Samuel Hughes

Dr Samuel Hughes was Sir Roger Scruton's researcher on the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission and is a housing fellow at Policy Exchange

Friday

Samuel Hughes

Could this infrastructure bill get Britain growing again?

Every so often, something unexpected happens in the Westminster village which disturbs the usual run of malicious gossip and misleading polling. This happened yesterday, when the whole village began buzzing about, of all things, infrastructure planning. The cause of this was a draft ‘National Priority Infrastructure Bill’, which you can read here, an oven-ready piece of legislation aimed at drastically liberalising infrastructure planning, released by Dr Lawrence Newport of the Looking for Growth campaign. Newport has form on attracting media attention. A young legal scholar, he sprang to national prominence in 2023 with his campaign to ban the Bully XL, an extremely violent dog that had been intentionally bred to pass through a loophole in the Dangerous Dogs Act.

Thursday

Samuel Hughes

The China model: why is the West imitating Beijing?

26 min listen

In this week’s podcast, we talk to the author of our cover story, eminent author, historian and broadcaster Niall Ferguson, who advances the theory that the West and China are in the throes of a new cold war which the Unites States is on course to lose, should the Biden administration continue to following Beijing’s lead on apparently everything from lockdown to digital currencies. Joining the debate is Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, from Chatham House. (01:05) ‘All of the features of Cold War I are here today which is why I have been speaking for a couple of years about Cold War II’ - Niall Ferguson. Next up, Laura Freeman writes in the magazine this week about the fake facades she has been increasingly noticing while out and about in London.

Monday

Samuel Hughes

Scruton’s housing vision is finally being realised

The government’s white paper on planning reform makes frequent reference to Roger Scruton and his Building Beautiful Commission – on which I worked as Scruton’s research assistant. If Scruton had lived to read the white paper, he would have found much to like, especially its commitment to building the homes the country needs. But he would have insisted that the proposed reforms can only succeed if the government gets the details right in its plans to win the consent of local people. Consent based on drastically raising the aesthetic standards of new buildings and by enabling communities to share in the benefits of development. The starting point of the reform proposals is the wholly correct claim that we need to build more homes.