Universal Credit
Britain needs more honesty about unemployment
Is low unemployment causing us more problems than we realise? The suggestion might seem absurd, offensive even. It’s reminiscent of…
Liz Truss should increase Universal Credit
Liz Truss’s plans for a two-year energy bill freeze, estimated to cost £100 billion, underscore three points. One, the incoming Prime…
Rishi Sunak's low tax pitch to MPs
Is Rishi Sunak a low tax chancellor? He certainly likes to tell anyone who will listen that he is. Yet…
Universal Credit and the future of the welfare state
Amid the many failures of public policy during the Covid crisis, one success has gone largely unnoticed. The Universal Credit…
Does Theresa May’s zombie government even want to survive?
Dealing with a hung parliament was never going to be easy, but no one quite foresaw the decay which now…
Netanyahu’s triumph means a one-state Israel must soon choose democracy – or apartheid
There are many reasons political journalists get so many things so badly wrong. One is our tendency to overvalue liberal…
The universal credit crunch
It only dawned on me in late summer just how terrible our new benefits system, universal credit, might be both…
Tearing tax credits away from the working poor is a battle of choice, not necessity
Just over 30 years ago, Margaret Thatcher’s government decided to look at local government finance. A young aide, John Redwood,…
Lord Freud: the man who saved the welfare system
Cameron was right about one thing: not sacking Lord Freud
Benefits Street exposes Britain's dirty secret - how welfare imprisons the poor
A documentary has finally exposed what life is like at the bottom. So why is the left so angry?
Welfare wars
George Osborne is refreshingly uninterested in his public image, believing that he will be judged by the success (or otherwise)…
