Conservatives are in deep trouble. The British Conservatives were wiped out in the latest local elections, and face a similar fate in at the coming General Election. In the US the entire conservative movement is a hostage to the fortunes of Donald Trump, slumped in a court room hearing his most sordid actions read … Read more
In amongst all of the elections going on the North East is electing 2 new Mayors in May. On Teesside Ben “Porkbarrel” Houchen, the Conservative incumbent has a fight on with Labour’s Chris “honest and sensible” McKewan. No guessing how I would be voting for, if I still lived down there. The rest of the … Read more
Britain never really loved the EU. We didn’t join the Common Market because we loved Europe or bought into a pan European vision, We signed up because we were in the doledrums as a nation. We had lost an Empire, and not really worked out a role in the world. The excitement of the 60s … Read more
This week Rachel Reeves delivered the Mais lecture, setting out Labour’s economic policy. For those who don’t follow such things the Mais lecture takes place at the Bayes business school in London, and for a future Chancellor of the Exchequer this is a big thing. This is where Nigel Lawson explained Thatcherism, Gordon Brown … Read more
The latest scandal in British politics is the long running tragedy of sub-postmasters. Over the decades the scandal has gone on the number of post offices in the UK has more than halved from 22,500 under Thatcher to around 11,500 now. 99% of all UK post offices are operated by franchise partners or … Read more
I am not a conspiracy theorist, although I love conspiracy theories. Ever since the X Files I have been fascinated by them. I don’t, however, feel the need to believe in them. Except maybe for one political conspiracy theory, about how someone might rig a UK General Election. In 1985 the Representation of the People Act was … Read more
No apologies for another short blog on immigration. On the 5th of December the new Home Secretary, James Cleverly, told the house that no new money had been given to Rwanda to sign a new treaty to try and resurrect they collapsed Asylum processing deal. Most people, including myself, understood that to mean that the … Read more
One of the main concerns people have about immigration is that immigrants work for less and drive down wages. A lot of economists were sceptical about this argument, mainly because the mathematical relationship between immigration and wages doesn’t exist. But the real reason why it didn’t happen was because it was illegal. When we were … Read more
Suella Braverman is leading a campaign to reduce immigration, furious that former Home Secretary Suella Braverman permitted a massive increase. Some people think immigration is a good thing, some think it is a bad thing. I am mostly in the good camp. There is a very obvious reason why the UK has immigration. The UK … Read more
Last week the Government has had only one thing they wanted to talk about – being tough on people coming here to claim asylum. You would have thought that having made such a mess of things they would want to keep their mouth shut. While all of this was going on a much lower profile … Read more