2020 Last week was marked by a series of trading halts as stock markets swung from “limit down” to “limit up,” and the Dow Jones Industrial Average posted its worst single-day loss since Black Monday in 1987. Uncertainty abounds, but one thing is for sure — no one knows what is going to happen next. It’s [...]