Ed Miliband has long had a problem with voters not perceiving him as “normal”. His famous struggle with a bacon sandwich in some ways says it all. But at a much more important level, he seems to have little or no empathy with one of the most
Read more →Archive for the Public Policy Category
INEQUALITY is now a buzzword in Britain. Scarcely a week goes by without a new publication by an academic or journalist lamenting the levels of poverty facing swathes of the population. They are bolstered by a complicit metropolitan liberal elite, who shed crocodile tears for the poor,
Read more →Will 2015 be the year in which fantasy economics in Europe is finally put to the test? Somewhat to the surprise of many commentators, in December the Greek political class failed to elect a new president even after three attempts. Parliament has now been dissolved and an
Read more →As the seventh anniversary of the start of the economic crisis approaches, it is an appropriate moment to take stock. At the time, the recession was simply not recognised by conventional economic forecasts. These continued to foresee positive growth until the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the
Read more →It has been a wretched week for Emily Thornberry. The high-flying MP for Islington was sacked as Shadow Attorney General, and widely pilloried in both social media and conventional newsprint for tweeting a picture of a white van and England flags in Strood. Yet the saga tells
Read more →Is there a secret Leninist cell operating at a high level in the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels? One which is dedicated to the overthrow of the capitalist structures of the European Union? The evidence from this past week is certainly consistent with this hypothesis. The demand
Read more →The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has been the butt of much ridicule over the past week. A pill designed to reduce alcohol consumption among problem drinkers will be made available across the NHS. But the concept of problem drinkers is so wide that
Read more →So, International Monetary Fund, wrong again! At the end of last week, the IMF abandoned its criticism of the UK government’s economic strategy. Christine Lagarde, the IMF chief, said her organisation had ‘underestimated’ the strength of the recovery in Britain. The IMF now believes that the UK
Read more →The annual Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) conference was held in Toronto earlier this month. INET was created by George Soros in the autumn of 2009 in response to the economic crisis. Mainstream economics bears a heavy responsibility for creating the intellectual climate prior to the
Read more →
