James Kirkup is a partner at Apella Advisors and a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation.
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Politicians are keen to fix what is seen as a mounting political problem with student loans. An increasing number of graduates are pointing out that the Plan 2 loan scheme in particular imposes some painful and unreasonable marginal burdens on their earnings. After all, paying another nine percentage points of student loan charges on top
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Never has Rachel Reeves been so glad to be so boring. The Chancellor will deliver today her spring update on the public finances at a time of unusual calm in the often overdramatic story of UK economic policy. One of the biggest actors in the story, the bond market, is currently happy and sleepy. In
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Peter Mandelson may just have achieved the impossible. He has made me feel sorry for Gordon Brown. When I was a lobby correspondent in the 2000s, I spent a great deal of time covering Brown, first as chancellor, then as prime minister. I did not emerge from the experience with a particularly warm impression of the man.
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The lexicon of Brexit has a new entry: the ‘Farage clause’. As part of Labour’s ‘reset’ talks with Brussels, EU negotiators have reportedly floated a termination provision that would require compensation if a future UK government walked away from a new deal designed to ease post-Brexit checks on food and agricultural trade. In plain English: if Britain
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For decades, British politics has lived in the shadow of a major failure of social and economic policy: the imbalance between graduates and those who don’t go to university. Many politicians have understood the need to do better for the ‘other 50%’ who don’t go to higher education. But few have delivered real change. From
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Work is good. Work generates wealth, makes people happier and, maybe, delivers salvation. The Protestant work ethic is much disputed among sociologists and economic historians, but most people accept that some level of work is both necessary and desirable. This makes it all the more troubling that, buried in the OBR data under the Budget,
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It’s traditional to describe Budgets as a political gamble. Rachel Reeves is actually making two bets. First, that voters can be persuaded to see the big picture of the economy – and second, that Labour MPs can be persuaded to take the long view of this parliament. Both are long-odds flutters. On the macro numbers,
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As the Budget approaches, Westminster is full of chatter about Rachel Reeves’s decision to take the ‘smorgasbord’ approach to fiscal policy: lots of small, detailed measures, each raising only modest sums for the Treasury. Conventional wisdom says, correctly, that this is risky. Every little tweak is another opportunity for something to misfire. And when people
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That Britain has the least generous state pension in the G7 should be recognised for what it is: good news. The fact that it won’t be celebrated tells us a lot about the mismatch between policy and politics around pensions in the UK. The nature of Britain’s state pension isn’t an accident or a failure.
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Sir Menzies Campbell’s death means the loss of one of the most inconspicuously interesting people I’ve known in politics, not to mention one of the nicest. Ming, who led the Lib Dems from 2006 to 2007, had naturally faded from the limelight in recent years, but there was a time when he was everywhere. He
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17 min listen
The summer transfer window comes to a close today but, as Parliament also returns from summer recess today, the only team Keir Starmer is focused on is his own in Number Ten. The Prime Minister has decided to reshuffle his advisers, including bringing in Darren Jones MP to Number Ten from the Treasury. Political editor
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When my friend James Lyons told me last summer that he was going to take a gap year, I knew it wouldn’t be a normal career break. It’s common enough for successful men around 50 to take some time out from busy, stressful careers to re-evaluate, reflect and just get some sleep. I know bankers who
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Nigel Farage’s latest immigration plan contains a proposal that deserves to be taken seriously. Reform UK’s ‘Operation Restoring Justice’ promises mass deportations, detention camps, and the withdrawal from international treaties. Those elements will raise both legal and moral challenges. But another part of the package is something that deserves attention and credit: a scheme to
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When William Beveridge designed the welfare state in the 1940s, the state pension age was 65 for men and 60 for women. Life expectancy for a man was around 66, and around 71 for a woman. The pension was not designed to fund decades of leisure: it was a modest provision for the last couple
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Farming is hard, and sheep farming especially so. Sheep are endearing but awkward creatures, generally looking for the most inconvenient way to die. The weather is usually miserable. Lambing is an annual torment. The government is always dreaming up new ways to make things harder. In a real sense, I’m writing this because sheep farming
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Pensions rarely top the Westminster agenda or get politicians excited. Too boring, too distant. But maybe, just maybe, pensions will soon become political. There is a growing consensus among pensions policymakers and industry insiders: if we want future generations to retire with a bit of security and comfort, contributions into defined contribution (DC) pensions
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Labour MPs blaming Rachel Reeves over welfare cuts are like teenagers blaming their mum for telling them to wear a coat when there are bloody great storm clouds on the horizon. It’s silly and it won’t save them from getting soaked. But this is emerging as part of the blame game over Labour’s welfare debacle,
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A Labour government facing a rebellion over welfare reform is something of a dog-bites-man story – Labour never finds this issue easy. But the nature of the current rebellion tells us something novel and revealing, not about the policy, but about the modern Member of Parliament. Yes, principle and policy matter here, but what’s really driving
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Rachel Reeves’ Spending Review does more than set budgets. It exposes a contradiction at the heart of Labour’s approach to government: a party that wants to rebuild the state won’t take the hard decisions needed to make that possible. The review was more painful that it needed to be for Labour, because Labour MPs have
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Nigel Farage’s march to the left continues. Reform is now committed not just to reinstating winter fuel payments for all pensioners but also, more significantly, to scrapping the two-child benefit cap. This is striking but shouldn’t be a surprise. Reform’s move to the left on economic questions has been arguably the most important political
