Utopia, you are standing in it!

Queen Elizabeth II sadly died yesterday, bringing to a close the longest reign in British history. Robert Hazell and Bob Morris offer a brief guide to what happens next, as King Charles III prepares for both the funeral of his predecessor and his own coronation. They also explore how the new king will have to adapt to his changed constitutional status.

At the age of 96 and after a record-breaking reign of 70 years, Queen Elizabeth II has died. A life of service to which she committed herself as a young woman has ended:

I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.

But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me, as I now…

And so the United Kingdom has a new Prime Minister, replacing one who, having besmirched the office, had been forced out.  The Conservatives took almost eight weeks to choose Liz Truss.  That saga resembled a presidential election, not least in the televised debates that were occasionally as unedifying as they were uninformative, and notoriously in some of the vicious briefings given by unnamed allies of the candidates about their opponents.  Not for the first time the British parliamentary system surrendered the choice of premier to a small section of the British electorate.  But their preference was not the same as that of Tory MPs, who had consistently voted for Rishi Sunak as their first choice.    

It is for the political parties to decide how to elect their leaders. But should the votes of others than MPs be part of their electoral systems? I think not, and I never have…

Over the past few months, I’ve written a 7-part series on Bidenomics, reviewing the president’s record on issues such as subsidies, inflation, protectionism, household income, fiscal policy, red tape, and employment.

Regarding the last item, a big problem is that the share of the population with jobs (measured by either the labor-force participation rate or the employment-population ratio) has not recovered.

It hasn’t recovered to where it was before the pandemic and it hasn’t recovered to where it was before Obama took office.

That’s bad news. Our economy’s output (and our national income) depends on the quantity and quality of both labor and capital.

This does not reflect well on Biden.

But not everyone agrees. Paul Krugman has leapt to the President’s defense. He even claims that American workers are enjoying a “Biden boom.”

President Biden has presided over a huge employment…

Electricity is one of those things that is only fully appreciated when a hopeful user is deprived of it. Across Europe, the cultlike fixation on wind and solar has provided precisely the environment in which households and businesses are coming to sense just how important having power as and when they need it, really is.

Germany set the tone by squandering billions of euros on subsidies to wind and solar, trashing their forests and rural heartland, as well as their hitherto reliable and affordable power supply. What could possibly go wrong?

Power prices are rocketing into the stratosphere and, even before winter drives up demand, are being deprived of energy in a way that was unthinkable barely a decade ago. But such is life when you attempt to run on sunshine and breezes.

Here are a couple of reports on the inevitable renewable energy transition from the frontline.

Energy Shortages…

Following her appointment as Prime Minister yesterday, Liz Truss has become the third Prime Minister in a row to take office directly as a result of a party leadership election. Ben Worthy explains that taking office in the middle of a parliament has historically not gone well for the incoming Prime Minister, with none of the last three ‘takeover Prime Ministers’ able to complete a full parliamentary term in office.

There are two routes to becoming Prime Minister in the UK. You can either win a general election or triumph in a party leadership election to become head of the largest parliamentary party when a predecessor leaves. As section 2.18 of the Cabinet Manual puts it:

Where a Prime Minister chooses to resign from his or her individual position at a time when his or her administration has an overall majority in the House of Commons, it is for the…

Chilean lithium deposits [image credit: travelandleisure.com]
By a big majority, the people said no – that’s it. Ideology overload?
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Chile rejected a new constitution on Sunday which, if accepted, would have significantly expanded environmental rights and recognised the urgency of climate action, says Climate Home News.

In a referendum, the South American nation rejected the proposed constitution by 62% to 38% in favour. Voting was mandatory.

As home to the world’s largest reserves of lithium, a key component of batteries for electric vehicles, Chile is of strategic importance in the global clean energy transition. This comes with social and environmental tradeoffs.