For 21 weeks now the Gilets Jaunes have taken to the streets of French cities to protest. It began as a demonstration against high and rising fuel taxes. These tax increases hit families getting children to school and the adults to work, and cut the earnings of the self-employed working from their vans and cars.
This week NATO meets. Mr Trump will want more progress with increasing spending by European allies. Many of them are still well below the 2% of GDP minimum spend they are asked to achieve to contribute to collective security. NATO will argue that members together have been increasing their spending in real terms since 2015,
Some say that Mr Trump’s behaviour at the G7 meeting last week-end showed contempt for the international rules-based system that many people in financial markets and the media admire. It is true that Mr Trump complained Russia was not present, inserted special prose about his energy and tariff policies and decided he did not agree
I find it difficult to believe some in the media are taking these latest economic forecasts for 15 years outside the EU seriously. They have all the hallmarks of the approach that the Treasury used to get the short-term forecast for the aftermath of a Brexit vote so hopelessly wrong. The first thing to stress
Leaving the EU should boost pay and create more jobs. Spending our own money on our own priorities ensures that is true from the first post Brexit budget onwards. The dreary gloomy predictions of Remain are all based on the absurd idea that the rest of the EU will want to impose new barriers on
The Secretary of State for Transport asked for my views on the capacity argument for HS2. I thought I would share them with you. To establish that HS2 is needed on capacity grounds the government has to be able to demonstrate three main points. Firstly, that the current West Coast Main Line (WCML) is full or
Taking tea at four, strawberries and cream, Wimbledon on a hot summer’s day, Christmas carols round the tree, street parties for a Queen’s Jubilee: the images of England are often nostalgic and middle class. To some, England, our England, is summed up in the poems of Rupert Brooke, and turned into childhood mystery in the
The biggest risk to the economy is not government cuts, says John Redwood, but lack of credit. There’s plenty ministers can do to get companies, and people, borrowing again This time it is different. Normally the UK economy bounces back from a downturn, and we have several years of rising prosperity. Today there are many