Kristian Niemietz is head of political economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs
On Monday, the Stop the War Coalition (StWC), the environmentalist group Just Stop Oil (JSO), the Socialist Campaign Group (SCG), which is a group of ‘Corbynite’ MPs, and Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project, held a joint press conference. With differences in emphasis, they all strongly condemned the moves of Venezuela’s dictator-president Nicolas Maduro to
When passing through an airport, the average traveller is unlikely to give much thought to the invisible economic forces that run the place. But the way take-off and landing slots are allocated at an airport affects a range of things, not least ticket prices and the range of destinations you can reach. This week, the government has launched a consultation on overhauling the system
The Renters’ Reform Bill aims to improve tenant security in the private rental sector by scrapping no-fault evictions, but it’s won’t solve Britain’s housing crisis. The Bill, which returns to Parliament this week for a second reading, was originally dreamt up in the dying days of Theresa May’s government. It could still just about make it in
Earlier this summer, NHS England published its long-term workforce plan. It has the backing of all major political parties and outside of health policy circles it did not attract much attention at first. But now, as its full implications (especially in fiscal terms) are becoming obvious, that is changing. A new report from the Institute
Who should we thank for our Covid vaccines? For many, the answer is straightforward: the National Health Service. ‘Thank you NHS’, says a profile sticker shared by thousands of Brits on Facebook. But while Britain’s undoubtedly successful vaccine programme owes a great deal to the efforts of NHS staff, is it right to thank the
Berlin’s rent freeze, hailed by some as a potential model for London, is already coming to an end after less than two years. In its final ruling this week, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court struck down the rent freeze as unconstitutional. In this sorry saga, there are plenty of lessons for those who supported rent freezes
In what Communities Secretary James Brokenshire described as ‘the biggest change to the private rental sector in a generation’, the government has announced a ban on so-called ‘no-fault evictions’ of tenants by their landlords. ‘By abolishing unfair evictions, every single person living in the private rental sector will be empowered’, Brokenshire claimed. The Prime Minister
Thirty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, socialism is back in fashion. The anniversary is a good occasion to reflect on some of the lessons that we have collectively un-learned, or perhaps never learned properly in the first place from the fall of Communism. The division of Germany into a broadly capitalist
If there were a modern remake of the TV series Fawlty Towers, it would probably contain an episode called ‘The Socialists’, in which the one-liner ‘Don’t mention Venezuela!’ would become a running gag. Mentioning Venezuela in the presence of a self-described socialist is considered boorish and impolite these days. Yes, a lot of people on
Danny Alexander’s latest plot to make the state a major player in housebuilding is just the latest in a line of useless political schemes to appease all the wrong people and let down all the right ones. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury made no effort today to tell us why the state would be
We are used to political parties trying to claim credit for any positive development that happened during their time in office. The Labour Party’s current stance on healthcare is the exception to this rule. It represents the rare phenomenon of a party denigrating one of the best bits of its legacy. In the mid-2000s, the
Up until about 2004, the Labour government’s strategy of fighting poverty by concentrating on three priorities – government spending, government spending and government spending – had seemed to work rather well. On a number of measures, living standards of low- to middle-income earners showed notable improvements. But from then on, progress on this front suddenly
What is ‘poverty’? It might sound a basic question but, when we hear about x percent of people ‘living in poverty’, what does that actually mean? The policy review conducted by Frank Field last year offered a number of insights into the issues of life chances and their determinants. But it failed to address that
