With the Huw Edwards court case complete – and the disgraced BBC News presenter given a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, after he admitted charges of making indecent images of children – attention has returned to the fact that he could still receive a £300,000-a-year BBC pension. Many are horrified by this. There
Almost everyone is aware of the concept of peak hours pricing. If you buy a train ticket to travel during rush hour it costs more than at other times. Few people object to this. Indeed, most of us think it helps. It means that people who don’t need to travel in that period will pick
There is talk, yet again, of the UK and EU agreeing some kind of youth mobility scheme, increasing the opportunities for under-30s from the EU to work in the UK. This has been proposed repeatedly over the past couple of years, especially because of similar schemes being agreed between the UK and Canada and Australia.
In the aftermath of misinformation spread via tech platforms during the recent riots, there is talk of the government requiring tech platforms to remove ‘fake news’ – as well as introducing a duty to remove ‘legal but harmful’ content as part of a review of the Online Safety Act. ‘Fake news’ could presumably take a number
One perfectly valid reason for voting is to reward past success and punish past failures. We have no guarantees about what politicians will do in future, whatever they promise. We know what they did in the past. For millions of right-wingers, this punish-reward perspective is central to their decision about how to vote in 2024.
Last week, the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt argued that the Tories shouldn’t pitch to the right in response to Nigel Farage and Reform, because ‘elections are always won from the centre ground.’ It is one of the most widely-repeated ideas in political analysis that elections are won from the centre. It isn’t really true, but it isn’t
As the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) announces its interest rate decision today it has the chance to reverse the damage caused by its interest rate hikes. Rates have been fixed at 5.25 per cent since last August and the Bank has stubbornly refused to cut them. We’re all paying the price. Those
The week’s Autumn Statement was quite pessimistic about the growth outlook of Britain. The accompanying OBR analysis forecast growth will be below 1.5 per cent on average over the next five years, and even by the end of the period the growth in potential output is only up to 1.75 per cent. And on this
The new Prime Minister has said this week that NHS funding will be ‘prioritised’ when it comes to spending decisions, while NHS bosses seek up to £7 billion in extra funding. That is wrong. In 2000, government health expenditure in the UK was equivalent to about 14 per cent of total public spending. By 2009, as the Labour government
Rishi Sunak has passed the 100 publicly-declared supporters which, it if is converted to nominations when Sunak officially declares, will meet the threshold required to make Monday’s MPs vote. Boris Johnson (like Sunak, not yet officially declared a candidate), is somewhat behind at around 70. Penny Mordaunt, who officially declared on Friday, is further back,
Markets are nervous and they are right to be. The government has announced a huge, open-ended package of energy subsidies expected to cost over £100 billion but that could cost over £200 billion if energy prices rise and stay high. At the same time, the Bank of England is making large losses on its QE
New Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s first ‘fiscal event’ was always going to be quite provocative and exciting. But in the end it went quite a lot further than expected. Far from pulling back when faced with the practicalities of being in office, Truss’s new administration did everything it had signalled, controversial or not, then threw in
Liz Truss’s statement that she would never authorise another lockdown and The Spectator’s interview with Rishi Sunak have triggered a new debate about whether the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 were justified. The most widely discussed positions are that lockdown occurred too late or that there should never have been any lockdowns at all, alongside
What policies should the government adopt in response to the energy crisis? When thinking about any policy, the correct place to start is to consider what kinds of solutions the market would produce absent any government intervention. Markets will always produce some kind of answer, and the market answer will often be very good in
Household energy bills are rising very rapidly, and are now expected to be over £4,000 per year by October and possibly over £5,000 per year by early 2023. Many commentators, including most notably Gordon Brown, are saying that we should now nationalise the energy companies and bring bills down. Would that help? It’s rather unclear
One of the key dividing lines of the current Tory leadership contest concerns economic policy. The gap between the candidates is not actually very large, but of course political arguments often magnify small differences. And in this case there quite an important philosophical difference that could have significant consequences over the longer-term. Broadly speaking, Rishi
The past six years have been a turbulent and controversial time in British politics. Through them all, one person consistently delivered progress, not deflected by the chaos around her. As others made headlines, Liz Truss made deals. Having been environment secretary under David Cameron, Truss was justice secretary and lord chancellor then chief secretary to
The Conservatives are selecting a new leader, who will become Prime Minister. What sort of a person should that be? It needs to be someone with the spark or edge of a leader, able to carry others with them – not just a clubbable ‘Yes Man’ type. It needs to be someone able to press
Boris Johnson has been given so many second chances. He hasn’t taken any of them. Let’s start with his voting for Theresa May’s terrible Brexit deal. Despite this, when Theresa May resigned he was backed by Leavers and became PM. Having become PM he didn’t, as he should have done, back a no deal, and
The Tories took a serious beating in Thursday’s by-elections. Whilst Boris Johnson and his government refuse to take responsibility for the big issue of the day – inflation – and fail to convey any meaningful central purpose to their government (‘levelling up’ being clearly nothing more than an empty soundbite) they will continue to face huge
