James Kirkup is a partner at Apella Advisors and a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation.
Rachel Reeves is cutting £1.4 billion of pensioner welfare payments with her winter fuel payment means-test. It sounds like a big number, but it’s not. £152 billion is a big number. That’s the total value of welfare payments to pensioners in 2024/25. It’s more than we spend on the NHS. Taking the £1.4 billion annual
Parliamentary oath-taking rarely causes excitement. MPs swearing the oath of allegiance to the Crown after an election is an archaic yet prosaic sight: line up, shuffle in, say the words, shuffle off. Repeat 600-odd times. It’s a bit different this time, because so many of the MPs are first-timers. Nonetheless most of their swearing-in moments
The Conservative party is in disarray. What the party does next matters for the whole of Britain and maybe even for all of liberal democracy. For the British centre-Right to follow its American and French counterparts into nativist populism would be a shift of global and historical significance. Such serious times call for serious people. So, naturally, David
A couple of years ago, an anecdote about Keir Starmer did the rounds at Westminster. The story was that when asked about his time leading the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), he said that his proudest achievements involved overhauling IT systems, or procurement rules, or some other highly procedural aspect of the organisation’s bureaucracy. The story
‘Spread happiness, peace and calm.’ That’s the slogan on a T-shirt you can buy at M&S. It’s pink, has frilly sleeves and is decorated with flowers and a unicorn. It is, of course, listed under ‘girls’ clothing’. There’s nothing unusual about that T-shirt. You can buy similar items for girls in most fashion retailers. ‘Be
The coincidence of the 2024 general election and the Euro 2024 football tournament is a great lesson in the myopia of Westminster and its creatures. Somewhere, deep in our hearts, we do know that the vast majority of people in Britain (OK, England and Scotland) are far more interested in the football than in the
Westminster is full of clever people who spend a lot of time stupidly making simple things complicated. The story of Nathalie Elphicke’s defection to Labour is a case in point. This is a simple story, or should be. Someone who used to tell voters to vote Conservative is now telling voters to vote Labour. It’s
Gordon Brown is a historian by education, so he might just appreciate the fickleness of posterity. Over a decade at the Treasury from 1997 to 2007, he did many things that he might believe should be widely remembered. Yet few, if any, of his decisions live as clearly in memory as ‘Gordon Brown sold the gold’.
Popping out to buy milk the other night, I saw how women die. My nearest local shop in south-west London, the place I go for last-minute and forgotten groceries, is an M&S at a petrol station. It sells fuel, overpriced food and coffee. It’s open late. As I queued to pay for my semi-skimmed just before
Another day, another smart report arguing for higher payments into our pensions. Standard Life and WPI Economics have published a paper saying that minimum contribution rates into workplace pensions must rise. Today, workers contribute a minimum of 5 per cent of their salary to their pensions while their employer pays in 3 per cent. Not
Ten years ago, George Osborne blew up the British private pension system. Because pensions are boring and complicated and move slowly, a lot of people didn’t really notice. But the shrapnel from the blast continues to ricochet today and is starting to hit. Chancellor Osborne’s Budget on 19 March 2014 contained the surprise announcement of ‘pension freedoms’.
Britain is running out of workers. The UK population may be growing, but the share of that population that is economically active is falling. More than 9.2 million working-age adults are out of the labour market today, and the number is growing. This might be the biggest story in today’s Budget, and certainly one that
Alison McGovern, Labour’s shadow employment minister is one of those politicians who are always worth watching. She combines the ability to look and speak like a normal human being – a rare thing at Westminster – with a genuine policy wonk’s fascination for data and trends and ideas. She also has fans at the top
Happy birthday to me. Today I turn 48. I’m celebrating in an age-appropriate way: a trip to the physio for a stiff shoulder, then publishing some gloomy words about pensions. Being born in 1976 makes me part of what marketers called Generation X. Arguably though, the 1965 to 1980 cohort should be tagged the ‘Forgotten Generation’.
This week, a Conservative Prime Minister announced he was banning something – disposable vapes. The reaction to that ban – or rather, the lack of reaction – is a signpost to future UK health policy, which will lean towards interventionism in the years ahead. Companies making and selling food and drink should pay close attention.
Liz Truss has sent Matthew Elliott to the House of Lords in her resignation honours list. There are some obvious and predictable reactions to this. First, the sheer effrontery of our least successful PM in exercising her traditional right to an honours list. She lasted less time than that lettuce. She was awful. How dare she? Etc
The death of Alistair Darling is a grievous loss. British politics has lost a man of decency, character, integrity and humour. He was a good man, in a world where good men are scarce. Darling’s most prominent role in politics was as chancellor to prime minister Gordon Brown from 2007 until 2010, a turbulent period
David Cameron is back. This will make some people unhappy, because they dislike the man. Common reasons for disliking Dave include Brexit and austerity. But there’s also the Greensill lobbying and just the general, all-pervading shiny-faced smugness of a man who, one suspects, never really gave a toss about any of it and was just playing
What does ‘mental health’ mean? Is the answer to that question undergoing a generational change, as younger people become more aware of – and likely to talk about – their mental state and to discuss it in terms of ‘mental health’? And will that cultural change have economic effects? These are some of the questions
With all due respect to the diligent journalists who revealed it, I don’t think it’s a big deal that some bits of Rachel Reeves’ book about women in economics were copied from Wikipedia. The book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, was launched at an Institute for Government event in Westminster on Wednesday evening. An
