Month: February 2015

On Social Policy

A couple of days ago I was asked, at short notice, to write a brief introduction to Social Policy, suitable for young people interested in finding out more about the discipline.  Even though I only had a few minutes to write it somewhat inevitably I wrote more than […]

Has The Good Right got it right?

I’ve only just found the headspace to catch up with Tim Montgomerie and Stephan Shakespeare’s The Good Right, an agenda for the modernisation of conservatism. I was reminded of it yesterday while reading Stephen Tall’s final – and excellent as ever – post for ConservativeHome. The overarching aim […]

Three aspects of coalition government

[This post is the original version of a text that first appeared in issue 370 of Liberator magazine (February 2015), under the title “Sustained by useful idiots”] As we approach the last few weeks of this Parliament it is almost inevitable that our thoughts turn to evaluating the […]

Articulating problems, finding solutions

I’m not sure whether anyone is tracking the frequency with which stories about the UK’s problems appear in the media, but intuitively you get the sense that it is increasing. Barely a day seems to pass now without something appearing prominently somewhere. Housing is not just on the […]

The Coalition’s social policy record

Last week researchers associated with the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics published a substantial suite of papers reviewing the Coalition government’s policies across a broad range of social policy areas. They summarize the key strands of policy and try to provide an […]