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
And I thought the SNP were destined to win the award for this year’s most pathetic excuse – after Scottish transport minister Jenny Gilruth blamed the party’s failure to dual the A9 on Putin’s war in Ukraine. Then UK transport secretary Mark Harper turns up and tries to use the very same excuse for HS2’s
Why does our government have so much trouble criticising China? It doesn’t seem to have had a problem calling out Vladimir Putin. But Downing Street – along with the rest of Whitehall – seems determined to do Xi Jinping’s regime’s dirty work. Over the past ten days we have become used to seeing Matt Hancock as
It is one of those ancient mysteries: why has no Labour government been able to abolish private schools? Harold Wilson didn’t spare grammar schools (and nor did Edward Heath’s government, which followed). New Labour, too, for all its reforming zeal, never dared disembowel the independent sector. When the party did promise to do so –
Is Tony Blair ever going to give up hope of foisting ID cards on us? As prime minister, he was defeated over the issue – his plans were eventually dropped by the incoming coalition in 2010. He tried again during the pandemic, trying to sell us the idea of vaccination passports. And now he is
There have been celebrations this morning about a government surplus of £5.4 billion last month, and people are even talking about a ‘windfall’ for Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in next month’s Budget. But all this shows is how conditioned we have become to appalling economic news – and that we will grab at anything which seems
Sadiq Khan said told Radio 4 listeners this morning that, while he was grateful for the free school meals he received as a child at his primary school in Tooting, he felt stigmatised by having to queue up and eat separately from children whose parents were paying for their meals. If that is what his
The HSJ, as the Health Service Journal likes to be known these days, has managed to produce one of the most intriguing headlines of the week: ‘NHS is “pandering to ministers” by cutting its equality, diversity and inclusion teams to 35 whole-time posts.’ A mere 35? That, by the way, is merely the central administration
British Gas has behaved disgracefully towards energy customers who have fallen into arrears, sending agents to break into their homes and install prepayment meters – activities for which the company deserves to be ordered to pay millions of pounds in compensation. Meanwhile, Centrica, the owner of British Gas, has just reported full-year profits of £3.3
The world of business has long been creative with feeble excuses. Even so, the explanation given by Tim Slatter, chairman of Ford in Britain, for slashing 1,300 jobs in the UK, 1,000 of them in product development, does take the biscuit. The company is moving towards a wholly electric fleet of cars by the end of
They never give up, those Remainers. Like the Japanese soldier found on a Pacific island still fighting the second world war – in 1974, every other day there is another loose shot from the undergrowth. After last week’s Ditchley Park gathering involving Lord Mandelson, David Lammy and others, comes an interview in the Overshoot with Monetary
Does the CBI want higher taxes or lower taxes? This morning its director general, Tony Danker, complained that the rise in corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25 per cent is in danger of killing off economic growth. He also demanded at the very minimum that a ‘super-deduction’ – where businesses can cut their
The government and Bank of England seem to have finally woken up to one of the many glaring problems with trying to achieve a cashless society: that there are 1.3 million people in Britain who do not have a bank account. Whether that is because of long-established habit, because they don’t trust banks or because
We’re all familiar with the usual trade union cliches: it’s not about us, it’s about passenger safety; staff morale is low; and strikers are being ‘victimised’. Or, in the words of Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, train drivers are being ‘demonised’. More so than government ministers, who are forever portrayed by
We all know about the teachers and train drivers, but apparently there are 100,000 civil servants in 124 government departments and quangos also on strike today – if anyone has noticed. It includes members of the PCS union employed at the DWP, National Highways, the Food Standards Agency and, er, the Risk Management Authority, Trade
Britain is beset by low productivity and stagnant growth, and things are not getting better. In the public sector, productivity stands at 7.4 per cent lower than it did before the pandemic. Until we can generate more growth in the economy, we cannot grow richer and real wages cannot grow. An uncontroversial statement, you might
Today, if you feel so inclined to celebrate it, is Brexit Day: the date on which, three years ago, Britain formally left the EU – although the transitional arrangements kept us effectively within the bloc for a further 11 months. But does anyone feel like celebrating? Only really in the Lincolnshire Wash, going by an opinion poll
Just what is a UK government supposed to do to keep the IMF happy? This morning it has issued a bulletin predicting that the UK will be the only major economy to shrink in 2023 – by 0.6 per cent – and blaming it on ‘tighter fiscal and monetary policies’. This represents an even-bleaker outlook than
So now we know what Britain’s great green economy looks like. First, the good news: construction of electric cars in Britain increased by 4.5 per cent in 2022 to 234,066 vehicles. Now the bad news: overall car production slumped to its lowest level since 1956, with just 775,014 units rolling off the production line. Britain
Every month, we are bombarded with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), the main inflation measure. It is currently running at 10.5 per cent, and although this is slightly down over the past two months, it is still far, far above the Bank of England’s target of two per cent. But what about inflation for people
Remember the Waspi women, who used to leap up and down outside Tory conferences for the right to continue to retire at 60? They claimed that their carefully laid retirement plans had been thrown into disarray by the government’s decision to equalise women’s retirement age with that of men – even though they had been