Ross Clark

Ross Clark

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

Is the bond bubble about to burst?

First, the good news: US inflation is down. Now the bad news: US inflation isn’t down by as much as a lot of people were expecting. Cue quite a lot of confusion on the markets. First, the S&P 500 plunged by 0.5 per cent, then it rose by 1 per cent, then it was more

Ross Clark

BlackRock is right to abandon eco-activism

Is this the end of climate activism from pension providers and other institutional investors? BlackRock, which manages $10 trillion in assets, has toned down its enthusiasm for blocking company boards that are not sufficiently committed to a carbon-free future. In January 2020, BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink shook up the world of investment by writing an

Why I’m not falling for Prince Harry’s latest eco-venture

Just when you thought Prince Harry’s post-royal career couldn’t get any more absurd, he manages to make it so. His latest venture is a service which supposedly tells you how many carbon emissions will be emitted as a result of an airline passenger’s journey by various airlines and routes – helping travellers choose the most

Crypto is dead

When Britain voted for Brexit, Macron boasted that Paris would eat the City of London’s lunch. It didn’t quite work out that way, with most league tables continuing to put London as the number one or two financial centre, with not a single EU city in the top ten. Emmanuel Macron’s government has now announced that it

‘Please don’t do a hit job’: An interview with Devi Sridhar

Of all the scientists who became household names during the pandemic, few divide opinion as much as Devi Sridhar. The Professor of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh turned adviser to the Scottish government and Guardian columnist is, according to your point of view, either a voice of reason who could have prevented

Bristol proves it: England doesn’t want elected mayors

Among the many council election results coming in today, the decision of the voters in Bristol to ditch the post of elected mayor, by a margin of 59 to 41 per cent, could easily get missed. Why does it matter? Because the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda proposes to establish elected mayoralties all over England –

Bill Gates vs Elon Musk? I know who my money is on

Is Bill Gates shorting Tesla? He certainly didn’t deny it in an interview with the Today programme. The suggestion is that he has upset Elon Musk, who has complained that he couldn’t take Gates’s philanthropy on climate change issues seriously if he was betting against the share price of the world’s biggest electric car-maker. But

What we get wrong about local elections

Friday morning’s headlines can pretty much already be written: Conservatives suffer heavy losses in local elections; a humbled Boris Johnson addresses the nation saying that lessons have been learned; backbench MPs resume plotting, trying to decide whether to move now or in a few months’ time. Former Tory voters will be feeling pleased with themselves

Why Meghan Markle’s Netflix show was cancelled

In their post-royal careers, Harry and Meghan have learned two lessons in quick succession: firstly, that membership of the royal family opens the door to media deals less well-connected celebrities could only dream about. Secondly, they have learned that even royal fame will not, ultimately, help one of the biggest media organisations in the world

Right-to-buy won’t fix Britain’s housing crisis

The biggest long-term threat to the Conservatives is neither partygate nor even the cost of living crisis – but declining rates of home ownership. As Mrs Thatcher understood, when people are able to afford their own home, they become more conservative in outlook. They put down roots in their local area and they gain a

The electric scooter ban doesn’t make sense

Is there anything we use in everyday life which was not, at some point on its journey to acceptance, denounced as a menace? Certainly not cars, bicycles, trains and aeroplanes, all of which were accused of various hazards and temptations. To take trains, for example, some confidently predicted that their passengers would suffocate at high

Why Brussels fears Elon Musk

Thierry Breton, the European Commission for the internal market, lost no time in rattling his sabre at Twitter as soon as it was announced that the company had accepted Elon Musk’s offer to buy it. Even though Musk had made no announcement on how he intends to run the company, beyond stating his belief in

Can Elon Musk make Twitter profitable?

Why does Elon Musk really want to buy Twitter? Is it vanity, political activism, or a shrewd financial move? Musk’s reputation lies in building companies from scratch, yet Twitter is a mature business. It is hard to see why that should excite him anything like transforming the car industry or creating a market for space

Labour are right – let’s do away with ‘non-dom’ status

Any Conservative who doubts that Labour’s promise to abolish non-dom status could seriously damage the government needs to look at the fate of Rishi Sunak. So recently the heir apparent to the Tory leadership, Sunak has this week plunged to bottom in a poll of the most popular cabinet members. It comes, of course, just

Boris is choosing to make you poorer

If Boris Johnson is forced from office by his own MPs, partygate will only be part of the story. Another huge part of it will be his failure to appreciate the full scale of the cost of living crisis now washing over millions of households – especially his reluctance to address the issue of energy

Do we really need a GCSE focused on saving the planet?

We have yet to see the first sample papers for the new GCSE in natural history to be announced by education secretary Nadhim Zahawi this week, but the fact that it has come about after lobbying by Caroline Lucas, Chris Packham and other green activists is a pretty good guide as to what might be

The problem with onshore wind farms

Remember how David Cameron’s government was going to end Nimbyism by having local communities vote for new housing developments on their doorsteps? That didn’t end so well. Last October, following a shock defeat in the Amersham by-election, the Prime Minister gave up on building more new homes in the shires in favour of reverting to

Boris’s real failure wasn’t breaking lockdown

Boris Johnson made a big error, alright. But it wasn’t walking into a room where his wife had prepared him a surprise birthday cake. It was in overriding his liberal instincts and imposing highly prescriptive lockdown rules in the first place. If, in March 2020, he had stood up to advisers and said that no,

What Rishi should do next

How tempting it must be for Rishi Sunak to chuck in his job as Chancellor. ‘My chances of ever becoming PM have plummeted to next to nothing,’ he must be thinking, ‘so why not go off and earn some serious money instead, away from the spotlight?’  I have no insight into the state of the

Could we be heading for a second Covid recession?

The political story for the moment is the cost of living crisis. But by the end of the year could we be talking about a recession instead? We shouldn’t read too much into one year’s economic growth figures, especially given how often they are revised upwards or downwards. But February’s figures, published this morning, have