What is a nation?
In the modern political tradition, patriotism has always been revered. Not only is pride in and devotion to country seen as a positive, but its absence is also often taken as a sign of moral deficiency. Nationalism, on the other hand, is more suspect. The nationalist identifies with the nation and nationalism can manifest as a political ideology, as it did [...]
Trump: good or bad for libertarians?
As a libertarian watching the phenomenon that is Donald Trump, it is difficult to know exactly what to think. One can't help but be impressed by his hold-no-prisoners first [...]
Nine problems with the government’s hopeless housing plan
Today the government published its white paper on the housing market, a landmark initiative to address one of the most pressing problems in the UK: the chronic lack of [...]
Trump’s return to Mercantilism
Newly elected US President Donald Trump has made much of the US's trade deficits, which has been a persistent characteristic of the US economy pretty much since the collapse [...]
Three questions for the inequality campaigners
Inequality hit the news again last month, when Oxfam published their annual study of global inequality, which labelled the state of affairs “obscene” and “grotesque”. [...]
Time to end the cult of the NHS
Citizens have a right to ‘qualified medical care provided by state health institutions’. Most Brits would agree with that statement. It comes from article 42 of the [...]
Solving the productivity puzzle
The UK economy has for years suffered from lacklustre productivity, and the latest figures from The Office for National Statistics confirm the trend: output per hour worked [...]
A farewell to Obama and his failed foreign policy
As the world parts company with the third American president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in office, it seems a fitting time to not only take stock of Barack [...]
Behind the Obama legacy: the truth about the US jobs market
The mainstream media has been busy showering outgoing US president Barrack Obama with accolades after 8 years in office. Headlines like ‘Obama’s Jobs Boom’ and [...]
A bankrupt profession shows no sign of humility
Last week Bank of England chief economist Michael Haldane used an event at the Institute for Government to warn against putting too much faith in economists and their [...]
May surrenders to the world view of the Left
There’s a new name for the government’s vision of Britain in 2017. The ‘Shared Society’ is Theresa May’s moniker for her agenda that is supposed to make society work [...]