Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. His books include Not Zero and The Road to Southend Pier.
So, what was the point of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act? What is happening today and for the rest of this week was exactly what it was supposed to prevent: whole rail networks closing down on strike days. The law is in place and rail companies have the power to issue ‘work orders’ to staff
What a shame we are not still in the single market, seamlessly exporting our lamb and whisky so it can be enjoyed in the finest restaurants in Paris. Or rather so that it can be burned and poured over the A1 autoroute. French farmers have blockaded roads with tractors and haystacks, set lorries on fire
The collapse of talks to renew a trade deal between Britain and Canada is a reminder that there is nothing automatic about Brexit. If we want to benefit from it we will have to make an effort, and approach matters like trade from a very different angle to the EU. At the moment, there is
The Scottish leg of the Covid-19 inquiry has, like the hearings in London, become bogged down in matters such as the deletion of WhatsApp messages on ministerial phones. But, with a slightly less attention-seeking counsel for the inquiry, it also seems to be getting to some of the nuts and bolts which should have been
Like Prince Harry, I never knew I had unconscious bias until it was pointed out to me, but now it has been I know I will have to do something about it. Except that in my case that ‘something’ is not to moan to Oprah Winfrey about members of my family speculating on the colour
Should we be bothered that Hinckley C nuclear power station has run even further over budget (the latest estimate is £35 billion, nearly twice that quoted when the project was given the go-ahead in 2016) and that its completion date has been put back yet further, to 2031? After all, the whole point of offering
Hurrah! The UK is just about to reduce its carbon emissions by a further 1.5 per cent. As for Wales, it is going to get even close to the holy grail of reaching net zero, with 15 per cent of its carbon emissions wiped off its slate in one go. True, there will be 2,800
Consumers seem finally to have thrown in the towel: they are no longer propping up the economy. After a year in which the predicted recession kept failing to arrive, the high street finally ran out of steam in December with a hefty 3.2 per cent fall in sales volumes compared with November. Non-food was down
Should it really be any surprise that not all teenagers are on the same page as Greta Thunberg? According to a poll by Survation, 31 per cent of Britons between the ages of 13 and 17 agree with the statement ‘climate change and its effects are being purposefully overexaggerated.’ It does rather restore faith in
There must be a slight flaw in the IMF’s crystal ball, causing the future prospects for the German economy to be refracted onto Britain. Remember a year ago when the IMF confidently predicted that the UK economy would suffer the worst performance of any major industrial nation and contract by 0.6 per cent in 2023,
Can I have a Legend of Aviation award please? I deserve it for the time I flew Aeroflot and lived to tell the tale. Then there was the time I flew from Denmark to Amsterdam, taking off from a snowbound runway in a twin-propped plane which looked like something out of Biggles; that was pretty hairy,
London mayor Sadiq Khan has just given us a foretaste of a Labour government by capitulating to the RMT and averting a tube strike at the last moment by, to borrow Nye Bevan’s phrase, stuffing the rail workers’ mouths with gold. That, at least, is Boris Johnson’s assessment of the 11th-hour agreement to avert the
There will be people outraged by the latest initiative of HMRC: to demand that the likes of Airbnb, eBay, and Vinted furnish it with details of everything bought and sold on their online platforms. The taxman should keep his nose out of the sharing economy, many will say. People who sell their secondhand clothes, books,
Economic forecasts rarely survive far into the New Year. Just look at last year’s prophecy by the IMF that the UK economy would shrink by 0.6 per cent in 2023, which was already being revised by March. But we are only three days into 2024 and already the forecasts of falling house prices are beginning to
When is a backlog in asylum applications not a backlog? When it is made up of ‘complex cases’ and of new applications which hadn’t been made at the time ministers promised to clear the backlog. Today, the Home Office has been chirping about its success in tackling illegal migration by announcing ‘the legacy asylum backlog
This should have been the year when we could finally put Covid behind us and return to normal. But as far as public transport is concerned it has instead turned out to herald the realisation that paralysis has become the normal condition, not a product of the pandemic. Any Eurostar passengers who thought they had escaped
I am guessing that Tory MP James Daly has given up trying to defend his majority of 105 in Bury North, has accepted that he will need to find a new job in the next 12 months and has decided to go out in style. I can’t think why else he would say, in an interview
Finally it seems to be dawning on many Conservative MPs that abolishing – or seriously cutting – inheritance tax at the same time as jacking up income tax for millions of low earners is not a great way to tackle a strong Labour lead in the polls. Several backbenchers have written to the Prime Minister
My first instinct is to rush to the attack against any think tank which calls for stuff to be banned. But in the case of a proposal by Bright Blue that wood-burners should come with a health warning, and that their use should be prohibited on certain days when pollution is high, I will make
Are we going to end 2023 with a recession after all? The great non-arriving recession of 2023 has so far confounded the forecasts of the Bank of England (which forecast a shrinking economy throughout 2023), the IMF (which forecast growth of -0.6 per cent over the course of the year) and others, too. But could
