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
Britain has a productivity problem – it lags behind Germany, France and the US, even Italy. But what, if anything, do we need to do about it? Over time, says economist Gerard Lyons, productive economies outperform less productive ones, but productivity statistics are not everything. Unskilled people who in Britain are working in less productive
Predictions of the death of the shop have become as much a ritual of New Year as fireworks and the singing of Auld Lang Syne. The two big retailers which have so far reported on their business over the Christmas period have provided the usual ammunition. Next reported sales up by 1.5 per cent in
A Martian visiting Britain in recent months might be a little confused as to the nature of human morality – not to mention as to where on the body we have our sexual organs. First the country becomes consumed by the wicked behaviour of man who lightly touched a woman’s knee. Then, a man who
The Spectator, in association with Tate & Lyle Sugars, brought together MPs, representatives from Tate & Lyle, the Fairtrade Foundation and the Australian High Commissioner to discuss the future of the UK sugar sector following Brexit. This is a report of the discussion which followed. The sugar industry is an interesting case study for the
Yet again this morning comes a demonstration of the enormous gulf between gloomy economic forecasts pumped out by those opposed to Brexit and much more positive data from the real world. And guess which received the biggest headlines. Britain, claims PwC, is about to miss out on a surge in global growth – the best in
As the Brexit ‘war cabinet’ meets this morning to discuss what future trading relationship Britain would like with the EU there is a grim inevitability about the next few months. We know what we want – free trade with the EU, in services as well as goods, as well as free trade with the rest
This morning has brought predictable outrage about Tory ‘traitors’. The Prime Minister has been undermined, Guy Verhofstadt has had his fun describing it as a ‘good day for democracy’. The government has been reduced to damage-limitation, suggesting that last night’s defeat – which means that Parliament will now have the final say on a Brexit
I didn’t think I would ever see myself write this, but I think Nick Clegg is right: we need a second referendum on the EU. I come to this conclusion not because – like some Remainers seem to do – I think 52 per cent of the British population are too thick to make decisions
There is a simple lesson the government needs to learn from Alan Milburn’s resignation as social mobility czar: employ a GOAT at your peril. A ‘GOAT’ – the acronym derives from Gordon Brown’s phrase ‘Government Of All Talents – is a figure appointed to a government job, either as a minister or an adviser, even though
Government figures today show a sharp fall in net migration – 230,000 over the year to June, compared with 336,000 in the previous 12 months. If it keeps falling at that rate for another 18 months, Theresa May will have fulfilled David Cameron’s rash promise to reduce net migration to tens of thousands – if
Can anyone really be surprised that among the worst districts for social mobility identified by Alan Milburn’s Social Mobility Commission are some of the wealthiest areas in Britain? Ranked out of 324 districts in England West Berkshire comes in at 265, Cotswold at 268, Herefordshire 271, Chichester 287 and West Somerset bottom at 324. Surely
What could be more terrifying than a return to the 15 per cent interest rates with which homebuyers had to contend in the early 1990s? Possibly the vision presented last week in UBS’s Global Economic Outlook: interest rates at minus 5 per cent. It would take us to an unknown world where savers who deposited
So where are the nasties? Philip Hammond’s Budget speech can be summed up as follows: £2.8 billion for the NHS, £44 billion of capital funding and loan guarantees for housing, £400 million for a new charging infrastructure for electric cars, £2.3 billion investment in research and development, £1.5 billion worth of changes to Universal Credit, an
The female leader of a prominent European country fails to win a majority in an election and then struggles to form a coalition. Meanwhile, her government limps from crisis to crisis and finally negotiations break down, leading to another general election just weeks later. Not Theresa May, obviously, because she had little difficulty in forming
Wasn’t the whole point of electric vehicles supposed to be to civilise our cities, making them safer and less-polluted places to live? I just wonder what the mung bean-eaters who act as cheerleaders for the industry are making of the latest performance by Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla. Launching his latest vehicle, a £150,000
Vegetables are rotting in the fields for want of Eastern European pickers, patients are being left untreated thanks to a haemorrhaging of EU nurses, our universities are in peril as European academics flee from a xenophobic Britain which no longer wants them. That, at least, is the picture that is continually presented to us by
I don’t hold much faith in forecasts by the IMF. They have been so wrong in the past as to be worthless. A week before referendum day in 2016, for example, the IMF predicted that a Leave vote would take 5.5 per cent off UK GDP by 2019, tipping us into recession in 2017. We’re
Buried in yesterday’s drama over Priti Patel was the news that train drivers represented by Aslef have voted to end their industrial action on Southern Rail by accepting a pay deal which will give them a 28.5 per cent rise over five years. It will take their basic pay – for a four day week
Apparently we’re all getting a little happier – if a little more anxious. The government’s official happiness index shows that we rate our overall life satisfaction at an average of 7.7 out of 10. We think our lives are 7.9 out of 10 worthwhile. We rate our happiness yesterday at 7.5 out of 10 and
David Cameron will presumably be spending today retching into a bucket at his Oxfordshire home. Having said that the thought of prisoners voting made him ‘physically sick’, he will not be pleased by the Government’s proposal to grant the vote to the hundred or so prisoners who are out of jail at any one time
