Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. His books include Not Zero, The Road to Southend Pier, and Far From EUtopia: Why Europe is failing and Britain could do better
Who would envy being an MP today when called upon to vote on a matter of conscience: the assisted dying bill? The issue cuts across party lines, and so whichever way they vote they will offend a good proportion of their own voters. But on the other hand, for once they are being trusted to use their
It is hard to see where all of Ed Miliband’s ‘green jobs’ are coming from, but we are certainly losing existing manufacturing jobs. Net zero has just claimed a very significant scalp. Stellantis, the parent company of Vauxhall, has said that it plans to close its plant at Luton, where it makes the Vivaro van,
Where is the stick? For weeks the government has been trailing its white paper on benefits reform by floating the idea that there would be tough sanctions on claimants who refused to take up work offers. It culminated on Sunday in a double hit – Keir Starmer in the Mail on Sunday and Liz Kendall
Turkeys don’t usually vote for Christmas, so just why have 43 new Labour MPs signed up to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Fair Elections and its campaign to replace the first-past-the-post system with proportional representation? These are, after all, the beneficiaries of the most distorted UK election in modern history, where Labour won
I can’t fault Keir Starmer for his piece in the Mail on Sunday today promising that Labour will crack down on idlers and benefit cheats. But does anyone really believe that Labour is really going to get on top of the explosion in out of work benefits? Whenever the Conservatives announced plans to trim the benefits bill,
Cop29 has drawn to a close with arguments over a $250 billion (£200 billion) a year ‘loss and damage’ fund, which developing countries complain is not nearly enough to match their demands. But away from the grand gestures at the summit it is worth looking at what countries are actually doing rather than what they say
Until a few weeks ago it seemed as if the government had inherited if not a golden economic legacy then an improving economic picture. But this morning’s figures for retail sales show just how faltering the economy is. During October the volume of retail sales fell by 0.7 per cent. Worst-affected was textile and clothing
After reneging on its manifesto pledge to not raise National Insurance, Labour is starting to struggle with another promise: to cut energy bills by £300 a year. This morning Ofgem has announced that its Energy Price Cap will rise in January so the average household will be paying £21 a year more. Together with the
History has taught us to be shy of miracle drugs. But that hasn’t stopped weight-loss drugs being eagerly promoted by fans such as Boris Johnson, and even touted by Keir Starmer as a possible means of getting people back into the workforce. In the US, according to a survey by polling firm KFF earlier this
Imagine what the government could do with an extra £9.1 billion a month. It could build HS2 in its entirety within the space of a year. Or better still, it could double the defence budget and still have some money left over to build the 40 new hospitals which the Conservatives promised – as well
Is ‘workshy Britain’ a mirage caused by dodgy statistics? That is what the left-leaning think tank the Resolution Foundation is claiming in a report published this morning. The Office for National Statistics (ONS), it says, has missed 930,000 people who are actually in work. The missing numbers, it asserts, are enough to raise Britain’s employment
It is a fate which has been creeping up on Britain for years, but that doesn’t make it any the harder to bear when it becomes official. According to the OECD, we now have the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe. At 80.9, the average Brit now keels over more than three years earlier than
Farmers are threatening a national strike over the inheritance tax increases, the first in history. Given how quickly the Labour government yielded to public sector unions, it is little wonder that the farmers have sensed that strikes are the best way to achieve their goals. By 1851, the proportion of Britain’s male workforce employed on
So that’s it then: the Guardian has declared that we are all being scorched, drowned and blown over by climate change. The website Carbon Brief, it says, has found ‘stark evidence of how global heating is already supercharging deadly weather beyond anything ever experienced by humanity’. Never mind that humans were around to witness multiple
The comments by Stephen Moore, Donald Trump’s economic adviser, should not really be controversial. ‘I’ve always said that Britain has to decide,’ he said from Florida, where he is preparing the new administration’s economic policy. ‘Do you want to go towards the European socialist model or do you want to go towards the US free
Rachel Reeves is beginning to look awfully like Gordon Brown. Study the actions of this government so far and you would hardly say that deregulation was its big idea. True, Keir Starmer did claim at his investment summit last month that he was going to slash red tape. Angela Rayner wants planning laws relaxed to
I’ve got a better idea for the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which is demanding civil servants be allowed to work just four days a week for no loss of pay, claiming that a shorter working week is ‘essential for a happy and healthy life’. Why not put civil servants on a zero-day week?
Keir Starmer said he was travelling to Cop 29 in Baku intending to “lead the world on climate change”. But it must surely be obvious that he is, instead, barking at a world that is heading in the opposite direction. Last year’s grand talk about “phasing down” fossil fuels at Cop 28 notwithstanding, today’s Global
‘It’s not about telling people how to live their lives. I’m not interested in that’ said Keir Starmer of his new target for Britain to reduce its carbon emissions by 81 per cent on 1990 levels by 2035. Really? In that case perhaps he would like to tell us how he does intend to reach
With an urgency not always noted in plumbers, Charlie Mullins announced earlier this year that he was leaving the country, before even waiting for the Budget fallout. He put his £12 million penthouse on the market and is busy buying up properties in Spain and Dubai, between which he will now spend his time. Inheritance
