Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. He writes on Substack, at Ross on Why?
From our UK edition
Well, that’s one way to reduce NHS waiting lists: to kick off a load of patients whom you have decided don’t need to be on them. New NHS chief executive John Mackey has ordered that everyone on a waiting list must be ‘validated’ – with the aim of removing 300,000 of the 7.43 million names
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It wasn’t that long ago when the fashionable gathering place for young couples was a meeting of the National Childbirth Trust. I remember, in the early months of 1995, sitting in our instructor’s front room as she passed around a plastic model of a female pelvis while she asked us: ‘So how do you think
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So were Donald Trump’s tariffs a negotiating tactic all along – never intended to come into force but rather as a shock tactic to bring other governments to the negotiating table? That was a popular theory before ‘Liberation Day’, but one rather snuffed out by the severity of the tariffs announced and the realisation that
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Anyone who thought that government bonds would provide a safe haven from the turmoil on global stock markets has just had a rude awakening. While bond yields initially fell after Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation day’, yesterday they rebounded, with the yield on 10-year US Treasury bonds hitting 4.5 per cent – higher than they were before
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Yes, as Wes Streeting says, it is ‘unacceptable’ for rubbish to be left piling up on the streets of Birmingham as the binmen go on strike. But neither he nor all the other government figures complaining about the strike should forget its cause. It is the fallout of Birmingham City Council going bust as a
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You can carry on burning petrol and diesel in your car so long as it is a pricey, niche sports car. If you are a pleb who can only afford a family hatchback, on the other hand, you will have to convert to electric – and the government will pretend that it is saving you
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The ‘blockers’ who have so offended Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have, for the moment, scored another success in thwarting a wealth-creating development – but it is a success which I don’t yet hear the Prime Minister and Chancellor rushing to condemn. Nor, to be politically neutral, did our pro-growth former Prime Minister Liz Truss
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The reactions to Donald Trump’s tariffs between London and Brussels could not be more different. Where Keir Starmer was conciliatory, stressing that his government still hoped to negotiate with the US, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was quickly out of the blocks with threats of retaliation, saying that a package of measures was being
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So, Britain has got its trade deal with the US – of sorts. Donald Trump has awarded Britain no exemption from his tariffs. Even so, he has left Britain off lightly, by imposing tariffs of 10 per cent on imports from Britain to the US – the lowest he imposed on any country, along with
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You can already sense Rachel Reeves’s spin machine whirring into action. It was Donald Trump wot ruined my careful book-keeping, the Chancellor will tell us as once again her fiscal headroom disappears and she ends up banging her scalp painfully on the ceiling. But could it be unrealistic expectations for her welfare reforms which prove
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Beware the words ‘liberty’ and ‘liberation.’ There are no end of evils committed in their names. Wednesday, according to Donald Trump, will be America’s Liberation Day, as citizens are freed from the yoke of free-ish trade. That is the day that importers who have been showering US consumers with cheap goods will be slapped with
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Sooner or later, it is going to dawn on the owners of electric cars that they have been enjoying one of the longest introductory free offers in history. The moment of realisation may even come tomorrow. That is when, for the first time, electric cars (EVs) are going to become liable to pay road tax.
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It has become customary for Budgets to unravel within 48 hours of being delivered. Rachel Reeves didn’t have much in the way of fiscal announcements to deliver on Wednesday, but even what she did have to say seems to be falling apart. It has since transpired that the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) did not
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Voters won’t want to thank Rachel Reeves if the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) turns out to be right in its forecast for zero real growth in earnings in 2026 and 2027. But static earnings could turn out to be the least of problems for households. They will take an even dimmer view of the
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The government has less than a week to decide how to respond to Donald Trump’s announcement of 25 per cent tariffs on car imports to the US. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves still seem to think that Trump might exempt Britain, but there is little sign of that coming out of Washington. Unless Peter Mandelson
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It didn’t take long for the Commons to spot the glaring omission in Rachel Reeves’s boast that the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) has increased its growth forecast for next year and beyond. The OBR’s growth forecast for this year has just been halved relative to its estimate made last October, down from 2 per
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Clothing retailers have saved Rachel Reeves from having to go naked into the debating chamber. As the Chancellor rises to deliver her Spring Statement today, she will have the comfort of knowing that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) has fallen from 3.0 per cent to 2.8 per cent – and unexpectedly at that. The main
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The Spring Statement was supposed to be a fiscal non-event, but instead, it is shaping up to be a mini-Budget. We have been primed, however, to expect only spending cuts – not tax rises (and presumably not tax cuts either). So what can we expect? So far, Liz Kendall has announced changes to welfare benefits
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The evils of slavery weigh so heavily on Britain’s conscience that we must decolonise our museums and our university courses, tear down statues of all those involved in the trade and quite possibly pay billions of pounds in reparations to the descendants of slaves who live 200 years ago. Yet the obsession with putting right
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Chancellor Rachel Reeves is seeking to trim £2 billion from the government’s £13 billion administration budget, with up to 50,000 jobs being cut in her Spring Statement. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government was ‘looking across the board’ for savings. But do Reeves and Starmer really have the courage, and the political capital,
