Government

We no longer have a pensions system, just a mess caused by the Treasury

Back in the 1980s, when I was embarking on a lifetime of sweat, toil and tears in order to bring home the bacon, I lived in a pensions desert. I couldn’t see, feel or feed one (a pension, that is) for miles around. During this decade, against a backdrop of privatisations, a rampant Prime Minister (Margaret Thatcher), Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Madonna’s virgins, I was privileged to work for four employers. A major chartered accountancy practice, a big and little publisher and a now defunct building society. Not one offered me the opportunity to save into a company pension. At the time I wasn’t bothered – life was for living, a

VAT: a back door money spinner that generates billions for the government

If conspiracy theorists turned their attention to the economy rather than, I don’t know, aliens or Hillary Clinton, surely it would not take long for them to notice the peculiar rise in the tax take from VAT. VAT sounds innocuous enough, perhaps because no one really knows why it is there or what ‘Value Added’ actually means. But it’s not really innocuous. To a government that makes much of its supposed generosity on income tax through, for example, increasing personal allowances, VAT is becoming the back door money spinner du jour. VAT has all the hallmarks of a brilliantly unfair tax. Unlike income tax, it is often invisible or well

Revealed: the Institute for Government’s Europhile links

This week the Times splashed on a report by the Institute for Government branding Theresa May’s Brexit plans ‘chaotic and dysfunctional’. The research group claimed that Whitehall is overwhelmed by the size of the task ahead and expressed concerns about its feasibility. However, while many Bremoaners have leapt on its findings as proof that the government’s Brexit approach is shambolic, Mr S suggests they take a close look at the group behind it. With a board composed of the likes of Neil Kinnock’s former Chief of Staff at the European Commission, Sir Andrew Cahn, and a range of Labour MPs and peers, it can’t be considered the most neutral outlet. What’s more, the

Breaking the Bank

The exchange of letters this week between Mark Carney and Philip Hammond made it very clear who the supplicant was. The Governor of the Bank of England informed the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he was prepared to extend his term by one year. Carney pointed out that while the personal circumstances that had made him want to limit his term to five years had not changed, this country’s circumstances had. So he would be here a little longer. Things had seemed very different a few weeks ago, when Theresa May bemoaned the consequences of the Bank’s monetary policy in her party conference speech. ‘A change has got to come,’

Blinded with science

We’re continually assured that government policies are grounded in evidence, whether it’s an anti-bullying programme in Finland, an alcohol awareness initiative in Texas or climate change responses around the globe. Science itself, we’re told, is guiding our footsteps. There’s just one problem: science is in deep trouble. Last year, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, admitted that “much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.” In his words, “science has taken a turn toward darkness.” Medical research, psychology, and economics are all in the grip of a ‘reproducibility crisis.’ A pharmaceutical company attempting to confirm the findings of 53 landmark cancer studies was successful in only six

Meet Boris Mark II

The make-up lady at the BBC’s Millbank studio in Westminster has noticed a change in Boris Johnson’s look. ‘His hair is much smarter now,’ she told me as she slapped anti-shine talc on my pate for the Daily Politics show. ‘But he still messes it up a bit after I’ve combed it.’ Boris Mark II has entered the fray. As his conference speech this week showed, he’s still making the gags but they play second fiddle to his more serious aspirations — as a successful Foreign Secretary and, ultimately, PM. Like some rare species of blond cockroach, Boris survived the post-referendum nuclear fallout while the other Bullingdon boys and the

Exit the Tsar

Helen Rappaport’s new book makes no claim to be a complete account of the Russian revolution. Instead it presents a highly readable and fluent description of the events of 1917 in the capital, Petrograd, as experienced by the city’s many foreign residents. Russia’s booming prewar economy had attracted every sort of business person and technical expert, as well as diplomats, journalists, adventurers and fleets of governesses. Their first-hand revolutionary experiences were too extraordinary not to record, and those who did not write contemporaneous accounts often produced memoirs later. Rappaport has unearthed striking new material from archives in Russia, the US, France and at the University of Leeds. From the start

Chris Grayling gets off to a bad start with Southern commuters

Oh dear. Less than a month into his tenure as transport secretary, and Chris Grayling already has a crisis on his hands. As commuters on Southern Rail face a week of rail chaos across London and the South East thanks to strikes, there is a growing anger that Grayling is yet to take charge of the situation — despite describing it as his ‘top priority’. As a result, the Brighton Argus have taken the unusual step of devoting a full blank page to Grayling: It doesn’t make for an inspiring read, with the paper explaining they had originally reserved the page so Grayling could ‘give the tens of thousands of rail users details

Portrait of the week | 21 July 2016

Home Theresa May made a speech in the open air in Downing Street after kissing hands with the Queen as the new Prime Minister. ‘As we leave the European Union,’ she said, ‘we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few, but for every one of us.’ In her new cabinet Boris Johnson, the failed contender for the leadership of the party, was made Foreign Secretary, replacing Philip Hammond, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer in place of George Osborne, who was sacked. Amber Rudd became Home Secretary, replacing Mrs May, and Liz Truss became Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, replacing Michael Gove, who was sacked.

Cameron’s Legacy

Midway through his final cabinet meeting, David Cameron realised — with some horror — that it had turned into a political wake. Theresa May had just lavished praise upon him, and his eyes had moistened. Then it was George Osborne’s turn: the Chancellor was a bit more humorous, but no less affectionate: ‘Being English, David, you’ll hate all this praise,’ he said. ‘You’re quite right,’ Cameron replied. ‘I am English, and I don’t much like it.’ Fearing that every member of his government was about to deliver an elegy, he brought the meeting to an abrupt end. Defining Cameron’s legacy is an important task for the Conservatives if they are

Steerpike

Lily Cole’s £200,000 government grant fails to pay off

What will be David Cameron’s legacy? The former Prime Minister is keen to be remembered for his social justice reform, but it’s more likely he’ll be remembered for taking Britain out of the EU. However, it’s some of his financial decisions that continue to trouble Mr S. Take, for example, the £200,000 of taxpayers’ money the Cabinet Office has gifted Lily Cole since 2013. Under the Innovation in Giving fund, the millionaire model received the money to fund her ‘sharing economy’ website Impossible. The site launched with the aim to match people with requests for help with those who have the skills to assist. So, a good use of taxpayers’ money? Perhaps

Who to nudge next

‘For ten years or so, my name was “that jerk”,’ says Professor Richard Thaler, president of the American Economics Association and principal architect of the behavioural economics movement. ‘But that was a promotion. Before, I was “Who’s he?”’ Thaler has had to get used to putting noses out of joint. His academic research, initially controversial, sparked an entirely new branch of economics, and now governments are adopting his theories across the globe. But he met plenty of resistance along the way. ‘You get your ideas straight when you argue with those whose views are most different from yours,’ he says. Struggling with his doctorate in the early 1970s, Thaler faced an

Brexit, and the return of political lying

Sir John Chilcot’s report into the Iraq invasion, due to be published on 6 July, is expected to highlight the novel structure of government created by New Labour following its landslide victory of 1997. As Tony Blair started to make the case for war, he began to distort the shape and nature of British government in several ways — the most notable being the deliberate debasement of the traditional idea of a neutral, disinterested civil service. Under Blair, civil servants were told to concern themselves less with the substance than the presentation of policy. They were informed that their loyalty lay more with the government of the day, less with the

In praise of doctors’ handwriting

My baby and I excel at blood tests. He (tiny, jaundiced) stretches out naked under the hospital’s hot cot-lamps like a Saint-Tropez lothario. The nurse rubs his foot to bring blood to his veins, and I lean over the cot to feed the greedy midget, who squawks just once as he’s stabbed. I watch the drops bulge and drip and I puzzle over the NHS and its mysteries. Why do nurses collect baby blood in glass straws with an opening no wider than a pin? It’s like an impossible task set by a whimsical tyrant. Even more surreal is the way the NHS handles patient records. Because the midget and

James Delingpole

The slow death of environmentalism

Would you describe yourself as an ‘environmentalist’? I would, mainly to annoy greenies, but also because it’s true. If your definition of an environmentalist is someone who loves immersing himself in the natural world, makes a study of its ways and cares deeply about its future, I’m at least as much of one as David Attenborough. But I can see why many fellow nature lovers might balk at the term, especially now that it has become so grievously politicised. That would explain the recent Gallup poll — it was taken in the US but I suspect it applies to Britain too — showing how dramatically this label has plunged in popularity. In

Rod Liddle

Let’s make assisted dying legal for Brightonians

I am having terrible trouble with my hair at the moment. It is lank, flat and lifeless. There are split ends. Also, it doesn’t smell too good. What’s that appalling stench, my wife asked recently while sitting next to me on the sofa as we watched a rerun of the old racist editions of Midsomer Murders starring the excellent John Nettles. ‘Probably the dog, again,’ I replied — but I knew that was a lie. I knew it was my hair. It smelt like that rotten cheese Italians eat. I don’t know why, because I wash it frequently enough. Maybe, to adapt Orwell’s mordant observation, at the age of 56

Who needs governments?

On 26 October last year, the Spanish government shut up shop in preparation for a general election. This duly took place in December but then a strange thing happened: after all the build-up, the arguments, the posters and the television coverage, the result was… nothing. The various parties were so balanced, so mutually distrustful and ill-assorted that no government could be formed. Since last October, therefore, there has been no government in Spain. One can imagine that the average political correspondent would think this a terrible problem, maybe even a crisis. The Financial Times has referred to Spain ‘enduring’ months of ‘political uncertainty’. This is assumed to be a matter

Desperate straits

 Istanbul Shops in a rundown neighbourhood sell fake life jackets to refugees planning to brave the Aegean Sea. Last year, nearly 4,000 refugees died trying to make this journey. ‘But what am I to do?’ says Erkan, a shopkeeper, as he pushes me out of his shop. ‘I tell them they are fake but the poor souls continue to buy them. The genuine ones don’t sell so well.’ We’re in the suburb of Aksaray, the makeshift centre of the smuggling trade in the city. Here the language is Arabic and the restaurants are Syrian. A town square serves as a hub for migration brokers. This is where dreams are sold.

Letters | 18 February 2016

Governmental ignorance Sir: Your leading article (13 February) blames junior doctors for playing with lives in their dispute; but what alternative do they have when confronted with the monumental ignorance of our present government (and the last, and the one before that, for that matter)? The NHS, when it started, was propped up by the amazing dedication of the post-war generation and then the baby-boomers. Even so, by the 1960s it was dependent on cheap foreign labour. If people want a first-class service they have to pay for it. It is about time somebody made our government aware of the facts of life — and the junior doctors seem to have

Flying doctors

A few months ago, paramedics were on the brink of industrial action. They had legitimate grievances. Ambulance services were being run down, their staffing levels were dangerously thin — and the mismanagement (much of it exposed by Mary Wakefield in The Spectator) was horrendous. But in the end they stepped back from the brink — for good reason. It went against their nature to endanger lives, and in addition it would have been a tactical mistake. If a single patient died as a result of the strike, paramedics would have lost public sympathy. Should a nationalised health service really use the unwell as a bargaining chip? English doctors have not