Who plays better poker? Cameron, Sturgeon or Varoufakis?
The gracious Palladian architecture of Edinburgh has often led the city to be described as the Athens of the North. If the referendum result had gone the other way, much closer parallels would have rapidly emerged. A high spending left-wing government, faced by a collapse in revenues with the fall in the oil price, would […]
Opinion Polls, Financial Crashes and Groupthink
The election is done and dusted, but many interesting questions remain. Was there a swing to the Conservatives at the very last minute, or was it indeed possible to foresee the victory in advance? Snippets are emerging which suggest that the electorate had made up their minds well before polling day. Rod Liddle, the entertaining […]
The 38 per cent tipping point on tax
Ed Miliband’s proposal to tax non-doms more harshly may be good, populist politics. But does it make economic sense? At most, the yield will be around £1 billion, even if people do not alter their behaviour in response to the change in policy. The actual amount generated could even be negative if enough non-doms leave the […]
Does Miliband understand the importance of incentives?
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 fundamental of human motivations. The most profound insight […]
“It’s not the economy, stupid, it’s the narrative!”
The improvement in the economy has seen a narrowing of the gap in the opinion polls between the Conservatives and Labour. In the key marginal seat of Bury North, a Tory gain in 2010 by just 2,200 votes, they recently took a council seat from Labour. Bill Clinton famously said about elections “It’s the economy, […]
