Tag Archives: jonathan jones

4 graphs on Thatcher’s legacy: a richer but more unequal nation.

A generation on, the Thatcher legacy continues to provoke and divide. One of the questions it poses for liberals is one this government is still wrestling with: does inequality matter if everyone’s getting richer?

Margaret Thatcher’s answer was that it did not — as she famously illustrated in one of her last Commons performances in response to a question from Simon Hughes:

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Your essential weekend reader — 12 must-read articles you may have missed

It’s Saturday evening, so here are twelve thought-provoking articles to stimulate your thinking juices…

Britain and Europe: Making the break – The Economist‘s verdict on many Europhobes’ éjaculation nocturne: ‘The most likely outcome would be that Britain would find itself as a scratchy outsider with somewhat limited access to the single market, almost no influence and few friends. And one certainty: that having once departed, it would be all but impossible to get back in again.’

Boris shows that Eurosceptics are in a mess

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“We’re not in recession”. Last July’s headline comes true (belatedly).

Four months ago, just after the last set of quarterly figures published by the ONS showed a sharp contraction in the UK economy, I highlighted economist Hamish McRae’s very public assertion that the UK was in actual fact no longer in recession. Pointing to the second-highest rate of job creation ever in the private sector, combined with falling inflation, he declared: ‘pull all the other data together and the figures would be consistent with an economy growing at around 1 per cent a year’.

Here’s what he has to say about the latest quarterly growth figures of +1.0%, which …

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The politics of sluggish growth: good for the Tories, bad for Labour, and as for the Lib Dems we’ll see

Today saw the publication by the IMF of its latest growth forecasts. UK growth prospects are downgraded once again. Growth in 2012 is now forecast to be -0.4% (the most recent quarter’s strong showing is anomalous) and an anaemic 1.1% in 2013. As The Spectator’s Jonathan Jones observes, the only thing new here is that the IMF is falling ‘into line with the consensus’.

On the face of it this is bad news for the Coalition, further evidence that the economic strategy of deficit reduction driven forward by David Cameron and George Osborne, and endorsed by Nick …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 33 Comments

What The Spectator says: ‘Obama the Lib Dem’. (PS: It may even be a compliment.)

Over at The Spectator, Jonathan Jones looks at the US and UK approaches to their forthcoming budgets — cutting the deficit, taming debt, etc — and his fourth and final point concludes:

Obama the Lib Dem. It’s striking how similar Obama’s tax priorities are to those of the Liberal Democrats, even though the specifics differ either side of the Atlantic. Obama wants to extend the payroll tax cut for ‘160 million hardworking Americans’, which he says is worth ‘about $40 in every paycheck’ for ‘the typical family earning $50,000 a year’. The Lib Dems have been pushing to raise the

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Recent Comments

  • User AvatarDavid 20th Jun - 3:42am
    I'd be interested -- in fact, fascinated -- by this whole debate if I thought that the question were really up for decision. Since, however,...
  • User AvatarIan Patterson 19th Jun - 11:37pm
    Quelle Horreur. Nearly choked when reading liberator article today. we do not need more millionaires in ranks in lords, however 'active' they have been in...
  • User AvatarTim13 19th Jun - 9:45pm
    Interested to hear a comment from candidates' Office at HQ on the numbers of PPCs in place. For the 2005 and 2010 the party made...
  • User AvatarRoland 19th Jun - 8:29pm
    @Keith - Actually, I overlooked a couple of important points: Firstly Caron did say 'qualifies' rather than 'receives' - so apologies to Caron if I...
  • User AvatarDavid Pollard 19th Jun - 8:22pm
    I still fail to see the point of the Labour party. It's funded by the Unions but it does not support the working man. It...
  • User AvatarDavid Pollard 19th Jun - 8:12pm
    Go for it. There is all to play for.
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