Do British voters really want to ban billionaires like Corbyn says? November 5, 2019 Say what you like about Jeremy Corbyn, at least he’s not afraid to play the hits. A week into the General Election run-up, and the Labour campaign is already built squarely around two messages. The first is that the secret Tory plot to privatise the NHS, nurtured over decades, is about to spring into full [...]
Level up: Lessons from London for boosting the rest of the UK October 29, 2019 Britain’s economy has been distorted. London takes all the jobs, all the talent, all the investment, leaving crumbs for everyone else. For Britain to prosper, the capital needs to be cut down to size. In the wake of the financial crisis, and then of the Brexit vote, this is an argument that has become increasingly [...]
Warning: The conveyor belt of global growth is grinding ever more slowly October 15, 2019 Where has all the growth gone? It’s the biggest economic question that we face – not just in Britain, but throughout the world. Ignore the stresses and uncertainties caused by Brexit, or Donald Trump’s trade war, or whatever the latest problem of the day is. The bigger picture is that the world just isn’t growing [...]
The Conservative party’s love affair with the City is back on October 8, 2019 Have the Tories fallen back in love with business? In place of lectures from Theresa May about executive pay, this year’s Conservative party conference featured the new Prime Minister exulting on stage about the wonders of “dynamic free-market capitalism”. And on the conference fringe, finger-wagging panels about corporate governance reform were conspicuous by their absence. [...]
There’s something important that Corbyn still needs to learn from Tony Blair September 24, 2019 To say that the Labour party conference hasn’t been going quite as the leadership might have intended would be something of an understatement. There have been the usual volcanic rows about Brexit, an abortive coup against deputy leader Tom Watson, the resignation of Jeremy Corbyn’s policy chief with a statement machine-gunning the leader’s most senior [...]
Think Brexit is a mess? Imagine what Remain would look like now September 10, 2019 Stop Brexit. For those working in Westminster, this has become the song of the summer, chanted by the throng of ultra-Remainers who have pitched camp next to the media gazebos on College Green. It is the – intensely irritating – evidence of what the polls increasingly tell us. Just as Leavers are coalescing around a [...]
Give Corbyn some credit – he helped to deliver Brexit August 20, 2019 When the history books are written, Boris Johnson may well be remembered as the man who delivered Brexit. But there is someone else who would deserve almost as much credit for Britain’s departure from the EU: Jeremy Bernard Corbyn. Admittedly, Corbyn’s current role in enabling Brexit is mostly involuntary. It turns out that he is [...]
Free schools show how hard it can be to battle the Blob August 13, 2019 It was Michael Gove who popularised the term “the Blob” to describe the establishment forces battling his education reforms. It’s such a perfect description, because it captures the experience of anyone who tries to change the system – a constant, oozing pressure, flowing around your positions until they’re completely swallowed up. Another education minister, George [...]
Free ports could turn Brexit to our economic advantage August 6, 2019 One of the most exciting shifts in policy under the new government has been its whole-hearted embrace of free ports. But many people are still puzzled by what they are. In a nutshell, free ports are areas which are within the UK, but outside its customs borders. So you can bring your goods into the [...]
Here’s one simple tax trick that Boris Johnson could borrow from Donald Trump August 1, 2019 It’s been great to see the new government hit the ground running, and even better to see it focus on a hugely important idea which our think tank has been beating the drum for: incentivising business investment. Britain likes to think of itself as a business-friendly country. We have slashed corporation tax. We have a [...]