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
The Trump administration has made MAHA – Make America Healthy Again one of its defining domestic initiatives. The movement promises to tackle chronic disease, improve diets and reverse the decline in Americans’ health. Some of its proposals have attracted widespread criticism and may well make matters worse. Central to the MAHA world view is the … Read more
The pharmaceutical agreement between the UK and the United States was signed last year, but it has suddenly become politically controversial. Incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham is under pressure to cancel or renegotiate it. The broad bargain was straightforward. The deal has returned to the headlines because of a paper published in the British Medical … Read more
The US government is refunding $81bn in tariff payments to importers, following the Supreme Court’s February 2026 ruling that Trump did not have authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose many of his tariffs. Not every business has been repaid: In June alone, about $49.2bn was refunded; May and June together accounted … Read more
When SpaceX’s share price fell last week, Elon Musk lost another vast slice of his fortune. That hardly qualifies as a national tragedy. But it is a reminder that one of the richest men in history owes much of his wealth to a company routinely presented as the ultimate triumph of private enterprise. The reality … Read more
Britain has committed itself to one of the most ambitious net zero programmes in the world. Targets are set. Timelines are clear. Policies—subsidies, mandates, bans—are steadily pushing the economy towards decarbonisation. On its own terms, this is a success story. Emissions are falling. Coal is disappearing from the energy mix. Electric vehicles are becoming more … Read more
People worry that AI is getting smarter. Genius science curmudgeon Richard Dawkins recently declared that AI was conscious — or at least conscious without knowing it. The singularity is apparently coming. People are already forming emotional bonds with chatbots, in some cases even falling in love. But that’s not my experience. I’m angry about the … Read more
It’s ten years since the Brexit vote, and over the last few weeks I’ve been visiting towns along the East Coast. Some — Clacton, Great Yarmouth, Skegness — have already elected Reform MPs. Others are targets in the next round of local elections. I worked in Redcar and Cleveland for a decade, in the NHS, … Read more
There are two very different ways of looking at Hartlepool. The first is the lurid headline version — the kind of thing you might find in the Sun, focusing on obesity, ill health, decline. The second is less obvious: Northern Studios, the largest film and television production facility in the North East, part of the … Read more
There is a structural problem in modern politics that we don’t talk about enough. Markets move on information. Governments create information. And in an age of erratic communication, that information is often released in ways that are unpredictable, informal, and badly timed. Take Donald Trump. One of the defining features of his recent presidency has … Read more