George Bridges

George Bridges was chairman of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee from January 2022 to January 2025

Monday

George Bridges

Is it too early to tell Rachel Reeves ‘I told you so’?

From our UK edition

'I told you so' – the most irritating four words in the English language, dripping with self-satisfaction and schadenfreude. So, forgive me. A year ago I – or rather, 'we', the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee of which I was chair – told you, the great British public, that the UK risked economic catastrophe. A cross-party group including Corbynites and Thatcherites, we came to one crushing conclusion: unless this government took tough decisions this Parliament, the UK’s sky-high debt might well become unsustainable.  A year on, what had been the subject of intense but largely ignored scrutiny in Lords’ Committee Room 2A has, at last, become the dominating issue.

Sunday

George Bridges

Are central bankers too powerful?

From our UK edition

Donald Trump’s political and legal assault on the Federal Reserve has provoked concern and indignation from the defenders of central banks’ operational independence. Amid the sound and fury, some simple points are being forgotten. Whether or not this distracts central bankers from their main goal of controlling inflation is a matter of debate First, public trust and confidence in central banks is critical if banks are to be operationally independent. That trust was shaken when many central banks lost control of inflation in 2021, erroneously seeing it as 'transitory'. In the inquest that followed, many central bankers blamed this mistake squarely on their forecasting models. Clearly models had much to answer for.

Thursday

George Bridges

Where is the Conservatives’ post-Brexit agenda?

From our UK edition

What’s the point of Brexit? We are told it is to take back control, but that is a means to an end: what is the end? The current answer is another slogan, ‘unleashing Britain’s potential’, which strings together a collection of policies: trade deals with non-EU countries that, to date, largely replicate existing deals; tougher immigration – although the government’s plan will open up the UK to higher levels of immigration from non-EU countries, and has no cap on numbers; taking control of our waters (fishing is about 0.1% of UK GDP); new rules for our ports and shipping (0.6% of GDP); banning live animal exports; blue passports.

Saturday

George Bridges

What price is too high in the war against Covid?

From our UK edition

Wars reshape states. The powers and size of governments grow. Economic activity is controlled or subsidised. Liberties are curtailed. Identity cards, rationing, censorship: the rights of the individual and freedom of speech are subjugated to a national effort to win the war. Lifestyles change, and so do societies. The struggle against Covid, if not exactly a war, is beginning to have a similar impact on our economy and society. Not since 1939 has government action transformed societies to the extent we have seen in the last six months. Swathes of the economy have been shuttered, while states have propped up businesses and paid millions of workers’ salaries.

Thursday

George Bridges

Where it all went wrong

From our UK edition

Management books often repeat the dictum: ‘If there’s one thing worse than making mistakes, it’s not learning from them.’ So let’s apply that smug little idea to Brexit. Before I start, a couple of housekeeping points. I voted Remain, but believe we must leave the EU and honour the referendum result. Second, as a former Brexit minister, writing this is a form of therapy for me. Failure no. 1 — from which many other failures flow — was a lack of honesty. Brexit is the biggest challenge we’ve faced since 1939. It’s complex, existential and will take years. It demands a sense of national endeavour, of ‘let us go forward together’.

Saturday

George Bridges

Too many toddlers

From our UK edition

A new baby boom is reaching school age, and we’re not prepared Some time in the next week or so, all being well, my wife will have baby number three. That means more hours spent in Battersea Park’s playground, a flocking place for parents who inhabit that sliver of south-west London known as Nappy Valley. Go there any Saturday morning and you’ll see toddlers everywhere: squabbling on the swings, pushing each other off the pirate ship. Having lived in London for 20 years, I’m used to a crush of commuters. But toddler overcrowding strikes me as something new. There are now Nappy Valleys all over Britain — places feeling the blast of a population explosion that our political class seems determined to ignore.

Thursday

George Bridges

The challenge of demographic change

From our UK edition

There may be a lot of debate about what the “big society” means, but there’s one thing we should all be able to agree on: we live in a big society – and it’s getting bigger. 62 million today. 64 million in five year’s time. And then on up to 70 million by 2028, according to the government.  (No, I’m not doing my bit, as my wife is about to have our third child.) What’s odd is how little debate there’s been at Westminster about all this. Why? Partly because it means you have to talk about immigration (still seen as toxic by many in SW1); partly because it is one of those issues that is just so big that it almost saps the will to live.

Saturday

George Bridges

Whose side are they on?

From our UK edition

The Conservatives have proved unafraid of making enemies with their cuts. It’s less clear that they know who their friends are With all the spending review figures published, one question still hangs in the air: whose side is the coalition on? Families with teenagers? No, they’ll be hit by higher university fees. Families where the single earner brings home more than £45,000? No, they’ll lose child benefit. High earners? There’s the new 50p tax for them. The public sector? With all those job cuts, that’s a sick joke. The armed forces? Unlikely, after the hatchet job on the defence budget. Commuters? No, it’s higher fares for them.

Wednesday

George Bridges

Hands off Jerusalem, my family heirloom

From our UK edition

George Bridges on the part played by his great-grandfather, Robert Bridges, in the composition of Parry’s music to Blake’s lyric: too precious, he says, to be hijacked by separatists I suspect you had better things to do last Friday evening than stay in to watch the English Democrats’ party political broadcast. I missed it. In fact, I didn’t know the party existed until I was throwing out the newspapers at the weekend, and happened to see the broadcast listed on the TV page. Intrigued, I looked them up online. ‘England: we have a right to be angry. THE ENGLISH HAVE HAD ENOUGH.’ I began to feel as if I had just hitched a ride with White Van Man, raging on about Gordon! Ken! Tax! Immigration! Europe! Everything in capitals, with lots of !!!!!s.

Wednesday

George Bridges

Welcome to subprime Britain. How scared should you be?

From our UK edition

When London radio news is being sponsored by a firm of bailiffs, you know something bad is happening. ‘Helping landlords get what they’re owed’ runs the cheery slogan at the end of the bulletins. As bad as the financial headlines are, this tells a bigger story than anything captured in the headlines — proof that the credit crunch is not an abstraction confined to the financial markets, but a bitter reality, already claiming victims and leaving tens of thousands to wonder if they will be next. All over the country, the borrowed penny is dropping. It dropped on me about 3.30 a.m.