We are not having a very good pandemic so far. With over 1,500 deaths per million people, Britain has one … Continue reading “No, “austerity” is not to blame for Britain’s poor Covid performance”

Long-standing battles on the role and size of the state won’t be settled by a virus, says a new briefing paper from Dr Kristian … Continue reading “Claims that “austerity” is to blame for UK’s poor pandemic response are “baseless,” says new IEA research”

Summary This briefing looks at the impact of the pandemic on the UK’s public finances and assesses the scale of … Continue reading “A briefing on the public finances: How deep a hole are we in?”

The United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, recently published his second and final report on poverty in … Continue reading “Is the special rapporteur right about poverty? (Part 1)”

The staff at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) are the best public finance number-crunchers in the UK. But last … Continue reading “Are there really no alternatives to tax increases (as the IFS claims)?”

So much for US Republicans starving the government beast. When the party’s major tax reform package passed in December, Democrats … Continue reading “US Republicans have given up any pretence of fiscal conservatism”

Ten years ago today, George Monbiot wrote an article for the Guardian titled ‘In this age of diamond saucepans, only … Continue reading “Remember the real champions of austerity: George Monbiot and the eco-miserabilists”

Have you ever wondered why many Tories spent the past two elections implying that Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn hated … Continue reading “On Brexit and ideological tribalism”

The launches of the Conservative manifesto and Donald Trump’s first budget could not have been more different in tone. Theresa … Continue reading “Fiscal restraint is dead – on both sides of the Pond”