Will Starmer’s chainsaw be Black & Decker or Fisher Price? March 13, 2025 On Monday I used this column to ask who, if anyone, will have the courage to take a chainsaw to the British state. It’s an inelegant metaphor, but an effective one as Argentina’s Javier Milei and Elon Musk in the US revel in the process of hacking away at state infrastructure. Milei won his election [...]
The Capitalist: Madders’ badders, desk politics and Volkswagen’s sausage boom March 13, 2025 Justin Madders slips up, desks become status symbols and Volkswagen celebrates sausages sales. That and more in this week's The Capitalist.
The new model of American success: Win at all costs March 13, 2025 America has always been a hyper-individualistic society, but in the turbo-charged Trump era something has changed, says Lewis Liu “What happened to your country?” “Surely most Americans don’t agree with what is happening?” Every single non-American I’ve encountered over the last six weeks has asked me questions like this. Over the past month, I’ve spent [...]
Labour’s jobs tax will hit working families hardest March 13, 2025 With less than four weeks to go before Labour National Insurance starts to bite, it’s clear which sectors will be harmed the most: Those that hard-working families rely on, says Mel Stride The clock is ticking. We’re now less than four weeks away from the implementation of Labour’s disastrous jobs tax. But let’s be clear [...]
Nepal: Where making a profit is a crime March 13, 2025 Maoist policies have made the Himalayan nation of Nepal one of the poorest in Asia, says Rainer Zitelmann On December 11 2023, I landed in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. Nepal lies between China and India and has a population of around 30m. Kathmandu is located in a valley in the middle of the Himalayas [...]
Lessons from the dot-com bubble, 25 years on March 13, 2025 While it’s tempting to compare the current excitement around AI to the dot-com bubble of 2000, it would be wrong to draw too many parallels, says Brad Holland As one market reporter quipped in Summer 2000: ‘pity the poor technology investor’. After the past fortnight’s trimming of US financial markets, some might think this observation has proven [...]
What do Conservatives really think about climate change? March 12, 2025 The public is clear that it wants action on climate change, but don’t want to pay more for it – and Conservatives are particularly opposed to higher taxes. The future of the centre-right depends on resolving this tension, says Simon Clarke What do the public think about the environment and the UK’s commitment to climate [...]
Five years on, has Covid really changed the way we work? March 12, 2025 With this week marking five years since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Julia Turney asks whether the world of work has really changed.
The Debate: Should we stop eating avocados? March 12, 2025 Alan Titchmarsh has waged war on the avocado, but do we really need to stop eating them? Two writers hash in out in this week's debate.
Preparing for war: What we didn’t learn from the pandemic March 12, 2025 The health service may not have been ready for the pandemic, but the rest of government was even less prepared. As we brace for a potential war, it’s time policy makers listen to that warning, says Joe Hill Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian general, famously asserted that war was the “continuation of politics by other [...]