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
It has become a received wisdom that coronavirus has forced Boris Johnson to morph into Jeremy Corbyn. Vast handouts to business, surging borrowing, open-ended commitments to NHS spending: there’s certainly a whiff of Labour policy in there. Some Conservative ministers even appear to see it that way; ‘We’ll find ourselves implementing most of Jeremy Corbyn’s
All governments are going to have to come up with vast stimulus packages over the next few weeks or face mass bankruptcies and job losses as the economy is paralysed by measures to combat the coronavirus. But was it really wise for President Macron to announce on Monday evening that no business will go bankrupt
What’s new in the world of coronavirus research this week? The most eye-catching study comes from the University of Maryland School of Medicine revealing a possible relationship between coronavirus outbreaks and meteorology. While the paper is not yet peer-reviewed and its authors admit that it’s ‘speculative’ and must be read with extreme caution, it notes
So are we all going to die or is it going to fizzle out? In Naples the police drive along streets with loudhailers, warning everyone to keep indoors; in Britain the government declines to close schools, call off sporting fixtures and persuade people out of the pub. Something feels not quite right: either there is
Boris Johnson, according to a large Twitter mob this morning, is a reckless libertarian – ignoring the drastic but effective measures being taken against coronavirus in other countries – in the same spirit he once praised the mayor in Jaws who kept the beaches open in spite of swimmers being eaten. A large body of
Yes, of course Donald Trump’s ban on travel between the US and the Schengen zone is an over-reaction to coronavirus, which will do far more harm to the economy than it will to protect the health of Americans. But it is pretty rich for the EU to be bleating about others banning things without scientific
There may be no vaccine yet for Covid-19, but the Bank of England yesterday morning gave us a full dose of what it hopes will be the financial equivalent; slashing interest rates from 0.75 per cent to 0.25 per cent. It has also relaxed the capital buffer requirements for banks — the amount of capital
In the panic over coronavirus in Britain, we seem to have forgotten about China. There is a logic to that, of course. The argument goes that British and European cases are far closer to home. But if we were just a little more aware of what has been going on in China over the past
Donald Trump is in the soup again, this time for appearing to reject the World Health Organisation’s estimate for the death rate from coronavirus (Covid-19): 3.4 per cent. ‘I think the 3.4 per cent is really a false number,’ he said on Thursday before adding that he had a ‘hunch’ that the real death rate is
It’s a bloodbath in the markets, but by how much could the real, global economy be affected by the coronavirus outbreak? A research note by Oxford Economics seeks to answer that question by comparing it with the experience of Japan following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. On that occasion, Japan’s industrial production slumped by 15
If you have just cancelled your trip to Venice and ordered your £19.99 surgical face mask from Amazon, how about this for a terrifying vision: by the time we get to April, 50,000 Britons will have succumbed to a combination of infectious disease and adverse weather. Frightened? If you are, don’t worry: you survived. It
It may well be, as Tom Goodenough argued here earlier, that Boris Johnson is secretly delighted at the Court of Appeal’s ruling that is was illegal for the government to give the go-ahead to a third runway at Heathrow without taking into account their own climate policy. The Prime Minister had, after all, promised his
Given that the government is running a £40 billion deficit, is determined to increase spending on infrastructure and will not be facing an election for another five years, no-one should get their hopes up too much for tax cuts in the Budget. Indeed, most of the talk has been of possible rises. But if any
Open the papers this morning and you would think the government had just announced plans to slaughter the first-born. The cause of the outrage? The environment secretary has just said that the sale of coal and damp logs for burning in domestic properties is to be banned from next year. Apparently it is an attack
A year ago, did anyone look like they would come out of Brexit better than Leo Varadkar? Here was a leader of a small country on the fringe of the EU suddenly catapulted to its centre. He was the one pushed forward by Juncker, Barnier, Merkel and Macron, as they sought to leverage advantage from
Where are the engineers? Whenever climate change comes up we hear from ecologists, activists and the odd scientist. But engineers? The very people we need to solve problems seem to be shut away in a box while school kids and dopey vegan campaigners are handed a megaphone with which to tell us the planet is
The argument for excluding the low-skilled from work visas under our new post-Brexit migration system is reasonable enough. As Home Secretary Priti Patel argued this morning, excluding low-skilled migrants should encourage businesses to invest in automation and in training higher-skilled staff who might be able to do the work of two of more unskilled staff.
When I read that police were invoking emergency powers at an Extinction Rebellion protest in Cambridge I thought: about time, too. It meant, I presumed, that they were not going to make the same mistake as the Met Police last April, when they were too slow to stop this bunch of anarchists closing down public
Like the Trumpton fire brigade, Britain’s disaster planners have had precious little opportunity to show off their skills over the past few decades. Plans for a nuclear war merely gathered dust. Global pandemics failed to arrive, as did a no-deal Brexit. Just about the only crisis requiring nationwide emergency planning concerned foot and mouth disease
Given what he has previously said about Brexit it would be a bit much to expect departing Bank of England governor Mark Carney to say that leaving the EU is a good thing for Britain. Nevertheless, it is still a bit of pleasant surprise to hear him in what – in Carney-speak – is presumably
