Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. His books include Not Zero, The Road to Southend Pier, and Far From EUtopia: Why Europe is failing and Britain could do better
Never has a Welsh Senedd election seemed so interesting; the Caerphilly by election marks a true turning point in history. It is the moment when the duopoly that has ruled British politics for the past century finally crumbled. The question was never: could Labour hang on in the face of a challenge from an up-start
Oh, the horrid injustice of it all! By the skin of their teeth, pensioners on the state pension and with no other income, are going to avoid paying income tax next year. With September’s inflation figures now in, it can be confirmed that, thanks to the Triple Lock, the state pension will be rising to
I’m not usually in favour of money-grasping councils, but I will make one exception: I’m afraid I am not on the side of the SUV drivers of Cardiff who are bleating about having to pay higher parking charges. Under new rules introduced by the Labour-run council – and likely to be copied elsewhere – drivers
It is day three of Labour’s latest strategy: to try to blame Nigel Farage for the forthcoming tax rises in the Budget. After Health Secretary Wes Streeting had a go on Monday, Rachel Reeves this morning has made a similar point. The reason she is looking to raise taxes in the Budget, the Chancellor says,
Wasn’t Labour supposed to be tackling the scourge of insecure employment, doing away with exploitative zero hours contracts and giving employees protection against unfair dismissal from the first day they start their jobs? How odd then that so far it seems to have achieved the exact opposite. The latest labour market figures released by the
Did anyone seriously think that Donald Trump was going to emerge this morning as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize? First, there were the mechanics. Nominations for the prize closed on 31 January, at which point Trump was only 11 days into his second term and there was hardly a glint of hope in Gaza.
I am not sure about the protocol for arguing with a royal essay, but at the possible cost of my head I will respectfully disagree with the Princess of Wales’s call for parents to ban smartphones from family mealtimes, written with Professor Robert Waldinger of Harvard Medical School. ‘Our smartphones, tablets and computers have become
At the mausoleum that is this week’s Conservative party conference one of the bodies has just shown a slight muscular twitch. Kemi Badenoch will this morning try to reclaim the one subject on which the Tories can reasonably hope to base a revival: fiscal responsibility. Mel Stride has already proposed £47 billion worth of spending
After extensive research I can reveal that Adolf Hitler was not, in fact, gay. Nor was he black, transexual, secretly a woman or neurodiverse. He was, it turns out, a straight, white, cisgendered male. As for history’s good guys – now that is a different matter. The latest to be claimed as belonging to some kind
According to Theresa May, Kemi Badenoch’s promise to repeal the Climate Change Act is a ‘catastrophic mistake’. Writing for The Spectator today, Ed Shackle, who works for a market research firm called Public First, was adamant that the policy change won’t just degrade the planet or obliterate Lady May’s thin political legacy – it is a bad electoral error,
Last week, Keir Starner swallowed Tony Blair’s argument for ID cards and announced that all we going to be forced to have them if we want a job, just as the former prime minister has been advocating for years. This week, however, the current PM has poured scorn on one of his predecessor’s cherished policies,
Is Tony Blair pulling the strings of Keir Starmer’s government from beyond the political grave? Only two days ago the Tony Blair Institute released a report calling for digital ID cards. Now Starmer is expected to announce that the UK public will indeed have digital IDs forced upon them. The juxtaposition of these two things
‘Copy nothing,’ implored Jaguar’s weird advert featuring multicoloured changelings swivelling their heads on a car-free planet. That includes, it seems, copying other large multinationals in taking out insurance to cover themselves against cyber attacks. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), it turns out, had none. Now, following such an attack, it finds itself in the soup. It
‘The British public is running out of patience with a state that does not work, where interactions with public services are beset by inconveniences and delays even as outcomes slip and costs rise.’ The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change is not wrong there, but what is its solution? Not to sack the state’s clock-watchers
The OECD expects the UK economy to outperform the eurozone and grow by 1.4 per cent over the year. But there is a downside to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s latest figures: the body expects the UK’s inflation problem to persist, ending this year at 3.5 per cent, down just a touch from the
Donald Trump’s apparent suggestion that people could protect themselves against Covid by injecting themselves with bleach marked a low point in his first administration. It provided his critics with evidence that he was an erratic president trying to ride roughshod over scientific evidence as well as common sense. It is easy, therefore, to dismiss the
How refreshing to hear transport secretary Heidi Alexander approve plans for a second working runway at Gatwick Airport, taking on the ‘eco warriors’ she has previously attacked for blocking airport expansion. Just the one thing, though. Does she really think she has heard the last from them? If she thinks she is going to drive
There really is no good news for Rachel Reeves as she prepares her second Budget. This morning’s borrowing figures are not just bad; they hint at a sense of hopelessness, that Britain is sliding inexorably towards a very deep fiscal crisis. This is yet another fiscal black hole for Reeves to fill, along with another about
Policymakers must, of course, stick to the evidence and base their decisions around proper, peer-reviewed research. Until, that is, the evidence starts to tell you what you don’t want to hear. The Mayor of London’s office appears to have been caught red-handed in refusing to publish a study it had itself commissioned into the behaviour
For some time, the Budget on 26 November has been looking as if it might be Rachel Reeves’ final fling before she is pulled away from the levers of the UK economy. But if so, it appears she may be preparing to go out in style. According to a report in the Financial Times, she
