By: Alys Denby

Alys Denby is opinion and features editor of City AM. She writes the weekly Free Thinking newsletter and presents the video series of the same name. She regularly appears in broadcast media including BBC, Channel 5 Sky News, Times Radio, LBC and GB News. She has previously worked for a think tank and as a parliamentary researcher

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Regulators are paying lip service to growth

December 12, 2024

“This is not a return to pre-crisis light touch… because frankly that ended in tears.” That was the response of the heads of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) when questioned by MPs about their new growth remit. No one can deny that the 2008 financial crash devastated lives. But the consequences of the low growth [...]
Could Elon Musk and Nigel Farage upend British politics?

December 5, 2024

Labour’s majority is enormous, but it only gives us the appearance of stability. All the evidence suggests their support is broad but shallow and their victory was as much a question of good luck and good timing as it was a literal vote of support for Labour’s policies. The Tory party is basically neck and [...]
Consumers will pay for Starmer’s green targets

November 14, 2024

It’s easy to be cynical about a climate conference that sees plutocrats flying their private jets to a petrostate claiming they’re going to save the world. That’s certainly the position of Greta Thunberg, who has dismissed COP29 as an exercise in greenwashing Azerbaijan’s human rights violations, a view shared – in City AM recently – [...]
Working mothers will pay for Labour’s tax rises

November 13, 2024

Employers’ national insurance hikes will increase the cost of childcare and put nurseries out of business, making life for working mothers even harder than it already is, says Alys Denby Governments are notoriously bad at picking winners, but Britain is about to find out what happens when leaders are more interested in picking losers. From [...]
These two mistakes are making today’s Budget harder than it needs to be

October 30, 2024

The problem with Rachel Reeves promising both ‘stability’ and ‘growth’ is that the two can be mutually exclusive. Governments do not create growth; businesses do and they rely on innovation and risk taking, says Alys Denby Not since George Osborne’s ‘caesar’ cut has a Chancellor’s hair-do caused such a sensation. Did Rachel Reeves’ newly auburn [...]
Make the Tories Conservative again?

October 23, 2024

A particularly laughable defence of socialism is that it’s never really been tried. It’s tempting to dismiss the central analysis of both candidates for the Tory leadership – that their Party lost the general election because they were not conservative enough in government – on similar grounds. But it would be a mistake to imagine [...]
Explainer: Does the public have the answers for the NHS?

October 21, 2024

A public consultation on NHS reform is yielding some interesting ideas…. The health secretary has launched the “biggest ever conversation about the future of the NHS” and invited the public to contribute to share their ideas for how to improve the health service. The responses are being published on the consultation’s website and it’s fair [...]
Is Gen Z really a risk to businesses?

October 17, 2024

A lazy, entitled and narcissistic generation, more interested in TikTok than hard work. The stereotypes about Gen Z have, apparently, become so pervasive that managing a young workforce is now considered the biggest business threat by CEOs. Just 38 per cent of executives are “very confident” in tackling demands for better pay and benefits from [...]
A ‘New Deal’ for fewer jobs and worse pay?

October 8, 2024

Labour’s promise of a ‘New Deal for Working People’ is deliberately worded to evoke the era of Roosevelt, when major federal interventions supposedly shook America out of the Great Depression and conclusively demonstrated the benefits of Keynesian economics. But even Keynes knew it was more complicated than this. Alongside stimulus, he wrote that reversing a [...]
Explainer: Boris Johnson’s humble address to the Queen?

October 4, 2024

Boris Johnson is never less than obsequious when referring to the late Queen in his new memoir, Unleashed, but is he really a loyal subject? Westminster has been gripped by the release of Boris Johnson’s new memoir, Unleashed, with figures from all areas of public life frantically checking the index to see if they are [...]

BP reports highest profits since 2023 off the back of Iran war

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Italy holidays: the Lake Garda hotel you must book this spring

By: Alys Denby

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