How large were cuts to government spending during the last parliament? The answer may surprise you. Overall real expenditure fell … Continue reading “Forget horse-trading over cuts: The Spending Review is an opportunity to rethink the state”

We should have called 2010 ‘The Phoney Election’. Right up until polling day, our wannabe political leaders were debating the … Continue reading “The second urgent election issue on which the parties are silent. Where will they make most of their cuts?”

This article is based on David B. Smith’s Politeia paper ‘The UK Government Spending Ratio: Back to the 1930s?’. Some … Continue reading “Government spending: ‘Back to the 30s’ claims are nonsense on stilts”

The fallout from the Autumn Statement has mainly revolved around one Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) graph and the words … Continue reading “Is George Osborne really returning us to a 1930s government? Accurate comparisons suggest a definite ‘no’”

British Chancellor George Osborne and United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron received a timely reminder today that their tough-sounding rhetoric … Continue reading “Freeze UK public spending for five years to achieve growth”

Italy had its general election on February 25-26. The centre-left coalition led by the Democratic Party’s Pier Luigi Bersani obtained a … Continue reading “Italy is the sick man of Europe, and also very contagious”

To hear First Minister Alex Salmond tell it, gaining independence from the U.K. is the most pressing issue facing Scots. … Continue reading “Scotland’s constitution is not the problem”

With a clear majority, the House of Lords has voted against the proposed changes to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), … Continue reading “The opponents of the ESA cuts are right for the wrong reason”

If you google the phrase ‘vicious public spending cuts’ you get 64,000 results from UK websites. Even if 32,000 of those are … Continue reading “Big steps to a smaller state”