Matthew Lesh

Former Chancellor George Osborne has become the latest British politician to call for a smoking ban. The architect of the sugar tax wants the UK to follow the lead of New Zealand, which will prohibit anyone born after 2008 from purchasing cigarettes.  'You basically phase it out. Of course you’re going to have lots of problems with illegal smoking, but you have lots of problems with other illegal activities,' Osborne said. 'It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and ban them and police them and make it less readily available. I thought that was a compelling public health intervention.' You have to admire his flawless logic. Prohibition has proven so successful for recreational drugs; so successful that even senior politicians have admitted to using Class A substances.

WhatsApp, Signal and five other messaging services have joined forces to attack the government's Online Safety Bill. They fear the bill will kill end-to-end encryption and say, in an open letter, that this could open the door to 'routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal messages'. The stakes are high: WhatsApp and Signal are threatening to leave the UK market if encryption is undermined. This intervention comes as the Lords begins their line-by-line committee stage scrutiny of the Bill today. Encryption provides a defence against fraud and scams; it allows us to communicate with friends and family safely; it enables human rights activists to send incriminating information to journalists.

The Online Safety Bill became a lightning rod for criticism during the Conservative party leadership contest over the summer. A wide array of candidates, from Kemi Badenoch to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, promised to take another look at how the legislation, and its attempt to crack down on online harms, could interfere with free speech.  The ‘legal but harmful’ duties, now being removed, required the largest digital companies to address state-determined categories of legal speech – like ‘disinformation’ or ‘hate speech’ – in their terms and conditions. But in practice ‘legal but harmful’ was never the most problematic part of the proposed legislation. While the impetus was for more user content to be removed, technically the platforms could have opted to do nothing.

The battle for the soul of the Republican party after President Trump has begun. Last week former United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, gave a provocative speech to the Hudson Institute setting herself up for a 2024 run on a largely free market platform. The speech has been published by Stand for America, an advocacy organization founded by Haley after standing down as ambassador in December 2018. Haley argues that capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty, improved the environment, and created immense prosperity – including the electricity, cars, airplanes, the internet and much more.

If Britain and Australia agree a post-Brexit trade deal, Liz Truss the international trade secretary has said that free movement between the two countries could form part of an agreement. In a press conference this morning in Canberra, Truss explained that 'Australians want to come and live and work in Britain, and Brits want to come and live and work in Australia'. In response to a question about free movement and the relaxation of current checks, Truss said that this was 'certainly something that we will be looking at as part of our free trade negotiations'. This potentially could take the form of pure free movement (like Australia has with New Zealand) or a visa that allows anyone who can find a job to stay (like Australia has with the United States).

Philip Hammond is up to one last trick before bowing out – and it’s a good one. The Chancellor has called on each of the Tory leadership candidates to commit to ensuring Britain’s debt falls as a share of national income every year. Hammond reportedly asked in a letter to leadership candidates: 'If we do not commit to getting our debt down after a nine-year run of uninterrupted economic growth, how can we demonstrate a dividing line between the fiscal responsibility of our party and the reckless promises of John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn?' Playing Labour-lite – promising just a little less spending than socialists Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell – is not only fiscally irresponsible but provides political cover for their reckless plans.

It is hard to exaggerate the level of shock caused by Scott Morrison’s Australian election victory. The re-election of the country's Liberal party prime minister – and the defeat of left-wing Labor leader Bill Shorten – took the polls and plenty of Aussies by surprise. Earlier this year, Shorten told a bemused Arnold Schwarzenegger “I’m going to be the next prime minister of Australia”. The Australian people had a different idea. In his victory speech, Morrison thanked “quiet Australians” for supporting him. A similar dynamic was, of course, at play among shy Tories in the 2015 election in Britain, shy Brexiteers in 2016 and then shy Trump voters later that same year.

Rent control would worsen London’s housing crisis while hurting the poor, immigrants, and minorities. Yet Sadiq Khan wants to make it the central plank of his bid to win re-election as London Mayor. Khan has said the case for rent control is 'overwhelming' and that 'Londoners overwhelmingly want it to happen'. But while some may see rent control as a way of capping the money going into the pockets of landlords, it would actually make London's problems worse. Rent control would lead to less home building—what London actually needs. On top of that it will mean lower quality housing and discrimination against the most vulnerable. From San Francisco to Stockholm, Berlin and New York, rent control has proven disastrous in every place it has been tried.