The reality of climate change is now firmly embedded in our public discourse. News media are awash with horror stories of fire and flood, and hopeful ones about giant offshore wind turbines, massive solar farms, electric vehicles, and heat pumps. The implication from these is that technology is pushing us in the right direction…
The 2019 Institute for Public Policy Research Economics Prize posed the question: “What would be your radical plan to force a step change in the quality and quantity of the UK’s economic growth?” This was my response. Growth For Growth’s Sake? I like your question. The quality of economic activity is habitually ignored by those…
If the UK has another general election this year (or next) Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party will lose. Again. In their euphoria at outperforming everyone’s expectations in the election just past Mr Corbyn and his merry crew appear to have overlooked the fact that they polled the best part of a million votes fewer than the…
A year ago I wrote that “Labour’s *New* Economic Strategy Makes Me Want To Scream”. With frustration, that is, not delight. Last November John McDonnell, Labour’s shiny new shadow chancellor, was telling us that diversification, innovation and public investment were going save us from the dead-end of Tory austerity. Mr. McDonnell appeared to be as…
John Mason MSP is a former accountant who is the Deputy Convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Finance Committee. Last month he was the focus of a lengthy conversation on twitter after stating that the “UK deficit (is) £1.5 trillion”. For those of you with time to squander the entire twitter exchange can be found here: https://twitter.com/JohnMasonMSP/status/703699151461203968…
John McDonnell, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote an article for the Independent last weekend in which he pointed out the folly and failure of George Osborne’s austerity fetish, and told us about the new economic strategy that the Labour Party is currently devising as an alternative to the Tory government’s slash and burn…
For most of the last 30 years it looked like socialism had been soundly beaten by its old adversary, capitalism. From the mid 1980s when Margaret Thatcher’s second government defeated Britain’s striking coal miners, until around 2009 when the extent of the banking crisis had sunk in, free-market capitalism was the only game in town.…
Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpected leap to the front of the Labour Party leadership race has inadvertently created a modern miracle: it has united every organ of the mainstream media from the Guardian to the Telegraph, and every politician to the right of Dennis Skinner. They all agree that his plans for the economy are bonkers. If…
Last month’s general election for the UK parliament provided a harsh reminder to some political parties that electoral success is all about telling a good story. The narrative has to be one that the electorate wants to believe or, at the very least, one that appeals to their common sense. The Scottish National Party won…
All around the world government ministers are obsessed by the size of their deficits: the gap between revenue and spending that can only be filled by borrowing money. This year’s deficit gets added to all of the previous years’ deficits, which accumulate into an ever-expanding mountain of debt. As the debt piles up, so too…
Views From The Boatshed 