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
Few will be minded to believe Russia’s explanation for cutting off Nord Stream 1 pipeline – that it is a maintenance issue – and I don’t suspect we are expected to believe it, either – any more than we were expected to believe that the would-be Salisbury assassins had an interest in cathedral spires. It
When the next prime minister is installed in Downing Street on Monday, we can expect a package of initiatives to help households with their heating bills. But will Rishi Sunak’s existing scheme – which promised £400 worth of handouts to every household – survive if, as expected, Liz Truss walks into No. 10? The scheme
It is reported this morning that one of Liz Truss’s first acts as prime minister, assuming she wins the Conservative party leadership election, will be to grant new licences for North Sea oil and gas extraction. But will it be enough – and quick enough – to alleviate the energy crisis? There are still substantial known
The challenger bank sector has been such a graveyard in recent years that I don’t hold out much hope that Durham-based Atom Bank will ever quite displace the likes of Lloyds and Barclays. Nevertheless, I wish it well. It is just that its claim to have increased productivity by changing to a four-day week does
‘We are living the end of an era of abundance,’ according to Emmanuel Macron, ‘the end of the abundance of products and technologies, the end of the abundance of land and materials, including water.’ It is hard to see how water has become less abundant, being the ultimate renewable resource, which evaporates before falling back
In Europe it is handouts to help pay our energy bills – even for people who could easily afford to pay them. In the US, it is student debts being written off. With remarkable speed the West is emerging into a new age of big – no, make that huge – paternalistic government. Today, Joe
Soaring gas and electricity prices are giving us an idea of the cost of imposing sanctions on Russia – a cost which may be worth bearing if it helps to defeat Russian aggression, but a cost nonetheless. But how complete and effective are the sanctions? Trade figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Since June 2016 we have settled into a pattern. Whenever the pound plunges, it is followed by cries of ‘I told you so’. It is all the fault of Brexit and a result of international investors fleeing Britain and taking their money elsewhere. And when the euro plunges? We hardly hear a thing. Yet today,
From the beginning, the debate over lockdowns was skewed by the fact that Covid deaths were imminent – and any other effects from lockdown would become apparent over a longer period. But are we beginning to see that now? Over the past few months the Office for National Statistics has been recording ‘excess’ non-covid deaths
There are so many house indices that they can create confusion. Last week, the Halifax house price index showed a small monthly fall. This week the government’s own index, the HPI, shows that prices rose by 7.8 per cent in the year to June, down from 12.8 per cent in the year to May. That
We are all supposed to remember where we were when we heard that Mrs Thatcher had resigned (my mother rang me while I was having a late breakfast). But I will always have a much more vivid memory of where I was when I heard Boris Johnson had called it a day. I was at
Have we yet seen the end of Covid restrictions? It is tempting to think so. For many people, Covid and the lockdowns have receded into history, replaced by Ukraine and the energy crisis. It would be easy, but foolish, to dismiss Tony Blair’s proposals as the ramblings of a bored ex-PM But perhaps we have
That today’s inflation figures would come as an immense shock to anyone who has returned from a year in the wilderness goes without saying. A little over a year ago, in May 2021, the Bank of England was predicting that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) would peak at no higher than its two percent target.
For anyone tempted to believe warnings from Mark Carney and other City figures about ‘stranded assets’ in the fossil fuel industry, while simultaneously buying the idea that renewable energy is the investment which can’t go wrong, here is a cautionary tale. Just over a year ago the mining giant Anglo American demerged its thermal coal
Who doesn’t want lower electricity bills, and sympathise with households who will be unable to keep themselves warm this winter? But there is something rather missing from the Dutch auction between Keir Starmer and the two Tory leadership candidates over promises to help with household energy bills. What about businesses, whose gas and electricity bills
Gordon Brown is demanding Parliament be recalled for an emergency budget. By October, he says, quoting a study he commissioned from the University of Loughborough, half the population could be living in fuel poverty. ‘Not enough thinking is being done about the major social crisis,’ he told Radio Four’s The World at One on Monday.
The Bank of England recently raised hackles by predicting that the economy would shrink in the final quarter of 2022, with Britain spending the whole of next year in recession. Liz Truss was especially critical, saying that a recession was not inevitable. In last night’s Cheltenham debate she again referred to the subject, saying that
For residents of the London borough of Islington whose homes were flooded this week by a burst water main, Thames Water’s decision to announce a hosepipe ban the following day must have come across as a sick joke. Just a few days before the flood, the company sent out an email asking its customers to
This summer marks a truce. But if, as expected, Liz Truss becomes prime minister, it is almost inevitable that tensions over the Northern Ireland protocol will resurface. Britain has been threatened with trade barriers if it tears up the protocol, with implications for import and export industries. But one possible consequence has been largely overlooked, in spite
Whatever happened to the great surge towards a cashless society which the pandemic was supposed to bring about? As I wrote here in February 2021, the cashless lobby was ruthlessly exploiting the pandemic in order to push for its nirvana in which we would be forced to pay for everything electronically, either via cards or