Write for us!Post-2008 politics
The Ballot and the Manipulated: Has Democracy Lost Its Way?
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Other than being friends, Dan and I don’t have much in common on paper. He was born into poverty in Liverpool, left school at sixteen, joined the army, protested nukes at Greenham Common, drove taxis, raised a couple of children alone on next to nothing, and arrived at philosophy and anarchism through sheer intellect led bloody-minded curiosity. He’s precisely the kind of intellect that Stalin would have sent to Siberia. Me on the other hand, I came from a middle-class background that turned out to be as fractured as any – a mother who resented me, an early exit from…
Why Game Theory Is Breaking Britain – but Could Also Save It
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Game Theory examines when and why people choose to cooperate or compete. Its central insight is that our decisions are shaped not only by what we want, but by what we expect others to do. Well known game theory scenarios include the Prisoner’s dilemma, the Cold War, and on a simpler scale, even Rock, Paper, Scissors. An important aspect of Game Theory relates to whether and why we choose to cooperate or compete. Researchers found that the success of either strategy is dependent on how others in the system behave, and that people instinctively know this. Our decision-making routinely includes…
Who Gets Heard? Why British Governments Listen to Business — and What It Costs the Rest of Us
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Earlier this month, the government quietly closed one of the more brazen rackets in modern British public life. For years, bots and third-party companies had been bulk-buying driving test slots from the DVSA and reselling them to desperate learner drivers for up to £500 eight times the official price of £62. New rules now mean only the learner themselves can book, change or cancel their test. Simple. Effective. Long overdue. But here’s the question worth sitting with: why did it take so long? This wasn’t a hidden problem. The Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency knew. Ministers knew. The waiting lists…
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…
The Glass House Secretary General – George of the Bungle
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George Robertson’s attack on the Starmer government ignores the seeds sown during his own tenure, or the 28-year trend that all parties have followed. When Lord George Robertson of Port Ellen took to the podium in Salisbury earlier this month to deliver the Edward Heath Annual Lecture, he did so with the moral authority of a man who had served as Secretary of State for Defence, who had led NATO for four years, and who had personally authored the current government’s Strategic Defence Review. His language was unsparing. Britain, he declared, was “underprepared, underinsured, under attack and not safe.” The…
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…
Eyes right for the centre left
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For well over a century, centre-left politics has been the engine of progressive change in Britain – building the welfare state, championing civil liberties, advancing social equality, and managing the economy with both competence and compassion. Yet today, many who hold these values find themselves politically homeless, watching as the very ground beneath their feet shifts inexorably rightward. The centre has moved. And if you haven’t noticed, you might be standing further right than you think or indeed want. Consider where we are. The Labour Party, once the champion of social democracy, now operate within a narrower fiscal envelope than Gordon…
