BY JASON REED In this alternative timeline, everything has changed in the space of a month. The crisis that grips the world is sure to be era-defining. Horrifying statistics fly through the air like stray bullets. Graphs of doom plague our news feeds. The sheer volume of total unknowns is Read more…
BY EMILY CARVER When the public voted for Brexit, horticulture wasn’t a top consideration. But excessive regulation was. And with retailers ordered to shut up shop, garden centres are finding they’re far from free of the EU’s regulatory grip. Just as this crisis hit, the sector was getting ready for Read more…
BY HARRY WILKINSON For years, we have been warned that a catastrophic environmental crisis is on its way – whilst living in a world that is uncertain about what a real global crisis looks like. Well, now we know. The coronavirus pandemic is horribly real. We need to learn the Read more…
BY LEWIS FEILDER For years, the Left has been shrieking about the privatisation of the NHS, despite only a tiny 7.3 per cent of NHS spending going to the private sector. They always gloss over the fact that the Blair and Brown governments introduced private providers to increase patient choice Read more…
BY CHRIS BULLIVANT Jeremy Corbyn believes that the Government’s response to COVID-19, to underwrite salaries and the entire economy from a magic money tree, has vindicated his own policy approach. He believes Corbynomics won the election in 2019, an expression of that most peculiar quality of his, delusion and denial, Read more…
BY CLARE GOLBY “What a great opportunity this is going to give us.” These words are part of a statement made by Ian Lavery MP, Chairman of the Labour party. What was he talking about? He was talking about the current Coronavirus pandemic and its potential usefulness for the Labour Read more…
BY ADAM HAMDY Do you know people with type-O blood are more likely to be infected by norovirus? Or that West Nile virus is more likely to present in blood type A Rh(D)- individuals? Or that there is already research which suggests individuals with type-O blood are less likely to Read more…
BY MADSEN PIRIE Opinions differ about the optimum unit of government. The nation state largely succeeded the age of empires. The British withdrawal from empire mostly left a host of new station states in its wake, whereas the end of the Soviet empire saw the re-emergence of the former nation Read more…
BY TOM HARWOOD It is almost always a bad idea to pursue measures that should be enacted in normal times in times of crisis. In this instance, however, it’s time to make an important exception to the general rule. Now is the time to liberalise this country’s restrictive, outdated Sunday Read more…
BY MO METCALF-FISHER Our pubs form part of the backbone of local communities up and down our country. We all have a favourite. The place we so eagerly went, to get in our first pint at 18. Perhaps the place you discovered your limit of what constituted sensible alcohol consumption, Read more…
BY JAMES YUCEL Only three months since I made the trek to Glasgow to recommence my first year of university, I find myself writing this piece back home in sunny Suffolk, with lectures, tutorials, and all forms of assessment permanently cancelled. It’s every student’s dream – an immediate pass for Read more…
BY JIM BARRINGTON There’s nothing unusual about disagreements amongst scientists – indeed it is that exchange of theories and ideas which often lead to consensus and thereby conclusions. The BBC programme Inside Science on Radio 4 is deservedly well-respected, explaining and commenting on sometimes complex issues in a way that Read more…
BY MATTHEW LESH Just moments ago I received a call from Lake District Farmers informing me that my meat hamper would be arriving on Wednesday. Lake District Farmers are normally an invitation-only wholesale meat distributor to fine dining restaurants. But after orders dried up last week they began retooling their Read more…
BY MADSEN PIRIE There was an obsession with inputs into education, begun by Tony Blair, but continued by Labour leaders since then. They measured “improvements” in education by the class sizes, the amount spent refurbishing buildings, and by the level of teachers’ pay. The real measure of education is, of Read more…
BY HENRY HILL As the Government prepares to pass the Emergency Coronavirus Bill, giving itself the powers and flexibility it feels it needs to meet the challenge of COVID-19, one of my favourite legislative concepts is getting another airing: sunset clauses. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a Read more…
BY TOM HARWOOD The left has been revelling in the unprecedented interventionism of this government in response to the Covid-19 epidemic. Over the weekend, Jeremy Corbyn claimed the response showed that he had ‘won the argument’, whilst Labour’s media outriders claimed that somehow the hundreds of billions of pounds committed Read more…
BY CHRIS BULLIVANT The outbreak of a global pandemic in recent weeks has amplified the noises from those who see global supply chains, a massive human population, and free trade between them, as the source of most ills. Environmentalists, including the UN agroecologists, who want to see aeroplanes grounded and Read more…
BY MADSEN PIRIE It was not a bad budget on the whole. True, there was greatly increased spending, but some of that was needed. There were nice little sparklers scattered through it, especially those that enable more homes to be built, and make life easier for small and start-up businesses. Read more…
BY ADAM HAMDY I previously wrote two pieces challenging the government’s assumptions. Read the deep dive here and the short dip here. Now, the government’s advisers have now admitted they got their assumptions and modelling wrong. By their own reckoning, the government’s initial approach, if implemented, would have led to Read more…
BY TOM HARWOOD It seems almost unbelievable that the budget was less than a week ago. The moment in the political calendar that almost everything had been building up to for months has fizzled out without much of a trace in just a few days. Since Wednesday we have seen Read more…