Neil O'Brien is Director of Policy Exchange. Andy Burnham made first major policy speech yesterday. While it told us a bit about the sort of issues he cares about, it doesn’t tell us much about Labour’s position on many of the most important issues in education. Amazingly, he failed to reference academies or free schools […]
Neil O'Brien is Director of Policy Exchange Why on earth are the railways so expensive? The cost of tickets is shooting up. And the taxpayer subsidy is huge too – Network rail alone gets a grant of nearly 4 billion from the government. These huge costs are one reason why lots of people say that […]
Neil O'Brien is Director of Policy Exchange. “The really good thing about the Big Society,” a fellow think-tanker told me last week in Birmingham, “is that it can mean absolutely whatever anyone wants it to mean. It’s totally brilliant.” This assessment, made in the wee small hours, is a far too harsh. But there is […]
Neil O'Brien is Director of Policy Exchange, which today publishes Making Housing Affordable: A new vision for housing policy. Last week there was a big debate about “fairness”. The Government are doing a number of things which will tackle the underlying causes of our social problems. IDS is trying to reform welfare to reduce unemployment, […]
Neil O’Brien is Director of Policy Exchange. Welcome back. I’m afraid you’ve arrived at rather a critical moment. Angela Eagle delighted the Fabian Society the other day with a speech declaring that “It is end of the Thatcher-Reagan era and it has come not a moment too soon.” Her speech was a sign of the […]
Congratulations to Neil O’Brien, currently running Open Europe, for being appointed the new Director of Policy Exchange. Neil replaces Anthony Browne, who is off to work for Boris Johnson. It’s a great appointment. Neil brings considerable intellectual and communication skills to the job. (And, by way of an aside, as a child of Huddersfield he […]
This is the final part of a series on the return of the EU constitution by Open Europe, of which Neil is Director. The mood in the UK embassy in Brussels must be pretty dire. The merde has hit the fan. Angela Merkel has just circulated to heads of government a summary of where she […]
Ahead of the EU summit in two weeks, Open Europe of which Neil is Director, will write for ConservativeHome each weekday this week outlining the ways in which the EU constitution is returning by stealth, and how we should resist it. Here we go again. EU leaders are meeting in two weeks time to re-launch […]
Neil is Director of Open Europe. A new argument has got Britain’s dwindling band of Europhiles very excited: we need the EU in order to save the planet from climate change. This line is now being parroted right across the Government. David Milliband has argued that “You cannot be an environmentalist and a Eurosceptic.” Geoff […]
Neil is Director of Open Europe The row over the Conservatives’ attempt to form a new group in the European Parliament is heating up quickly. The current consensus among most journalists is that the move was a rashly-promised sop to eurosceptics in the party, which Cameron must surely now regret. If the Tories want to […]
Neil O’Brien is Director of Open Europe. Open Europe is a think tank that believes that ‘ever closer union’ has failed. It "believes that the EU must now embrace radical reform based on economic liberalisation, a looser and more flexible structure, and greater transparency and accountability". The year since the French and Dutch votes against […]
This is one area where Brexit doomsayers such as I have been proven wrong. So why is he so unhappy about it?
In this feature, we look at some of the most memorable podcasts of the last few weeks.
There is talk of a “Covid-fascist state”. What does any decent person do when confronted by a fascist state? He takes up arms against it.
Neil O'Brien is Director of Policy Exchange. I’m baffled. Stumped. Totally at a loss. For years, teachers have been complaining about the narrowing of the curriculum. Educationalists (many of them on the left) have warned that languages, sciences and humanities were being squeezed out, as schools tried to hit narrow government targets. One of their […]