Competitive sectors face the hardest hit from coronavirus Competitive sectors face the hardest hit from coronavirus The package of economic support offered by the Treasury — from a standing start — is one of the most impressive among any western country. But the cascading consequences of the coronavirus crisis mean that there are all kinds of areas where the pleas for help continue to come. Small businesses, for example, are the [...]
It’s time to self-isolate from social media’s armchair experts It's time to self-isolate from the self-proclaimed experts on social media You can tell whether a news story is really, properly serious by the degree to which people develop instant expertise. Back in 2008, all sorts of people who didn’t know an asset from a debt suddenly started holding forth confidently about balance sheet liabilities and CDO-Squareds. A few years later, in the wake of the [...]
Can the chancellor protect the UK economy from coronavirus? You have to feel sympathy for Rishi Sunak. Suddenly appointed as chancellor after the unexpected resignation of Sajid Javid, he found himself with just weeks to put together the first Budget of the Boris Johnson era. Any chance he could simply copy Javid’s homework was then dashed when the former chancellor gave the Times chapter [...]
We are blind to the soft-left bias across British institutions March 3, 2020 A few weeks ago, I went to an art exhibition at Somerset House called 24/7. Billed as “a wake-up call for our non-stop world”, it promised to explore the many ways in which technology is speeding up our lives. This was, admittedly, something of a busman’s holiday. Back in 2016, I wrote a book called [...]
It’s not just Whitehall that needs a Dominic Cummings January 28, 2020 The topic of Whitehall reform has never exactly been sexy. No list of “Moments that Made the Modern World” would ever include, let alone kick off with, the publication of the Northcote-Trevelyan Report in 1854. Even many who work in Westminster would be unable to pick the cabinet secretary out of a line-up, even though [...]
Jeremy Corbyn has busted the myth of Labour’s moral superiority January 21, 2020 Let’s play a game. Imagine that a Tory-supporting business leader had delivered her company’s worst financial results for more than three decades. Let’s further imagine that the company had then, because of significant overspending, had raised the prospect of firing dozens of ordinary workers — while rewarding said senior executive with a bumper new contract [...]
In politics as in football, a star transfer player isn’t enough to save a struggling club January 14, 2020 As every football fan knows, the start of a new year marks the opening of the January transfer window. A host of Premier League teams, anxiously surveying their position in the table, will be forking out eight-figure sums for new players in order to drag themselves out of the relegation zone or up towards the [...]
It’s not just that Corbyn hates capitalism — he doesn’t even understand it December 10, 2019 It’S not exactly news that those at the top of the Labour party dislike capitalism. But what’s less often pointed out is how little they actually understand about it. Last week, on my Twitter account, I published something of a demolition of Labour’s claim to save every household £6,700 a year. After only a cursory [...]
Labour isn’t even trying to make its slapdash sums add up December 3, 2019 General Elections are always an uncomfortable period for those of us who like our facts straight and our figures honest. All too often, politicians of all stripes seem to be treating the Liberal Democrats’ infamous bar charts not as a scandal, but an inspiration. Even by modern standards, however, there is something rather special about [...]
The vote-winning power of tax cuts November 12, 2019 As theGeneral Election clunks into gear, it’s already clear what Labour’s approach will be: promise to spend literally all the money. The Tories put out a dossier at the weekend costing the opposition’s pledges at a jaw-dropping £1.2 trillion. You can quibble with the detail, but it’s pretty clear that under John McDonnell’s guidance, the [...]
