Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. He writes on Substack, at Ross on Why?
From our UK edition
Who are all these people who keep being photographed on Bournemouth beach and elsewhere, frolicking in the midday sun? None of them, obviously, work for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) or the TUC. None of them can possibly be members of the Unite union, nor Unison, nor the GMB. It is little wonder that
From our UK edition
If you want to spend the sunny weather house-hunting in East London, you will be met with a stark message in one of the windows of a development alongside the A12. ‘Don’t buy these flats,’ it reads, ‘Too hot’. Residents complain of temperatures which do not fall below 27 Celsius even at four in the
From our UK edition
There really is no hiding place for Rachel Reeves in this morning’s employment figures. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) release shows that 164,000 payrolled positions have been lost in the 12 months to July, Labour’s first year in office. Those figures are still provisional, but the figures for the 12 months to June show
From our UK edition
From Lord Kinnock’s demand for a wealth tax and VAT on private health fees to Gordon Brown pressing for gambling taxes, it is plain that Labour has run out of ideas other than dreaming up new ways to part us from our money. Even so, Kemi Badenoch is ill-advised to go on an all-out attack
From our UK edition
Will yesterday’s cut in interest rates bring relief to the government in its economic problems, offering a breather to people who feel that their living standards are declining? That is unlikely for two reasons. Firstly, people buying homes with mortgages – the most obvious beneficiaries of a cut in interest rates – are more likely
From our UK edition
As the man who first gave Britain a £150 billion deficit, I don’t think Gordon Brown is the best person to advise the current government on its fiscal policy. But even so the gaping hole in his call for higher gambling duties does raise the eyebrows. Brown seems to think that higher gambling taxes are
From our UK edition
Are civil servants throwing sickies en masse in protest at being forced to go back into the office to work three days a week? The order to return to the office, made by the previous government, seems to have coincided with a sharp rise in the number of days which staff are taking off sick.
From our UK edition
High levels of migration might not always be good for community relations if large numbers of new arrivals descend on one neighbourhood, but at least it helps boost GDP by providing Britain with a source of eager workers whom employers struggle to find in Britain. That sums up the view of some economists, but it
From our UK edition
We can’t stop the illegal migrants, so let’s crack down on legal ones instead. That pretty well sums up the government’s policy on migration. Last year foreign students earned Britain £12.1 billion in revenue. They are one of our strongest export industries (while the students might physically be entering Britain, they are an export because
From our UK edition
Maybe Trump doesn’t always chicken out after all. Rapid trade deals with the UK, Japan, the EU and others in recent weeks may have given the impression that the trade war was essentially over. Today, though, comes Trump’s Ardennes offensive, with immediate tariffs of 35 per cent announced for Canada. Other countries have been given
From our UK edition
Wes Streeting was recently revealed to have said in private that junior doctors (or resident doctors, as they now like to be called) must be made to ‘feel pain’ for going on strike – for fear of encouraging other public sector workers to copy their example. Today comes a reminder of why he said it:
From our UK edition
The most remarkable thing about today’s air traffic control failure, which has led to at least 45 flights being cancelled and many more disrupted, is how few people are bothering even to question whether this could be the work of hackers employed by a foreign power. In recent years almost every systems failure that afflicts
From our UK edition
Given the perilous condition of Britain’s public finances, perhaps we ought to start taking the IMF and its World Economic Outlook a little more seriously. It is not impossible to foresee Rachel Reeves or her successor having to repeat what one of her Labour predecessors, Denis Healey, had to do in 1976: and beg the
From our UK edition
Maybe it is Donald Trump’s way of getting back at Keir Starmer for Labour sending activists to campaign for Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election. Either way, the US president seems to have no intention of obeying the convention that leaders of democratic do not delve into the domestic politics of their counterparts in
From our UK edition
Donald Trump is often treated in Britain as a know-nothing who speaks off the top of his head on subjects he does not understand. No one is keener to try to make this point than the BBC. Yet not for the first time, it turns out that he is bit more on the ball than some
From our UK edition
The more you look at the trade deal negotiated between the US and the EU, the more you want to ask: why couldn’t Britain have dealt with the EU like that? Why has every UK Prime Minister since Theresa May acted so feebly in the face of the EU’s tactics and ended up getting such
It is easy to admire Trump’s negotiating tactics. But that doesn’t mean that the US will end up being the big winner from higher import tariffs
From our UK edition
Just a few weeks ago the trade union movement seemed to be on a high. It has got rid of its hated Tory government. Legislation which made it harder to call strikes had been hastily abolished by the incoming Starmer government. There were generous public sector pay rises all around. If you were a trade
From our UK edition
The official cost of the deal to surrender the Chagos Islands to Mauritius – a country which never owned the islands in the first place – has been put at £101 million a year over the 99-year term of the lease. But the real cost could end up being multiples of this. Not only did
Trump will be able to claim a negotiating success. But that doesn’t mean Americans will be better off for it
