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Freeze UK public spending for five years to achieve growth
Mark Littlewood
12 March 2013
3 comments

British Chancellor George Osborne and United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron received a timely reminder today that their tough-sounding rhetoric about getting the nation's public finances...
Three reasons why Britain's credit downgrade is no mere technicality
Mark Littlewood
25 February 2013
comments

A major irritation for anyone attempting to engage in an informed public discussion of economic policy is the media’s desire to latch onto any piece of news which makes a snappy...
Plan A is not the whole answer
Mark Littlewood
21 October 2011
comments

  A year has now passed since the government published the results of its Comprehensive Spending Review. Brazenly, Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has marked the...
The LibDems should back enterprise, not soak the rich
Mark Littlewood
19 September 2011
comments

The Liberal Democrat leadership is in danger of committing a cardinal sin at their party conference in Birmingham. They are addressing their messages to delegates in the conference hall, rather...
Don't make banks safe, just make it safe for them to fail
Mark Littlewood
12 September 2011
1 comment

How on earth, most people wish to know, did we get to the precipice of full scale economic collapse in 2008? Aren’t banking and financial services one of the few things Britain is supposed to...
Urgent need to simplify the tax code
Mark Littlewood
26 August 2011
1 comment

The Taxpayers’ Alliance has released some interesting research coming out of its 2020 Tax Commission. HMRC is simply failing to collect tax revenues – to the tune of about £25...
Will Keynes Be Buried Once and for All?
Mark Littlewood
11 July 2011
9 comments

The impact of fiscal stimulus packages is very limited in the short-run and positively damaging in the long-run. That was the argument put by Professor Robert Barro at the IEA's twentieth...
Can we cap the debt?
Mark Littlewood
6 July 2011
1 comment

Next week, Conservative MP Sajid Javid will put forward a ‘ten minute rule bill’ to attempt to introduce a legal cap on the size of the net national debt. Although the proposal has no...
Public sector largesse in the UK
Mark Littlewood
1 July 2011
7 comments

The strikes and protests witnessed in Britain's cities this week may well signal the start of a phase of industrial disputes, as public sector employees fight to retain the rather substantial...
Osborne doesn’t need Plan B, but he does need Plan A+
Mark Littlewood
7 June 2011
comments

The Chancellor is right to stick to his guns on deficit reduction. The dividing line in the debate is between those who believe that spending more on the bloated public sector would assist with the...
True Finns are right to oppose EU bailouts
Mark Littlewood
21 April 2011
comments

General elections in Finland rarely secure much coverage across mainstream European media, but the results of – and fallout from – the poll earlier this month deserve detailed...
If there is to be an immigration cap, the Government should sell that limited number of work permits and visas
Mark Littlewood
13 April 2011
2 comments

Unsurprisingly, the government has been struggling somewhat with how to implement its policy of imposing an immigration cap on non-EU immigrants. Fortunately, in The Challenge of Immigration, a new...
Osborne made a start on deregulation, but there's a long way to go
Mark Littlewood
24 March 2011
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This was always going to be a rather modest budget. Having set out the Comprehensive Spending Review last year, the government had already decided its broad plan; we were never going to see much...
Plurality or not?
Mark Littlewood
4 March 2011
1 comment

With all the provisos attached to News Corp’s takeover of BSkyB, opposition to the deal has surely now been diluted. But there are, perhaps, two groups who can still legitimately complain...
The Coalition must create a culture of entrepreneurship, rather than entitlement
Mark Littlewood
15 February 2011
comments

Going for growth is the key challenge for the Coalition. In fact, pretty much all their eggs are in the growth basket. If GDP does not show a marked and impressive upward swing over the coming...
A simple way to keep every public library open...
Mark Littlewood
9 February 2011
42 comments

The furore over relatively modest reductions in public library provision shows the enormous challenge facing those seeking to reduce the size and cost of our bloated state. At an annual cost to...
The real debate – “laissez faire” versus “hands-on” government
Mark Littlewood
20 December 2010
2 comments

The so-called ‘cuts’ have dominated the political agenda since the coalition government was formed in May. In totality, the cuts are extraordinarily modest, amounting to a real terms...
Why education should be for profit
Mark Littlewood
15 December 2010
4 comments

Michael Gove’s free schools programme has been heralded as the cutting edge of the coalition’s structural reform programme. Removing the dead hand of the state and allowing new schools...
The Big Society is a threat to Labour
Mark Littlewood
25 November 2010
comments

If you think there really is a big idea behind the Big Society, then you agree with the unlikely pairing of Jon Cruddas (Lab, Dagenham) and Jesse Norman (Con, Hereford). The latter’s new book...
Going beyond the IDS reforms
Mark Littlewood
14 November 2010
1 comment

Iain Duncan Smith deserves credit for fully understanding the nature and scale of the welfare problem. But that’s the easy bit. Finding a solution with the right balance of carrot and stick...

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