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
How pleasing that the sleazebags at Fifa are finally getting their comeuppance. We have all known what has been going on for years: dodgy deals in hotels, backhanders to secure votes. Who could disagree with the judgement of Greg Dyke, chairman of the FA when he suggested: ‘There is no way of rebuilding trust in Fifa
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New communities secretary Greg Clark has the least enviable job in the cabinet: justifying the policy of extending the right-to-buy to housing association tenants. The policy, hastily put together in the early stages of the election campaign, was roundly condemned from across the political spectrum. Dominic Lawson, not a noted socialist, for example pointed out
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Why is it that whenever anyone proposes a tax on the wealthy all hell breaks loose, but when someone proposes a tax on the poor there is no more than a faint whimper of protest? Yesterday, life sciences minister George Freeman, speaking at the Hay Festival, floated the idea of a sugar tax. In contrast
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The cost of living, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported on Tuesday, has fallen by 0.1 per cent over the past year. Or at least it has if you rent your home and have no intention ever of owning your own. If you do aspire to buy a home, on the other hand, you
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With Chuka Umunna out, the choice for Labour party members is simple. If they want to win the next election they will choose Liz Kendall as their next leader. There is a very simple test for suitability for the job: their reply to the question ‘did the last Labour government spend too much money?’ Kendall
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‘Bank of England says that migrants are holding down wages’ the headlines screamed this morning. Yet Mark Carney, when interviewed on the Today programme this morning, spun a slightly different story. Migrants bear some responsibility for downwards pressure on wages, he said, but not so much as another group of people: British workers in the
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For the past few days the BBC website has had an interactive game where you have to build your own coalition, using a series of possible results from tomorrow’s election. It ought to be marketed as an educational test, far more challenging even than Michael Gove’s rigorous school tests. But finally, I think I have
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What is the point of government passing a law to stop it doing something when it can just as easily repeal it? If George Osborne were still to find himself Chancellor after the election I can’t see that we would feel any more bound to abide by a law fixing the rates of income tax,
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How foolish of Ed Miliband to try to pervert the free market in housing with his rent controls. There is a slight problem with this analysis, which we have heard ad nauseam from the Conservatives and from the right in general over the past 24 hours. We don’t have a free market in housing and
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No speech that Ed Miliband has made over the past five years has generated so much derision on the right as when he divided capitalists into ‘predators and producers’. That was because everyone knows there is a lot of truth in Ed’s analysis. And worse, the legal system seems to support the predators. Today, a
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I agree with much of what Iain Duncan Smith said on Sky TV this morning: that zero-hours contracts should be rebranded ‘flexible-hours contracts’, that they are good for work-life balance and are often very popular with those who are employed in this way – who are, as a result, able to do such things as
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The BBC opposition leaders’ debate wasn’t great political theatre, but it did turn into a fascinating experiment in human behaviour. A third of the way through, Nigel Farage suddenly imploded, attacking the BBC for putting together a left-wing audience – which he then went onto to insult and dismiss as an irrelevance, the real audience
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‘The dream of a property-owning democracy is alive,’ David Cameron will say today as he launches the Conservative manifesto, promising to extend the right to buy to all 1.3 million housing association tenants. Why, then, if he wants to promote a property-owning democracy is he also proposing to raise allowances for inheritance tax, allowing people
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Nicola Sturgeon has been described as a rock star politician. In Tuesday’s STV debate she looked like one who is suffering from second album syndrome. Having impressed a UK-wide audience in the seven-leader ITV debate last week, her reception at the Scottish version was far more muted, with some instant polls suggesting a narrow victory
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I have never been impressed by round robin letters, so if Ed Miliband had shrugged off the letter to the Daily Telegraph this week signed by 103 businessmen with the words: ‘if they have got something to say why can’t they speak for themselves rather than bleating like a flock of sheep’ he would have
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As soon as I heard the French prosecutor reveal that the co-pilot of the Germanwings jet appears deliberately to have flown his plane into a mountain it took me back to an anecdote told to me by a friend who is an airline pilot. A pilot, like you and I, has to go through scanners
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The most remarkable poll of the week was the one which suggested the British public find Ed Miliband more of a toff than David Cameron. It takes something to out-toff an Old Etonian with a patrician air and liking for green wellies. But is it so very surprising? Ed has, after all, just shown himself to be on
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I always thought that rugby was invented so that there was no chance of public schoolboys having to meet grotty kids from football-playing state schools on the playing fields. But until recently all children, whether in the state or independent sector, did at least take the same exams. Until, that is, there emerged a great
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There have been many occasions since the financial crisis that I have been led to question the calibre of the more-than-amply remunerated ‘masters of the Universe’ who inhabit the City. But this morning brings a fresh insight into the competence of the fund managers who look after our pensions and investments. Biggest riser in the FTSE250
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Cue the Guardian headlines of ‘exploitation’ in ‘Dickensian’ Britain. Nearly 700,000 people are now working on zero-hours contracts, a rise of 100,000 in just one year. Is that really such a problem? Not among the many people who want flexible work because they want to fit the business of earning money around studying, travelling or
