The West and particularly the US is, with good intentions, doing things that will only make matters worse in the long run in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The current policy is one of containment, whatever else it is dressed up to be. Pakistan is seen as part of the problem to be contained. It is instead […]
This has turned out better than expected for the first quarter of 2011. Germany with 1.5% and France with 1% are both doing best of the bigger economies and better than the UK, which manged just 0.5%. Significantly, very significantly in fact, neither entered the global crisis with a property boom nor excessive consumer debt. […]
It may seem an odd moment, just after an election or set of elections, to read trends from opinion polls, but nevertheless that is what this blog now proposes to do. The Lib Dems faced a more calamitous outcome in all the various elections than they could ever have imagined, topped by a landslide against […]
Politicians and economists of every stripe agree that what is needed is growth. Then comes the divide. The broad left want to maintain or more slowly reduce government spending; the broad right want to re-allign the economy away from big state towards private enterprise and cut vigourously to reduce the deficit twice as fast. Each […]
Greece is at a standstill today as angry workers protest at the emasculation of living standards and available jobs. Never before has any country tried so drastic a reduction in GDP. The widespread expectation among economists not in a state of denial, is that Greece will have to default, no matter what. The big matter […]
Mervyn King has warned that higher fuel prices will push inflation to 5% before the end of the year. Normally this should be alarming news and, as this blog as often argued, presage a rise in interest rates. That is not going to happen, because higher interest rates would mean a stronger pound. The industrial […]
Like many, I listened to David Willets, the Universities Minister, explaining on the radio this morning that the Government was thinking of allowing rich parents to buy their offspring places at the best universities. This peculiar proposal was, among other things, to help with the the establishment of better social mobility. By the time I […]
The Tories will feel happy with the elction results. They did much better than expected and the No campaign, which they backed, won a landslide. Their happiness may be misplaced. Their gains were largely at the expense of their coalition partners in the south, the Lib Dems, who also lost out to Labour in the […]
I have long believed that Constitutional Reform was necessary to modernise our democracy. I look to something beyond just the voting system. Modernisation of the Monarchy, the House of Lords, the Church of England and the way Parliament functions are all on my Agenda, which goes as far as a Written Constitution, but stops short […]
Yesterday will be seared into the Lib Dem psyche as its worst day. Black Friday. Defeat on every front. Humiliation is not too strong a word. The biggest blow is the massive rejection of electoral reform, one of the pillars of the party’s raison d’etre. Some are already suggesting the party has received a mortal blow. […]