In a previous piece, I discussed a little of the concept of property and its role in Conservatism. The "property" I had in mind there was things like spears, money, shares, cars, factories, jewels. Some readers may have wondered how land fitted in, for there was a traditional notion that no land could be held […]
Following the pasty tax, the cutting of the 50p rate and the donations-for-dinners scandal, people have started to ask, more earnestly, a question that was always at the back of their minds: does this Cabinet of millionaires get what it is like to be me? (That's "me" as in you, obviously – no-one cares whether […]
Locke believed that the logical origins of property lie in the fact that we are not by nature slaves and thus have ownership of our own labour. When we combine our labour with the "common treasury" of resources provided to us in nature, we create property. So, for example, if I pick an apple from a […]
The budget contained oodles of minor tweaks here and there. Some people condemn this as tinkering, but they are forgetting that issues that are small on the national stage can be big for those affected, and the Budget is where the Chancellor gets to address lots of minor concerns as well as major ones. That […]
Usually when I make recommendations, I aim to propose measures that will be palatable to policy-makers, things that they might actually be tempted to do. But on this occasion, here are five things that I think should be in the Budget – regardless of how likely it is that they might happen. Cut NHS spending. Cutting […]
I am a fan of the Olympic ideal. I see that ideal as this: once every four years, countries suspend their political, military, religious and cultural disputes for a couple of weeks, and instead send their own choice of athletes to compete against one another celebrating our common human excellence. Here are some implications of this […]
If you want informed, expert and insightful opinion on the Republican nomination race, I recommend the ConservativeHome USA site and Timothy Stanley’s blog. But if you are daft enough to be interested in my idle and half-informed reflections, read on. As I see it, the Republicans are caught in a outwards-looking struggle between two theories […]
The churches are hotting up in their opposition to gay marriage. The newspapers are digging in their positions – the Telegraph came out firmly against; the Times firmly in favour. But it seems to me that the position of the churches is rather confused, and logically they ought not to complain but simply to cease to […]
The government is to defend a European Court of Human Rights case brought to uphold the right of Christians to wear the cross openly. The government's position is that the wearing of the cross is not a requirement of the faith, and hence not entitled to protection. The government's view has been supported by the Archbishop […]
In my last column I argued that, whereas in dictatorships or quasi-democracies with inadequate constitutional checks and balances the loss of power can result in ruin and death for supporters of the losing party, in a healthy democracy losing is much more a matter of "that's the way the cookie crumbles – I'll beat you […]
In a dictatorship, or in a quasi-democratic system with one-party rule for extended periods, political groupings cannot afford to fall out of favour. For example, in the late Ming Dynasty the eunuchs (through the Brocade Guards) and the scholars (through the Donglin academy) struggled for power, and falling from grace could mean arrest and execution. In such […]
1) Forget Plans B. The UK does not face a demand problem that fiscal policy can usefully respond to. Nominal GDP was growing about 5 per cent a year for much of 2010-11 – about the same as its 2000-2007 average (i.e. about the same as in the boom years). That growth rate shrank to about […]
The constitution of any politically mature country should include provision for some body or process that reflects/captures the public will. In Britain we've had such a body for about seven hundred years – the House of Commons. In no successful constitution whatever, in any mature developed society, anywhere in the world, is it true that […]
I write that headline. I look at it. It doesn't seem like it should be controversial. Indeed, if I have written such a headline twenty-five years ago, readers would probably have expected the body of the article to contain some terrible revelation about police malpractice in Northern Ireland. And yet, as a strange and disturbing […]