Mick Whelan has given the game away over striking railway workers

We’re all familiar with the usual trade union cliches: it’s not about us, it’s about passenger safety; staff morale is low; and strikers are...

The dangerous myth of degrowth

Britain is beset by low productivity and stagnant growth, and things are not getting better. In the public sector, productivity stands at 7.4 per cent...

Why should under-productive civil servants get a pay rise?

We all know about the teachers and train drivers, but apparently there are 100,000 civil servants in 124 government departments and quangos also on...

Three years on, is Brexit worth celebrating?

Today, if you feel so inclined to celebrate it, is Brexit Day: the date on which, three years ago, Britain formally left the EU – although the...

What does the IMF want from the UK economy?

Just what is a UK government supposed to do to keep the IMF happy? This morning it has issued a bulletin predicting that the UK will be the only major...

Could Britain cope without Taiwanese microchips?

So now we know what Britain’s great green economy looks like. First, the good news: construction of electric cars in Britain increased by 4.5 per...

It’s no surprise Britain’s manufacturers are struggling

Every month, we are bombarded with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), the main inflation measure. It is currently running at 10.5 per cent, and although...

The retirement age should be 70

Remember the Waspi women, who used to leap up and down outside Tory conferences for the right to continue to retire at 60? They claimed that their...

Is the National Grid’s energy payment offer too good to be true?

Still resisting installing a smart meter in your home? If so, the National Grid might make you think again – by offering you free electricity. With...

Al Gore should practise what he preaches

Lucky old Americans. They only had to put up with one fruitcake as president, in Donald Trump.    It could have been worse. But for a few hanging...

The strikes have lost their power

The dead went unburied and the rubbish piled high in Leicester Square. Then a suntanned Jim Callaghan arrived back at Heathrow from a summit in...

Food price inflation hits 16.8 per cent

Oil prices are down, wholesale gas prices are down, so why isn’t inflation falling a lot faster than it is? The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) for...

Do we truly know the cost of net zero?

Just why is Chris Skidmore’s review into the government’s target to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 called an ‘independent’ review?...

Cautiously optimistic / Could Britain avoid recession altogether?

The idea that we face a certain recession has been drummed into our heads for months. The Bank of England recently produced a graph showing recession...

Is Starmer foolish to attack the Tories’ strike laws?

Labour feels strongly on the NHS – you can tell that by the number of times Keir Starmer brings up the NHS during Prime Minister’s questions,...

Why Rishi Sunak doesn’t need to fear the unions

The calendar for January is already pock-marked with strike dates for railway workers, ambulance staff, postal workers and others. But does the...

Are the rail strikes nearing an endgame?

How likely is a global recession this year?

The best thing that can be said about global economic growth prospects for 2023 is that no-one is expecting very much. On that basis, hopefully,...

Putin has failed to bring Europe to its knees

Unforeseen events which provoke global crises – such as Covid — have come to be known as ‘black swans’. By the same token, the end of 2022 has...

Is global warming behind America’s snowstorms?

Is there any weather condition which cannot be blamed on anthropogenic global warming (AGW)? No, it seems, judging by the reaction in the US liberal...

How Britain’s economy might bounce back in 2023

Whatever happened to the economic boom that was supposed to follow the Covid pandemic? The 2020s, some argued, would be like the 1920s, with an...

Crypto is dead

We’re finishing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles from 2022. Here’s number eight: Ross Clark’s piece from May on the crypto...

Britain’s worrying industrial decline

Economic growth is the third quarter was known to be depressed, but the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has this morning upped its estimate of...

Mick Lynch leads a middle-class union

Mick Lynch told Mishal Husain this week that it is about time she started showing partiality to Britain’s working people. Leave aside the assertion...

Could 30,000 Britons really die of flu this winter?

Could flu really kill 30,000 people in Britain this year as our immune systems, rendered naïve after two years of lockdowns and other anti-Covid...

The Bank of England’s interest hike shows the worst is to come

After a faltering start in its programme of rate rises, the Bank of England is catching up. Today’s half-point rise in its base rate to 3.5 per cent...

Inflation slows to 10.7% – and may have passed its peak

Has inflation peaked? The Consumer Prices Index fell to 10.7 per cent last month, down from 11.1 per cent in October. This follows predictions that...

The fall of FTX is just the beginning of the crypto collapse

It will come as no comfort to those who have already lost fortunes, but it is remarkable how resilient the crypto currency market has been this year,...

Oxford’s highwayman campaign against motorists

Oxford councillors are feeling rattled by opposition to their proposal to divide the city into six districts and to limit the passage of road traffic...

John Kerry’s climate blindspot

For climate campaigners, Donald Trump was the anti-Christ, pooh-poohing climate change and withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement. But...

Will the law be used to stop the strikes?

We are still a long way from the Winter of Discontent, when 29.5 million worker-days were lost to strikes. Nevertheless, with today’s strike of...

Britain should embrace new coal mining

For those of us who remember the miners’ strike in the 1980s it takes some getting used to the journey made by coal miners over the past 40 years:...

Striking railway workers can’t avoid reality for ever

Rail strikes on a couple of days when no trains would be running anyway might not seem the biggest inconvenience facing the British public at the...

Prince William’s Earthshot prize won’t save the planet

I hate to pour cold water on the Prince of Wales’ big night out in Boston on Friday, where he hosted the Earthshot Prize for climate change...

Ambulance strikes won’t improve record waiting times

The vote for strike action by 10,000 ambulance drivers who are members of the GMB union is more about public safety than about pay, insists the union....

Why is the US economy doing better than ours?

The US entered recession earlier than the UK and Europe, and suffered its inflation surge earlier too, so it was always likely that its economy would...

It’s time we stopped subsidising the railways

Rail travel has never been cheap, but should we really each be paying £500 a year even if we never set foot on a train? That, according to figures...

The black hole in Jeremy Hunt’s energy windfall tax

Jeremy Hunt has supposedly just closed a black hole in the government’s finances. But is another black hole opening up before his eyes?   One of...

Westminster bluster / Britain isn’t ready for onshore wind

Staging rebellions against their own government has become a way of life for many Tory MPs – but why choose onshore wind farms as the hill on which...

Why is Britain still sending foreign aid to China?

Just why is Britain still spending over £50 million a year in development aid to China? Despite it being the world’s second largest economy and...

Sadiq Khan’s Ulez expansion punishes the poorest

Imagine if Jeremy Hunt announced a new 60p income tax band that was payable only by people who earn less than £20,000 a year. Or if he reversed...

Strikes / The unions are losing their power

The rail unions have announced further strikes for December and January. Nurses have already voted to strike for the first time in over a century. Now...