Don’t blame austerity for the crumbling concrete, Osborne salvaged Britain’s deficit
If only the Conservatives had loosened the purse strings on public spending in the 2010s, the story now goes, all the decrepit buildings could have been fixed. “Austerity” has, of course, become the catch-all word describing the David Cameron and George Osborne policy of restrictions on public spending to control Britain’s financial deficit. This misperception […]
Politicians must understand that taxation is not a substitute for economic growth
In a speech last week, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party provided a ray of sunshine. I am not taking bets, by the way, on the number of times this particular sentence has been written. But Anas Sarwar was making a serious point which is of critical importance not just for Scotland, but for […]
Taxes have never been so high but it’s still not enough for some
Taxes are higher than at any time since the Second World War. The UK’s overall tax burden now stands at 37 per cent of the total national income, according to last week’s report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies. The Conservatives will preside over the biggest tax-increasing parliament in living memory. Taxes on average have […]
Years on, we still haven’t learnt to quantify the damage done during the pandemic
The Royal Society is the world’s oldest independent scientific academy. Last week, some of its scientists trespassed onto public policy with a report on how effectively lockdowns and other measures such as mask wearing reduced the number of cases during the Covid-19 pandemic. At one level, the work was thorough and scrupulous. More than fifty scientists […]
We need to get to net zero, but we will fail if we lose public support
Rishi Sunak’s proposals to adjust some of the timetables on the path to net zero have provoked outrage in many quarters. This is despite the fact that the UK has already made more progress than most countries in moving towards net zero. We might usefully compare it to this time last year, when the public […]
Keep dreaming if you think Brexit is the reason craft beer breweries are going bust
A couple of weeks in the Highlands is always refreshing; the scenery is fantastic and the locals are welcoming, even if the weather has been typical of a very British summer. The experience was only marred in one respect: it was virtually impossible to obtain a pint of hand-pumped traditional bitter in the pubs. This […]
House prices will eventually start to fall, as long as owners accept their new reality
Economic news has had few moments of optimism lately: living standards are being squeezed and the overall level of economic activity, as measured by GDP, remains lower than it was in the second half of 2019. Yet house prices are holding up well. In the year to May 2023 average house prices are estimated to […]
Edinburgh Fringe fame for a one woman show is proof of the randomness of celebrity
The Edinburgh Festival is in full swing and the number of performers is almost incredible: the overall total this year is estimated to be around 50,000. A small fraction are already established names; an even smaller fraction may become famous as the festival unfolds. But most will return home just as unknown as when they […]
The big beasts of banking, supermarkets and tech are behind our productivity slump
The mystery of the dramatic slowdown in productivity growth across the West since the late 2000s remains unsolved. It is the key question in political economy. If productivity doesn’t rise, national income per head of population remains flat. As a result, government receipts from taxation remain static. In the UK, where the limits to taxation […]
Even if the pandemic hadn’t happened, we would have all ended up working remotely
Working from home is a phenomenon we still associate with the pandemic. Some companies are trying to reverse its growth and get more people back into the office, but the debate about productivity has failed, so far, to yield conclusive results. A fascinating and timely Stanford research paper, entitled “The evolution of working from home”, […]
