Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. His books include Not Zero, The Road to Southend Pier, and Far From EUtopia: Why Europe is failing and Britain could do better
‘It’s Scotland’s oil,’ cried the slogan of the SNP in the 1970s when the party first began a serious drive for Scottish independence. Not according to the current Labour government at Westminster, it isn’t. The oil doesn’t belong to Britain, either, but to the Earth – and that is where it will stay if Ed
Donald Trump’s tendency to exaggerate and make up figures as he goes along is for some people a symptom of the ‘post-truth society’. But for the president himself it is a useful rhetorical tool which helps draws attention to things which might otherwise get less of an airing. Yes, it is a gross exaggeration to
The cowboys must be licking their lips. Ed Miliband has come up with yet another green homes scheme to chuck public money at subsidised energy improvements. The Warm Homes Plan will allocate £15 billion to grants and low-cost loans for homeowners who want to upgrade their insulation, and fit heat pumps and solar panels. According
The excruciating thing about Donald Trump is that the madder and more unreasonable he seems to become, the more he catches everyone out when he says something that is utterly true. The US president’s manoeuvres on Greenland are the act of a bully and autocrat; for him to suggest that he wants Greenland as compensation for
Normally rail ticket prices are raised in line with the Retail Prices Index (RPI) plus 3 per cent. This January, unusually, they didn’t increase. But that is not how it will feel if you fancy a short break in Edinburgh. In that case, you may well find yourself paying double what you used to pay.
How grim things are suddenly looking for Nigel Farage and Reform UK. It isn’t that their poll ratings are crashing – in spite of a minor decline in the polls in recent weeks, the party still holds a commanding lead. For the moment, the outcome of the next election continues to look like being either
Remember the summer of 2022 when politicians from Ed Miliband to Boris Johnson went around telling us that wind energy was ‘four times cheaper’ than electricity generated by gas. It wasn’t true then – even at the top of the spike in gas prices which followed the Ukraine invasion. But it looks like an absurd
‘Evidence-based policy-making’ is very much in vogue – until, that is, the evidence doesn’t quite support what the government wants to do. Then governments tend to plough on ahead anyway, evidence or not. Just why is the government proposing to lower the drink-driving limit in England from 80mg/100ml to 50mg/100ml? To many people, government ministers
Shock horror. A Cambridge college has realised that to recruit the brightest students sometimes you have to encourage students from private schools as well as state comprehensives in poor neighbourhoods. You can almost feel the foundations of higher education quivering at Trinity Hall’s decision to write to private schools to encourage pupils to apply for certain
From our US edition
One remarkable thing about Donald Trump’s adventure in Venezuela is just how old-fashioned it is. It is a world away from George W. Bush’s neoconservative efforts at nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is little attempt to justify the arrest of Nicolás Maduro in terms of the human rights of Venezuelan citizens. Little attention appears
It is easy to see the political attraction for Nigel Farage of promising to reverse Rachel Reeves’s decision to end the 5 pence cut in road fuel duty. The idea that we are in the midst of a cost of living crisis has not gone away – in spite of the fact that, notionally, average
As Keir Starmer found out with digital ID, what the public initially says it wants isn’t always what it turns out to want once the details become clear. A large majority in favour of digital ID turned into a significant majority against once people started to ask themselves: is this scheme really going to tackle
Thank God for HS2. The scandal of the ever-more expensive and ever-delayed rail line from London to Birmingham (and now no further) has taken the heat off another of Britain’s tortured rail projects: East West Rail, linking Oxford and Cambridge. East-West rail has the distinction of being even older than HS2, having first been proposed
Ed Miliband has given up trying to promise £300 a year off our energy bills. He is now dangling the prospect of something even better: ‘zero bill’ homes. He is expected to announce a new £13 billion ‘Warm Homes Fund’ to subsidise solar panels and heat pumps which could mean some householders paying nothing for
How tempting it is to rush to the aid of Clare Melford, one of the five people told by the Trump regime that they cannot have a US visa on the grounds that their presence in the country is not conducive to America’s commitment to free speech. It is hypocritical, one might say to Team
Could Labour, under a new leader, go into the next election with a manifesto promising to start negotiations to rejoin the EU? It is beginning to look like a real possibility given Wes Streeting’s assertion that Britain should rejoin the customs union. If Britain were to become part of the customs union, it would make
Until Rachel Reeves tightened the rules in last month’s Budget, Motability customers were able to sink into the leather seats of a top-of-the-range Mercedes. But however luxurious the upholstery, it can’t have been as thick and durable as the rhinoceros skin of Motability boss Andrew Miller. He has just been awarded a 23 per cent pay
Is the government engaged in a campaign by stealth to return the UK to membership of the EU? It couldn’t make a better job of it if it was trying. This morning comes the news that Britain is to rejoin the Erasmus scheme, which offers students the opportunity to engage in an exchange with other
Imagine you are a keen Brexiteer and opponent of net zero plans, especially of the idea of being forced to buy an electric vehicle (EV). There are plenty of people like you; there is much evidence to suggest that the two things go together. But you must now be feeling a little confused. It must
We are, as vicars like to tell us, all special in our own way. But none so much as children in Scottish primary schools, 43 per cent of whom are classified as having special needs. This can entitle them to extra tuition and, when they are older, extra time in exams. The expansion of Send
