News & Insight

18 October 2013

Steve McQueen’s new release ‘12 Years a Slave’ has its European premiere in Leicester Square today. Chasing the tails of Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’ and Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’, it’s the third Hollywood movie in 18 months to tackle the difficult theme of slavery....

17 October 2013

It’s that time of year again – the ‘big six’ energy companies have started announcing inflation busting price hikes, to hit just as the cold winter months set in. Today, British Gas announced a hike of nine per cent, following...

17 October 2013

Populism – characterised by an appeal to the masses against elite institutions – has found fertile ground recently. The frenzied subprime lending of banks illuminated just how reckless, and in some cases just how corrupt some of the most powerful...

16 October 2013

At the Labour Party conference in September Ed Miliband spoke about the dangers of a race to the bottom – of falling real wages and problems inherent in the unfair distribution of the benefits of growth. And if a rising...

16 October 2013

When the global financial crisis came, as Chairman of the House of Commons Treasury committee, I witnessed the power of public spending to mitigate economic calamity. In the decade I led the committee’s work, I also saw the difference spending...

15 October 2013

When a reshuffle is in the air, everybody can sense it. Ministers and their shadows pop up on the television a lot more, make far more interventions. The press is full of endless speculations. Who’s in? Who’s out? Who’s up?...