On Friday Vince Cable is due to give a set piece speech. Given that a week is a long time in politics the speech could, presumably, go through several revisions between now and then. But that hasn’t stopped people speculating, and unnamed individuals briefing, that Uncle Vince is going […]
The Brexit debate, on social media at least, shows few signs of abating. It shows every sign of continuing to be vociferously unpleasant on the occasions people venture outside their echo chambers and encounter an incorrigible who disagrees on the wisdom of Brexit. In some respects, therefore, little […]
My goodness the atmosphere around the Libdems is febrile at the moment. No sooner had it become clear that Friday’s Libdems4change petition was going to fizzle out than we learn of Lord Oakeshott’s freelance polling manoeuvre. It’s almost as if the timing of the leak of the poll […]
You might have thought we were currently in the eye of the storm. We’ve been through the pain of seeing more than 300 Libdem local councillors lose their seats. And today the results of the European Parliamentary elections will no doubt bring fresh horrors. So perhaps the intervening […]
Vince Cable made a substantial speech to the Royal Economic Society at the beginning of this week. The speech is worth reading in full because it represents one of the most thorough, thoughtful and wide-ranging perspectives on the economy that you are likely to hear from a front […]
I have to admit I found the whole situation rather discomfiting. Yesterday I found myself agreeing with George Osborne. Of course, as David Gillon (@WTBDavidG) pointed out on Twitter, we can all join George Osborne in agreeing that Iain Duncan-Smith is not perhaps the sharpest knife in the […]
Today’s papers bring us further news of the sickness that afflicts our housing market. On the front page of the Telegraph is a piece focusing on St Vince of Cable’s warning that the housing market is exhibiting all the signs of overheating and that Mark Carney is considering […]
When I first studied macroeconomics the Stagflation era of the 1970s and the death of Keynesianism were still being quite hotly debated. They were still contemporary events. Well, they were contemporary events in the way that the election of Tony Blair is a contemporary event for us today […]
Zero hours contracts are not new. But that doesn’t mean they’re not news. Today the BBC reports on a study by CIPD that suggests there are four times as many workers on zero-hours contracts than previously thought – a million rather than 250,000. Perhaps as important as the […]
The agenda for this year’s Liberal Democrat Spring Conference carries the strapline Stronger economy, Fairer society. Given the parlous state of UK plc, and the deeply inequitable impacts of the Coalition austerity policy, the strapline touches on two of the biggest issues of the day. So the unwary […]
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