Tag Archives: jonathan jones

Stephen Tall

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

By Stephen Tall | Thu 11th April 2013 - 8:15 am

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:

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , and | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

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

By Stephen Tall | Sat 8th December 2012 - 5:39 pm

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 – …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , , , and | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

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

By Stephen Tall | Thu 25th October 2012 - 8:05 pm

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 …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 25 Comments
Stephen Tall

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

By Stephen Tall | Tue 9th October 2012 - 11:10 pm

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 …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 33 Comments
Stephen Tall

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

By Stephen Tall | Tue 14th February 2012 - 8:12 pm

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

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Richard Flowers
    Dear Rebecca, It is you who gives me hope and lets me take Pride. Thanks to your tireless work, and other members of the Plus committee and community, you�...
  • George Thomas
    Have just come from the latest post discussing Welsh Lib Dems struggles to a post regarding better transport. Does this mean support for retrospective funding f...
  • Tristan Ward
    “Let’s start by arguing that the economic benefits of the Single Market far exceed having to accept freedom of movement into the UK, and take it from there....
  • Chloe
    'Needless to say the poorest in British society paid the price for this' I remember canvassing , the poorer the area the less interested they were. Membership ...
  • GWYN WILLIAMS
    A balanced and fair assessment of the Senedd campaign. Unlike in Scotland, Wales has not as yet polarised into for and against Independence camps. The Welsh Lib...