Andy Burnham and Treasury Death Grop aren’t the hot new indie band coming out of Manchester. It is a central part of the our new Prime Ministers strategy. He has declared war on one of Britain’s oldest institutions. Not Parliament, the Bank of England or Whitehall civil servants. His target is the Treasury. For decades, … Read more
British politics is trapped between two comforting fantasies. We have a fiscal problem. We can’t afford the levels of Government spending that we want within the taxes that we pay. Each side of the political divide has an easy answer to the problem. The first belongs to the right. We are told that Britain’s fiscal … Read more
At long last, the student loan system is being debated seriously. It should be. Few policies impose marginal tax rates that politicians would tolerate anywhere else: 37% on incomes over £25,000, 51% over £50,270, and 71% over £100,000, before you even factor in interest and postgraduate add-ons. The Conservatives have proposed scrapping interest rates of … Read more