The prospect of a British shale gas revolution attracts broad support across the centre-right. As well it might do, because unlocking this potential resource bonanza would have major benefits. For a start, the economy would benefit – a home grown shale gas industry would undoubtedly boost growth, certainly help with our balance of payments and […]
So, no triple dip recession, then – and maybe no double dip either, once the final figures are sorted out. Of course, the whole narrative around multiple dips always was absurd – as if bumping along just under and over zero growth was worse than an equally long period of consistently negative growth. In any […]
Larry Elliot is the economics editor of the Guardian, but don’t let that put you off. Unlike the Labour frontbench, there are some parts of the British centre-left still capable of original thought on the economy. It is, for instance, refreshing to see someone look beyond the frustratingly restricted debate between ‘Keynesian’ supporters of stimulus […]
Back in February, the Deep End featured a post entitled Sweden: Beacon of the right. Today, we look to a rather more obvious source of inspiration: the Lone Star State of Texas. Writing for the Dallas Morning News, Erica Grieder contends that talk of a ‘Texas miracle’ is no exaggeration: “Between 2001 and 2011, according […]
0.3 per cent GDP growth in the first quarter of this year was better than many people expected. But it would have been better still if the construction sector hadn’t done so badly, contracting by 2.5 per cent. As Nicholas Crafts reminds us in the Guardian, there was a time when construction led Britain out of recession: […]
America has the ‘BosWash corridor’ (Boston through to Washington), Germany has the Ruhr valley, Japan has Tokyo-Yokohama. England, of course, has Greater London, but we also have the ‘Northern conurbation’ – Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and all the places in between: one of the greatest concentrations of humanity anywhere in the world. So why don’t […]
If someone were to declare their enthusiastic support for mass immigration, dismissing anyone who thinks otherwise as a backward xenophobe, what would you assume about their politics more generally? You'd probably place them on the left of the political spectrum, but as Ed West reminds us in the Telegraph, there are those on the right […]
In an 18th century recipe book by Hannah Glasse, the recipe for jugged hare supposedly began with the words “first catch your hare.” The quotation is apocryphal, but it says so much about the food culture of the time – or rather the food culture of our time, in which we simply assume the availability […]
In 1930 John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay entitled ‘The economic possibilities for our grandchildren.’ In it he looks forward to the great improvements that would be brought about by accumulated decades of economic growth. In particular, he envisaged a dramatic shortening of the working week. In a challenging article for Aeon, John Quiggin summarises Keynes’ […]
By JP Floru. Lord Heseltine proposes to shift £49 billion from national to local government to encourage investment and growth. His report No Stones Unturned is a classic tale of “government knows best”: of politicians taking economic decisions about which they know little; and of a belief that local politicians are somehow better suited at this than national ones. […]
They may not be that common in the real world, but in political circles there’s a lot of people who declare themselves to be both economically and socially liberal – usually with a slight edge of self-congratulation to their words. Liberalism isn’t the only thing these concepts have in common, there’s also a causal link […]
These are not the salad days of capitalism. The banking crisis, compounded by a series of scandals, has undermined popular support for free market, laissez faire economics. Yes, it’s true that a lot of the blame attaches to the fact that true market principles were never properly adhered to in the first place. But that […]
The pundits have spoken: David Cameron gave a good speech; and, last week, Ed Miliband gave a good speech; and, the week before that, Nick Clegg gave a good speech (well, no one actually remembers what Nick Clegg said, but it can’t have been that bad otherwise we would’ve done). So, everyone’s a winner. But, […]
Whether one prefers ‘Plan A’ or ‘Plan B’, we’re all agreed that the goal of economic policy is economic growth. Well, everyone except the crustier kind of environmentalist who sees it as a deadly threat to the planet. However, even they must see growth as the default state of industrialised economies, otherwise they wouldn’t be so […]
How many Chinese cities can you name? Obviously, there’s Beijing and Shanghai. Nanjing (Nanking) and Guangzhou (Canton) might also come to mind – along with Shenzhen (Hong Kong’s near neighbour), Xi’an (home of the Terracota Army) and Chongqing (home to 30 million people). But what about Wuhan, Tianjin, Shenyang, Fuzhou, Hangzhou, Harbin and Chengdu – […]