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?
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The biggest lesson to come out of the first report of the official Covid Inquiry is what a mistake it was to hand to job to lawyers. They have interpreted their job as one of conducting a show trial of politicians, civil servants and advisers who were involved in handling the pandemic. The have obsessed
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Today we will learn exactly what Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood meant when she hinted last week that the government would adopt a Danish-style migration policy to deter new arrivals. One thing she will announce is a ban on visas for nationals of three countries which she says are not taking back enough failed asylum seekers:
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I know doctors have a long training and have to absorb a lot of knowledge before they are let loose in a surgery or a hospital ward, but still there is one extra module which needs to be inserted into their schedule: one on the public finances. In fact, maybe just give them an afternoon
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If Rachel Reeves was hoping for a glimmer of good news in today’s GDP figures, she has been left disappointed. We now have a whole year of data since she delivered her first Budget, and it does not look good. Labour’s promise to put ‘growth, growth, growth” at the heart of the economy looks increasingly
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If nothing else, the government is providing us with a masterclass in how to lose control of public spending. A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, as Ronald Reagan once said, and soon it begins to add up to some serious money. Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden has announced that he intends to
From our UK edition
Just how much more desperate can Rachel Reeves get? Giving an even heftier clue to Radio 5 listeners on Monday that she is going to break Labour’s manifesto promise and raise income tax, the Chancellor explained that this is necessary in order to raise Britain’s lousy productivity record. Sticking to the manifesto commitments, Reeves said:
From our UK edition
Sooner or later it is going to dawn on the drivers of electric cars that they have been benefitting from a huge introductory free offer. As EVs become more commonplace, that offer is going to come to an end, and the economics of running these cars is going to look very different. Not even the
From our UK edition
Like the John Lewis Partnership he used to run, Sir Charlie Mayfield, who has just completed the government’s ‘Keep Britain Working’ review, comes across as terribly nice and civilised. It’s just a shame he can’t quite bring himself to put the boot in and deal properly with the problem of mass worklessness he correctly identifies.
From our UK edition
So just what was the point in dragging political journalists out of bed to be addressed by Rachel Reeves in Downing Street this morning? We could – and should – have had the Budget by now. Instead, we got a half Budget speech – a desperate attempt to blame the Tories, a vague suggestion that taxes are
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There can be no more Panglossian document than the UK international climate finance results published by the government last month. Apparently, since 2011 UK taxpayers have helped prevent 145 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, given 33 million people improved resistance to climate change and saved 717,000 hectares of ecosystem. How proud we can all
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It is getting pretty bitter in the world of evolutionary biology, and it could come down to the survival of the fittest. In August I reported here on the extraordinary spat between Professor John Wiens of the University of Arizona – who formerly wrote of a ‘sixth mass extinction’ but has since changed his mind
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It seems pretty certain now that having flirted with just about every tax rise under the sun, Rachel Reeves is going to increase income tax in her Budget on 26 November. That much became clear when Keir Starmer declined to take Kemi Badenoch’s invitation to rule out a rise in income tax rates at Prime
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We don’t yet know what Rachel Reeves is planning to do with the welfare bill in her Budget. Will she propose more cuts to personal independence payments, or remove the two-child benefits limit? And what will she do about the new benefit which the Home Office has just invented? It is called – or at
Amazon and UPS have each just replaced 14,000 jobs with AI
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Should anyone really be surprised at the House Builders’ Federation’s (HBF) warning that the government has little chance of hitting its target of building 1.5 million new homes over the course of this Parliament? The target of 300,000 new homes a year has become something of a holy grail for previous governments, too. If Boris
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We are still four weeks away from the Budget and already we have had virtually every tax rise floated before us by Treasury leaks. This is presumably in the hope of managing our expectations so that if we think the Budget is going to be really, really dreadful, we will be pathetically grateful to Reeves
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Once, foreign nationals came to Britain to freeload on the NHS. Today, UK residents visit other countries for medical treatment. Last year, it has emerged, 523,000 British people went abroad for their healthcare. The top five most popular destinations were Turkey, Poland, Romania, Portugal and India. Does this matter? Health secretary Wes Streeting seems to
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Imagine if a government had set out deliberately to stir up the public over illegal migration, or perhaps to do as one former Tony Blair aide said of his government’s policy, to ‘rub the noses of the Right in diversity’. Could it have done a better job than the past two governments have managed by
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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
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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
