Utopia, you are standing in it!

I’ve just updated my UK GDP forecasts with today’s data for November. Here are ten key points, including some international comparisons.

1. UK economic growth in 2021 is likely to be just shy of 7½%, 1% higher than assumed in the October Budget and 3% higher than the consensus in the Treasury survey at the start of last year.

2. This means that the UK was almost certainly the fastest growing G7 economy in 2021. Many like to dismiss this as a ‘dead cat bounce’ after the relatively large fall in UK GDP in 2020. But the UK still did much better than expected, even taking account of this favourable ‘base effect’.

3. To illustrate, the chart below compares different vintages of the OECD’s forecasts for last year. In December 2020 the OECD expected UK GDP to grow by 4.2% in 2021, and to be outpaced by France and Italy…

Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale (January 8, 1864 – January 14, 1892) was the eldest child of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra) and grandson of the reigning British monarch, Queen Victoria. From the time of his birth, he was second in the line of succession to the British throne, but never became king because he died before his father and grandmother.

Albert Victor was born two months prematurely on January 8, 1864 at Frogmore House, Windsor, Berkshire. He was the first child of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and his wife Alexandra of Denmark, daughter of was Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (King Christian IX of Denmark) and her mother was Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel.

Following his grandmother Queen Victoria’s wishes, he was named Albert Victor, after herself and her late husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. As a grandchild of the…

From the outside it looks like treason, to the insider it’s merely the extension of the most massive subsidy scam in history. For nearly 40 years, the wind and solar industries have been telling us that they’ll soon be standing on their own two feet. But their greatest fear is being given the chance to actually do so.

The renewable energy rent seekers traipsing the halls of power in Washington are desperate to ensure that the subsidies upon which the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time critically depend are extended in perpetuity.

With the Squad firmly in charge, and Joe Biden wandering the Oval Office in a befuddled daze, crony capitalists have already given a list of demands to Democrats ready to deliver: decade-long extensions of the Federal tax credits that will allow wind and solar generators to continue to profit obscenely at taxpayers’ expense.

Alex Epstein describes…

Sweden’s Imaginary Socialism as a Non-Model

Part One of this essay was posted a couple of days ago. In it, I reviewed some of the avatars and zombies of the vague words “socialist” and “socialism.” I arrived at the inescapable conclusion that Sen. Sanders “democratic socialism” means only Scandinavian and, specifically, Swedish “socialism.” I look at that social and fiscal arrangement below.

First, let me say that Sweden is a good place to live; it’s a very civilized country. I just don’t know in what sense it’s “socialist.” Center-left parties took part in governing the country for most of the 20th century, true. Yet, little of Swedish commerce or industry is nationalized, or in any way public property. The Swedish government tends not to be invasive with regulations or direct intervention. Sweden even ranks a little higher than the US in “business freedom” on the 2016 (international) Index of…

As part of a recent discussion with Gene Tunny in Australia, I explained why I support “Starve the Beast,” which means keeping taxes as low as possible to help achieve the goal of spending restraint.

The premise of Starve the Beast is very simple.

Politicians like to spend money and they don’t particularly care whether that spending is financed by taxes or financed by borrowing (both bad options).

As Milton Friedman sagely observed, that means they will spend every penny they collect in taxes plus as much additional spending financed by borrowing that the political system will allow.

The IMF published a study on this issue about 10 years ago. The authors (Michael Kumhof, Douglas Laxton, and Daniel Leigh) assert that there’s no way of knowing whether Starve the Beast will lead to good or bad results.

…there is no consensus regarding the macroeconomic…

Dame Anne Salmond, a Distinguished Professor in anthropology at the University of Auckland and 2013 New Zealander of the Year, had good advice for the Ardern government in an article on the Three Waters plan and The Treaty.

She was writing about the comprehensive Three Waters reform and the manner in which it is being imposed on local authorities, making nonsense of any notion they and the citizenry are being consulted.

This must be an opportunity for listening, not for a government imposing its view of water as ‘assets’, she urged in an article which concluded:

“In dealing with the Three Waters debate, the Sixth Labour Government should learn from the mistakes of the Fourth, and not try to operate by executive fiat.

“Democracy is too precious to be set aside, even by those with the best of intentions; and waterways are not ‘assets,’ but the lifeblood of the land.”

The Government explains its Proposals in its Human Rights Act Reform: A Modern Bill Of Rights: A consultation to reform the Human Rights Act 1998 (CP 588), which represent a radical departure from the HRA. The specific Proposals are developed in the context of broader themes:

• respecting our common law traditions and strengthening the role of the UK Supreme Court;
• restoring a sharper focus on protecting fundamental rights;
• preventing the incremental expansion of rights without proper democratic oversight;
• emphasising the role of responsibilities within the human rights framework; and
• facilitating consideration of and dialogue with Strasbourg, while guaranteeing Parliament its proper role.

The Government’s Proposals are designed to recast the HRA profoundly. They seek to create a framework for human rights which focuses principally on British law rather than ECtHR judgments and propose that the UK courts should give greater weight to the views of Parliament. The most important proposed…

Introduction

The Nationality and Borders Bill (NABB) proposes controversial amendments to the UK’s citizenship deprivation power under s. 40 British Nationality Act 1981 (BNA). The Home Secretary seeks a power to dispense with the requirement to give notice of deprivation decisions to those affected, in an act of “striking back” (Harlow and Rawlings at Chamberlain J’s decision in D4 v SSHD. This post aims to analyse Clause 9 NABB from a comparative perspective, drawing on the provisions for depriving citizenship without notice in Australia’s Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (ACA) and New Zealand’s Citizenship Act 1977 (CA). It argues that, although Australia and New Zealand have similar powers to withhold/dispense with notice, the proposed UK power would be broader and more draconian, yet subject to fewer constitutional control mechanisms.

Sheppelle, considering a “forensic legal analytical framework” to assess constitutional changes, argues that “[t]he only way we can tell…

Henry Dundas, the first Viscount Melville (1742-1811), holds an infamous place in British constitutional history: he was the last person to be impeached. His acquittal by the House of Lords in 1806 marked the beginning of what has become a long pause in the use of an impeachment procedure against politicians or public officials. The last time that events got anywhere near interrupting this long pause came in 2004 when a number of MPs, including our present Prime Minister Boris Johnson, sought to impeach Tony Blair over the invasion of Iraq. The impeachment motion was co-drafted by experienced MPs and placed on the House of Common’s order paper, though proceeded no further (for the motion and background see J Simson Caird, ‘Impeachment’ House of Commons Briefing Paper).

But could it be that the turbulence of recent years when there have been many complaints about the government’s disrespect for accepted…

The new year calls for a new blog series, so throughout 2022 we’re taking a closer look at some of the figures who held the post of Speaker of the House of Commons. Today we hear from Dr Kathryn Rix, assistant editor of our Commons 1832-1868 project, who explores the career of J E Denison, Speaker from 1857-72.

On 8 April 1857 John Evelyn Denison was in the library at his Nottinghamshire residence, Ossington Hall, when he received a letter from the prime minister.

My dear Denison,

We wish to be allowed to propose you for the Speakership of the House of Commons. Will you agree?

Yours sincerely,

Palmerston

Lord Palmerston to J. E. Denison, 7 Apr. 1857

This brief epistle marked the beginning of Denison’s fifteen-year tenure of the Speaker’s chair: just over three weeks later, on 30 April, the Commons chose him as Speaker, with no…

Inflation is colloquially defined as, “Too much money chasing too few goods (and services)”. Supply chain constraints get talked about, and these are widely blamed for the inflation we are seeing. Of course, supply limitations play into inflation, but to focus on them is to miss the elephant in room. The primary driver of this inflation is not “too few goods”, but “too much money.”

Such is the thesis of a widely circulated article by Ray Dalio’s investing firm Bridgewater Associates, “It’s Mostly a Demand Shock, Not a Supply Shock, and It’s Everywhere.” The point is summarized:

While the headlines tend to focus on the micro elements of the supply shock (the LA port, coal in China, natural gas in Europe, semiconductors globally, truckers in the UK, etc.), this perspective largely misses the macro cause that is likely to persist and for which there is no idiosyncratic solution.