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As National Debt tops £3trillion, it’s time for Burnham to be honest about Britain’s finances
The problem for bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new prime ministers who take over part-way through a Parliament is they start with a king-sized chip on their shoulders. They walk through Downing Street’s door knowing they aren’t the one who won the…
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Manchesterism’s first big test is the bond markets
Here it comes again. Whoever Andy Burnham chooses to be his Chancellor of the Exchequer will face the same challenge as all their predecessors since Gordon Brown: producing ‘fiscal rules’ to reassure the City they will be prudent holders of the nation’s…
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The fiscal farce that’s bankrupting Britain
American political strategist James Carville wryly observed that, rather than being reincarnated as US President or the Pope, he wanted to come back as the bond market because it can intimidate anybody. The hard truth behind his quip is the…
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How To Solve Britain’s Red Tape Crisis
Labour’s bonfire of the quangos is barely smouldering so far. The run-up to last month’s ‘Spring-Statement-that-honestly-wasn’t-an-Emergency-Budget’ included a big anti-red tape fanfare, with lots of worthy rhetoric about tackling bureaucratic complexity and regulatory risk-aversion. But it always starts this way,…
