The Strange Decline in Small Boat Crossings — One Year On

by

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a slightly tentative blog about small boats crossing the Channel. Something odd appeared to be happening. In August 2025, the number of people arriving in Britain by small boat had fallen by around 40 per cent compared with the previous month. It was the lowest August figure for … Read more

Premier League Clubs Have Spent £3 Billion This Summer. Have Sustainability Rules Failed?

by

Football is exciting. Accountancy less so. The transfer window has closed and Premier League clubs are once again spending extraordinary amounts of money on footballers, over £3 billion. That follows more than £3 billion spent in summer 2025 and just under £2 billion in 2024. £1.29bn (43%) of that money was transfers within the Premier … Read more

We Already Agreed Reparations for Slavery. We Paid the Wrong People.

by

Commonwealth nations are pressing King Charles for some form of reparations for slavery. This is a question that isn’t going away. Predictably, outraged online right-wingers are outraged about this. But there are really two separate questions: should Britain pay reparations for slavery? And, if so, how? The first question should be the easy one. Britain … Read more

The Myth of Easy Savings: Why Cutting Government Spending Never Matches Politician’s Promises

by

A few years ago I proposed Chadwick’s laws of Government: I was working for a DWP quango in 2010, and sitting on the commercial board of DWP. It was the age of austerity, and Osborne proposed huge cuts to Government to free up money for tax. I would be the first to admit that Government … Read more

Muslim Europe? It’s Been Here for Over 1,300 Years

by

I’m in Albania, one of the European countries with a Muslim majority. When people talk about Islam in Europe, the conversation often starts in the 1950s or 1960s, with immigration from former colonies and labour migration into countries such as Britain, France and Germany. Increasingly, it degenerates into conspiracy theories about Muslim invasions or the … Read more

Tito – coca cola socialism

by

The funeral 8th May 1980. The funeral of Josip Broz Tito, President of Yugoslavia. From Moscow came Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Union; from Washington, Vice-President Walter Mondale and the President’s mother, Lillian Carter. Margaret Thatcher came for Britain, Helmut Schmidt for West Germany, and from the other Germany came Erich Honecker. President … Read more

How Much Is the Union Worth?

by

Last week I published a blog based on interviews with Iain Carlisle or the Grand Orange Lodge, and Doug Beattie, MLA. While talking to Iain Carlisle of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, he used a phrase I hadn’t heard before. “Economic unionists.” He wasn’t talking about people like himself. For Iain, Britishness is historical, … Read more

Where Have All The Loyalists Gone?

by

This summer I visited Northern Ireland for the first time in more than twenty years. The last time I had been there was shortly after the Good Friday Agreement. I worked for a while with Mo Mowlam when she was MP for Redcar, and my memories of Northern Ireland were inevitably bound up with that … Read more

Who Killed The High Street?

by

Another week, another set of shop closures.Retailers and restaurant owners complain about rising costs, newspapers publish photographs of boarded-up shops, and inevitably somebody blames the Government. There is some justification for this. In April 2025 the National Living Wage increased by 6.7%, from £11.44 to £12.21 an hour. At the same time employers’ National Insurance … Read more