A guest post by Tim Ambler Parliament passes and revises legislation, of course, but it also should give teeth to democracy by holding government to account. Ministers make decisions but they are shielded from the public by their civil servants. Anyone who has written to a government minister, and been lucky enough to get a… [Read More]
President Biden’s inaugural address used the word unity a dozen times but his first actions as President did not match the rhetoric. Among the batch of Executive Orders he signed that day, one was inspired by the exact opposite of national unity. It signalled that he is a fully-signed up member of the divisive identity-politics… [Read More]
A guest post by Tim Ambler . . . Consultation on the planning White Paper concludes on October 29th.[i] Its central tenet, namely that the currently cumbersome planning system should be streamlined, must be right. One could argue that it does not go far enough: ridding us of the contrary and bureaucratic Planning Inspectorate would help.… [Read More]
A guest post by Tim Ambler . . . Magistrates’ courts, as the anonymous “Secret Barrister”[i] and others so clearly describe, are not fair to victims and witnesses. Delays, slow justice being no justice, imbalance and police reliability cause the problems but primary culpability lies with parliament, not the police nor the courts. The government… [Read More]
In 1931, the economic situation in the UK was not wholly different from what it is now. The cause was not the same – economic dislocation and depression on an epic scale then rather than the pandemic we have now – but many of the symptoms were the same. Between 1930 and 1931, real GDP… [Read More]
While Britain has begun to look away from its weary relationship with ‘social Europe’ and across the globe to strike new trade deals, it is apparent from the latest round of Brexit trade agreement negotiations that EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier remains pessimistic. He claimed to share the British ambition to achieve a free… [Read More]
There will be a big ‘small business question’ for government when the coronavirus crisis ebbs. Ambiguous criteria and operational problems in accessing loans saw many businesses turned down for the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme. Then, it was found that almost 110,000 small businesses applied for the emergency Bounce Back loan scheme in the first… [Read More]
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), which was set up to regulate the vast majority of UK newspapers and magazines under the Editors’ Code of Practice, has recently been holding a review of its Code. The Code is a set of 16 clauses setting out the editorial standards – designed to balance the rights of… [Read More]
The current challenges that face Boris Johnson both in relation to ending the automatic early release of terror offenders from prison and the impending Brexit negotiations could be solved very easily by him taking one decisive position – to govern in the national interest while repealing that crumbling lawyer’s charter, the Human Rights Act 1998. … [Read More]
Britain’s own Brexit negotiator David Frost was both eloquent and thoughtful in his speech on Monday, setting out the British government’s attitude and plans for a trade deal. His speech pictured Brexit as a kind of counter-revolution. Having pursued the creation of the European Union itself in which a new European, transnational governmental system “overlaid… [Read More]