The argument
Openly angled · signed · the other side stated first
The Economy
By Its Own Numbers
A third runway at Heathrow is sold as growth for the whole country. The government's own appraisal puts that growth at up to 0.05 per cent of GDP a year, and the reviewer it paid to check the work says the claim about the regions cannot be made from the modelling.
The Crossbencher · 30 Jul 2026 · 4 min read
The Economy
The Invoice Comes Later
VAT off electricity on Monday, a £2 bus fare on Wednesday, a fifth off the pub's rates on Thursday. The new government's first week was a run of price cuts - and not one of them arrived with a bill attached. The relief has a date. The argument about who pays has been postponed.
The Crossbencher · 28 Jul 2026 · 3 min
The Economy
The tax nobody voted for
A frozen tax threshold is not a tax held steady. It is a rise that turns up every year on its own, unannounced, aimed at the people least able to see it coming - and it has quietly become the British state's favourite way to take more without being caught asking.
The Crossbencher · 25 Jul 2026 · 3 min
The Economy
Off the Books
The private finance initiative built hospitals and schools that would otherwise have waited a generation. Its deciding attraction was never the buildings - it was which column the debt landed in.
The Crossbencher · 21 Jul 2026 · 4 min
The Economy
The Veto Economy
The highest-leverage fix for British stagnation costs the Treasury nothing. It is the planning system - a machine built so that almost anything can be stopped, and so almost nothing gets built.
The Crossbencher · 19 Jul 2026 · 2 min
The Economy
Taxed for Working
Britain taxes the wage the day it is earned and the asset barely at all. That is not an argument for a wealth tax, which has a poor record. It is a description of a bias the country runs against work itself.
The Crossbencher · 19 Jul 2026 · 3 min
The Economy
The Stagnation Machine
The reassuring story is that Britain is much like its neighbours - lower taxes, similar growth, cheaper in places. That story is how the disease hides. Britain isn't comparable. It's a low-investment economy that has been deferring the bill for fifteen years.
The Crossbencher · 19 Jul 2026 · 2 min
The Economy
The Degree and the Visa
Britain runs an immigration policy and a higher-education policy, and they have quietly become the same policy. Neither is being decided on its own terms, which is how you end up with the worst of both.
The Crossbencher · 19 Jul 2026 · 2 min
The Economy
Cheap Power, Expensive Country
British industry pays some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world. You can believe every word about the climate and still notice that most of the gap is not physics. It is design.
The Crossbencher · 19 Jul 2026 · 2 min
The Economy
The Fund We Never Built
Britain and Norway found the same sea of oil at the same time and did opposite things with the money. One built the largest fund in the world; the other spent it as it arrived. The difference was not luck, and it was not virtue. It was a rule.
The Crossbencher · 18 Jul 2026 · 4 min
The Economy
Who should own the water?
The case for privatising water was serious and made by serious people. It rested on one condition that was never met - and the geometry of what happens when it isn't.
The Crossbencher · 16 Jul 2026 · 3 min