BY SHABNAM NASIMI Our response to the Coronacrisis has been extraordinary. From more than 20,000 former health workers who have returned to work, to the 750,000 people who have volunteered to help the NHS, or the thousands of small businesses working round the clock to provide essential support to older 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 Now is the time to liberalise this country’s restrictive, outdated Sunday Read more…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 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 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 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 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…
BY MADSEN PIRIE To solve a problem, one needs to know what the problem is. Most people want to combat poverty, meaning that everyone should be able to access sufficient food, accommodation, healthcare, and other necessities. This is what the welfare state with its various benefits seeks to do. The Read more…
BY EMILY CARVER The gender pay gap myth shows no signs of letting up; the same old tired headlines resurface like clockwork, perpetuating misleading narratives around women in work. Of course, the feminist lobby conveniently buries all the good news – including that the gap has disappeared for women under Read more…
BY MADSEN PIRIE Self-employment is an important part of economic growth. People who start up new ventures usually begin as self-employed, perhaps with a friend or colleague. As they build up the business, it might succeed to the degree where it employs other people, adding to the total of jobs Read more…
BY SUSAN HALL Much has been written about the flaws of the licence fee, including by me on this site last August and what might replace it. The Conservative Party’s Manifesto promised to decriminalise the licence fee. This will mean that no one is sent to prison for failing to Read more…
BY MADSEN PIRIE A common fallacy is that “business” pays Corporation Tax, and some argue that it should pay more. This ignores the fact that every tax comes out of someone’s wallet or purse, and a business, not being a person, does not have a wallet or purse. What it Read more…
BY TOM HARWOOD Rishi Sunak is a courageous politician. As a protégé of the Cameron clique it clearly was not the easy option to back Brexit in early 2016. His bold move against heavy pressure from the then Prime Minister was an early sign that 2016’s referendum would be nothing Read more…
BY TIM DAWSON It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. “Who’s out?” everybody has been feverishly asking, and no, they’re not referring to Phillip Schofield. Finally, the reshuffle has hit – and we now know who will be taking us through this year’s FTA negotiations with the EU, and Read more…
BY DOMINIC FRISBY The trope of many a zombie movie is the idea of Patient Zero. Patient Zero is where this deadly virus that is about to wipe out mankind began. If our hero is to save the human race, he has to get to Patient Zero. Either to destroy Read more…
BY IDREECE KHAN The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek published in 1949 is one of the most important works in the pantheon of economics. Margaret Thatcher famously slammed a copy on to her cabinet table stating, “this is what we believe”. At the time of publication in 1949 however Read more…
BY SUSAN HALL The Conservative Party is a broad church, but there are certain commandments that should be universally accepted amongst Conservative members, Councillors and MPs. Perhaps the foremost of these is the idea of sound money – the view that no Government should spend more than it can raise Read more…
BY TOM HARWOOD Drowned out by the rightful celebration of the dawn of an independent United Kingdom, something else extraordinary happened this week. Many may have missed it. Sadiq Khan quietly came out against the Government’s proposed unilateral Digital Services Tax. In an interview with CityAM, the Labour politician gave Read more…
BY REBECCA RYAN The BBC has lost its audience. Perhaps it was, once, considered the glue which bound our country together, the jewell in the crown of our cultural life. But those days are long gone. For a start, we no longer live in a world of two or three Read more…
BY EMILY CARVER Every now and again a property listing goes viral on social media, reminding us just how extortionate and unaffordable the rental market in London has become. This time round it’s a one-bed flat in Camden where the mattress is conveniently positioned just inches from the toilet – all for Read more…