News & Insight

12 October 2012

Picking up an empty cardboard box, walking 200 metres, holding a pen and pushing a button. These are some of the ‘tests’ deployed by the government to assess whether someone is fit for work. They form part of the Work...

12 October 2012

I am not a pessimist, but scratch away at the patina of Olympic greatness and there is a nation stagnating. For at least the near future, the Great British public will have to endure soaring unemployment, shrinking public services and...

11 October 2012

Party conference speeches rarely live on beyond the next news cycle. But Ed Miliband’s ‘one nation’ speech will linger in the political consciousness longer than the average – because he told a story about how the policies he recommended were...

11 October 2012

Winning public support for spending on benefits will not simply be a matter of some new eye-catching policy proposals. First the whole debate on benefits needs re-framing. There is a growing belief that poverty is due more to individual failings...

10 October 2012

Changing the shape of Britain is difficult when you have dug yourself into a hole, and there is no clear direction to take. After misguided property investment by American and British banks almost brought the world’s financial system down, it...

10 October 2012

The bar had been set high for David Cameron this morning: first by Ed and then by Boris. He knew he would be judged both by style and substance. And yet not unlike another leader mired in his own data...