Our social contract – the ‘deal’ that makes us a civilised country – is under grave threat both practically and philosophically. And we are not talking about it. Practically, the UK is in a grave situation. We are in the midst of a serious cost-of-living crisis which will plunge over half of the UK population […]
One good thing Truss did in her brief tenure as Prime Minister was to shelve plans to ‘reform’ the UK’s system of human rights. Under Sunak and Raab, the government is bringing back its much-criticised Bill of Rights. As the Law Society (a group traditionally at least small-C conservative in its disposition) remarked: “We are […]
We are used to inequality. There is inequality of height, weight, shoe size, intelligence – in fact every human characteristic you can think of. But most of these characteristics follow a normal distribution, which looks (at least roughly) like a bell-shaped curve. Here, for example, is the way that height is distributed. Only […]
Since 2012, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss have all been at the helm of the Conservative Party. By the standards of the UK’s other major parties, of course, they are all very right-wing. But how far right are they by traditional Conservative standards? From the perspective of traditional Conservatism, this government is dangerously extreme: Johnson’s government […]
Twice a year, the IMF releases its World Economic Outlook. The most recent was published on 11 October 2022. Some on the extreme right have been claiming that it is a clear vindication of Truss and Kwarteng’s disastrous Budget, and even that this Budget will make Britain the “fastest growing country in the G7.” We […]
Last week, we wrote about Truss and Kwarteng’s Budget that “It is very clear that this Budget does not produce the change in direction the country needs; it is a dangerous doubling-down on the failed policies of the past, without even an attempt to safeguard most UK citizens.” Just one week later, that summary seems […]
Since 2010, the UK economy has been shaped by three critical government decisions: Austerity, Brexit and COVID. We have previously argued that the government mishandled all three (see Austerity, Brexit, COVID – an ABC of Economic Mismanagement). Now even the former Chancellor and would-be Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has admitted that the UK faces a […]
As Niels Bohr remarked, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” And that general remark is particularly true about politics where decisions are taken on the basis of complex (and sometimes less than transparent) motivations. Given that, is it safe to make any predictions whatsoever about the result of the Conservative Party leadership contest? […]
There is great scope for improvement and, unfortunately, plenty of scope for being worse than Johnson. It has now become obvious even to his own ministers that Johnson is not fit to be Prime Minister. And of course, that raises the question of who will come after, both for the remainder of this term […]
Sometimes a moment can be pivotal in a way which is not obvious at the time. This article explores whether the UK is at such a critical moment now, without most of the population realising it. And it suggests what we can do about it. The challenge is that we have a government which is […]
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