Leading article
The American way
It is a paradox that the nation most committed to free enterprise — the United States — can be one of the most aggressively protectionist countries on earth. The accusations… Read more
Doping the economy
An outsider viewing the Olympic opening ceremony could easily have gained the impression that Britain was in the midst of an unprecedented boom. A week on Sunday we are promised… Read more
Summer of discontent
The ninth of August will mark the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the credit crunch: the day in 2007 that the banks found themselves frozen out of the debt… Read more
Competitive advantage
Scambusters is the name of a government initiative to prevent householders falling victim to rogue traders who use high-pressure sales techniques to flog lousy and vastly overpriced goods and services.… Read more
The Tories are back
This week marks 50 years since Harold Macmillan’s ‘Night of the Long Knives’, in which he sacked a third of his Cabinet. As if to mark the anniversary, Tory MPs… Read more
Omniscandal
It is easy to understand Bob Diamond’s miscalculation. In the great pantheon of banking scandals, it was unlikely, he thought, that Libor interest-rate rigging would rank very high. Libor is… Read more
Cyber insecurity
The NatWest banking disaster is an ominous reminder of the way in which technology has come to control our lives. We now know what a proper IT collapse feels like:… Read more
Summit of arrogance
The folly of jetting off to an international summit in a pleasant tropical resort during a time of emergency at home was amply demonstrated by Jim Callaghan in 1979 when… Read more
The virtue of restraint
As Britain prepares for a week of peaceful celebration, Syria will be bracing itself for more bloodshed. The Assad regime, perhaps emboldened by the knowledge that the west has no… Read more
What’s stopping us?
The Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, promised this week to ‘reduce the volatility of energy bills’. Unfortunately, his proposal to eliminate the peaks and troughs in the electricity market involves… Read more
Fewer laws, more action
This government has run out of good ideas; that was what the Queen’s speech told us this week. When the coalition was formed, it united behind a genuinely bold agenda:… Read more
Science or starvation
At the end of the month, a group of protestors plan to descend upon a field in Hertfordshire and ‘decontaminate’ (i.e. destroy) a field of genetically modified wheat. The activists,… Read more
Leave those Lords alone
The Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill could have saved itself a lot of bother if, instead of producing a lengthy report, it had simply quoted… Read more
The technocrats are coming
There was a time when the British could look upon the French, and their monstrously big government, with a sense of superiority: not any more. There is now a… Read more
Human wrongs
There is a danger in this week’s ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that Abu Hamza and four other Islamic extremists can be extradited to face terror charges… Read more
Carbon captives
The government’s desire for a ‘green economy’ has become such an obsession that it has begun to override common sense. This week, the Department for Energy and Climate Change invited… Read more
The generations game
‘When the Cold War ended, we thought we were going to have a clash of civilisations,’ wrote the American author and businessman David Rothkopf. ‘It turns out we’re having a… Read more
Budget battles
For the past couple of months, government business has been bogged down in the detail of taxation policy. Higher personal tax allowances, a lower top rate, more stamp duty for… Read more
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