Write for us!Economic incentives
A Liberal Approach to Our Broken Energy Policies: Fantasy vs. Reality of Net Zero 2050
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Ever since the Climate Change Act 2008 was first passed, we have seen an ideological obsession with Net Zero 2050 to the detriment of both the public purse and the supply of our energy. I contend that the obsession with Net Zero at any cost, has had a severe impact on both our economy and our source of energy and I will spell out the course of action that should have been taken over the last twenty years or so. This is a strategy we can still pivot towards as we move towards to 2050. Net Zero – an unhealthy…
Welfare in the 21st Century: From Hand Down to Hand Up
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The total welfare bill in the UK, has risen from approximately £100 billion in the early noughties, to £333.6 billion in 2025-26, a more than a threefold increase in just over twenty years, It now comprises 10% of our total GDP. It is expected to hit £400 billion by the end of the decade, according to a recent report by the Centre for Policy Studies. This unsustainable growth in welfare spending needs tackling. In this article, I am going to advocate a welfare system which is simpler, fairer and ensures that working pays better than welfare dependency. Simplification Currently there…
A Track Less Discovered: A Novel Approach to Railways in the 21st Century
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The Labour Government’s latest attempt at reforming railways in Britain by bringing them back into public ownership, without actually spelling out in detail how this will work in relation to the Great British Railways project, suggests a lack of imagination on the part of the government. It’s time we moved beyond the complication of having a rail franchising system operating within a state-owned railway structure. Britain can and should be more ambitious and therefore opt instead for ‘Open Access Rail’ throughout the system. The bankrupt Rail Franchising System Ever since the inception of rail privatisation in 1996 under John Major’s…
A Liberal Approach to the State: A Twenty‑First Century Concept of the State’s Role
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Historically, liberals viewed the state with caution and perhaps even indifference. Classical Liberals (like me), argued for a state which is restricted by a codified constitution, separation of powers and respect for the rule of law. Ultimately, the state is there to serve the interest of individuals, not to control them. However, this concept of the state is restricted to a somewhat archaic way of thinking that emerged out of the enlightenment period of the 17th and 18th century, most notably from thinkers such as John Locke. However, over three hundred years later and with the incredible advancement of technology…
Time for a Liberal Approach to Fiscal Policy
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Fiscal policy in the UK needs a massive overhaul and indeed a fresh pair of eyes – a liberal, specifically Keynesian approach, would I believe, be a successful approach to treating the ills of the decaying UK economy. Taxation in the UK has become synonymous with overcomplexity and opaqueness: it’s time for a rethink. The British tax code is an incredible 24,000 pages long. To put that into perspective, Hong Kong’s is a mere 350 pages. Ironically, the complexity of the UK Tax Code appeals to the very rich, who can afford to employ advisers who help them to exploit…
Guns, Wealth and Welfare – Who Carries the Burden for Defence?
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The argument for democratic reform on defence, taxation and the social contract. Britain is in the middle of a debate about defence spending. On the surface, it looks like a straightforward question of national security; how much should the country spend, and how quickly? But scratch beneath that surface and a far more uncomfortable set of questions emerges: who actually benefits from military power, who is being asked to pay for it, and what does the answer reveal about the kind of society Britain truly is? The answers are not flattering. The welfare-for-weapons trade-off In early 2025, Chancellor Rachel Reeves…
From Blair’s ‘Tough on Crime/Tough on the Causes of Crime’ to Placing Sticking Plasters Over Gaping Wounds Under Starmer — How Britain’s Shoplifting Crackdown Exposes a Justice System Built to Protect Property Over People, and Power Over Accountability
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On Monday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer stood before the USDAW shop workers’ union and declared an end to the shoplifting “free-for-all.” It was the kind of speech that plays well in a headline cycle: tough, purposeful, protective of honest working people against those who “cheat the system.” The government announced stiffer penalties for shoplifters, 3,000 additional neighbourhood police officers, a £5 million specialist intelligence unit targeting retail crime gangs, and a new standalone offence for assaulting a shop worker. The statistics underpinning the announcement were, at best, modest. According to the Office for National Statistics, shoplifting offences fell from 516,611…
The Compassion Trap: Herbie’s Law and the Patients No‑One Cares About
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A proposed law to end animal testing in UK medical research by 2035 is being sold as an act of compassion. But the real human cost of getting this wrong has been almost entirely absent from the debate — and it will fall hardest on those who can least afford it. Herbie is a rabbit. He was bred for a laboratory, tattooed on his ear, and (as the story goes) rescued before his fate could be sealed. He has since become the face of one of the most emotionally compelling campaigns in recent British politics: a push to ban all…
The Road not Taken
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In the autumn of 1986, Margaret Thatcher’s government abolished road service licensing for local bus services outside London (commonly called deregulation). The logic was market orthodoxy: competition would drive down costs, encourage innovation, and serve passengers better than the inefficiencies of public ownership ever had. Almost four decades later, the verdict is in, and it is damning. Bus journeys across England have fallen from 4.6 billion in 2009 to 3.6 billion in 2024. Outside London, bus mileage has collapsed by 29% compared to 2005. In the north of England, the decline is starker still: Transport for the North reports that…
A Plan for Young People
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In this I want to propose an approach to two issues – youth unemployment and pensions for younger people. Youth unemployment has recently hit the news. As of the final quarter of 2025, the unemployment rate for 16-24-year-olds stands at 16.1%, the highest in a decade and now exceeding the EU average of 14.7%. Total UK unemployment is at 5.2%, a five-year high, but young people are disproportionately affected, with entry-level hiring stalling amid higher payroll costs from the 2025 National Insurance (NI) hike to 15% and minimum wage increases. Meanwhile given the UK’s declining birth rate, England and Wales…
This Stupid Tax Rule is Harming the Country and Needs to Go
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The Labour Government from 1997 to 2010 did many harmful things to the tax system. Although Gordon Brown when Chancellor of the Exchequer had a stellar reputation with much of the media, I always considered him a poor Chancellor. The reason is that he kept endlessly tinkering with the tax rules by introducing stealth taxes that he hoped people would not notice, but which had harmful side effects. However, blame for possibly the worst such stealth tax must be shared between Gordon Brown as Prime Minister and the late Alistair Darling who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer who announced…
