Utopia, you are standing in it!

In mid-April, The Treasury released some economic scenarios for how things might play out as the country and economy work through –  and perhaps beyond – Covid-19.  I wrote about that document here.  The focus of those scenarios was on peak levels of (for example) unemployment, and on the multi-year path back to full employment.  It was a quite limited exercise –  although valuable for what it was –  in that all the variation across the scenarios was about the degree of government (a) restrictions, and (b) stimulus.

A day or two later, the Reserve Bank appeared before the Epidemic Response Committee and they gave the Committee some numbers for the estimated GDP losses at each level in the government’s (then) schema of alert levels –  this was before the current “Level 3” rules were adopted, let alone the new (“Level 2”) ones to be announced today.   The…

The path out of poverty is always and everywhere about reliable and affordable energy. And entrenched poverty is best explained by its absence.

Want to know how important electricity is to modern life? Try living a comfortable and civilised life without it.

More than a billion humans struggle through daily life without access to power at all, and two billion more are limited to a meagre trickle, because in developing countries it’s both unreliable and too expensive for all but the wealthy elites.

The wind and solar obsessed in the first world are quite prepared to ensure that it stays that way. With economic development agencies peddling ridiculously expensive solar panels – seen as ‘fake electricity’ by those lumbered with it – and forcing tinpot governments to sign up to costly and pointless wind and/or solar power schemes, the ratio of haves to have-nots is likely to stay that…

Prorogation is a quintessentially political power, sometimes deployed toward some of the most brazen of political ends. Charles II prorogued Parliament several times to prevent discussion of the Exclusion Bill. John Major (in)famously prorogued Parliament in order to prevent a report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards on the cash-for-questions scandal from being tabled before the 1997 general election. In 2003, the Canadian Parliament was prorogued to delay the tabling of a report by the Auditor-General into a major sponsorship scandal. In 2011, the New South Wales Parliament was prorogued in order to prevent the production of State papers pursuant to Standing Orders of the Legislative Council. Numerous other examples abound (see Gerard Horgan, “Partisan-Motivated Prorogation and The Westminster Model” (2014) 52 Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 455-472; “Prorogation as a Tool of the Executive in Intercameral Conflict” (2014) 29 Australasian Parliamentary Review 159-76). Oh, if only the loyal opposition –…

(Abraham Lincoln)

The French writer, Alexis de Tocqueville described America as enduring a “quadrennial crisis” every four years as it held its presidential elections.  The 1860 election was an exception because the artificial passions that were easily stoked reached unheard of levels.  de Tocqueville remarked that “a self-absorbed president, catering to the ‘worst caprices’ of his supporters, could easily distract their attention from plodding matters of governance, and whip their enthusiasm into a frenzy, especially if he divided his supporters and his critics into hostile camps.”  He spoke of “feverish obsessions” and warned “the potential for lasting damage was always lurking.” As the ominous warnings came to fruition in the Civil War in 1861, today we stand on another ominous precipice as the 2020 election approaches.  de Tocqueville’s view of America is as plausible today as it was in the 19^th century as even a pandemic and how to…

There may not be many reasons for optimism about the economic outlook, but one is the relative flexibility of the UK labour market. This should help unemployment to fall back and activity to recover more quickly – provided the government gets out of the way.

There is no doubt that many jobs are being lost as a result of the coronavirus crisis. The data over the next few months will look horrible. My own guesstimate is that the unemployment rate will jump to around 8%. That would be bad enough, but others are even more pessimistic. The OBR’s first attempt at a ‘coronavirus reference scenario’, published in April, predicted a surge to 10% – an increase of more than 2 million in the number of people without work.

However, the labour market did at least enter the crisis in good shape. The employment rate was a record high…

We are in uncharted waters in comparative terms. Israel held three election cycles within 12 months to end the political stalemate that prevented the formation of a government until recently. One of the thorny issues was the allegations of serious corruption against Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted and suspected of committing serious offences involving fraud, bribery, and breach of trust.

Public law as well as moral considerations should have led Netanyahu to resign and quit public life until the end of his trial. Yet, he refuses to do so, arguing that he is not only innocent but also enjoys a mandate from the public to continue in office. Israel has adopted a parliamentary system following the British model. In a parliamentary system, no executive is elected directly. Rather, the Israeli public votes for political parties, which, in turn, hold a proportional number of seats in…