Universal Credit

Britain needs more honesty about unemployment

18 October 2022 4:30 pm

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

7 September 2022 10:32 pm

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

28 October 2021 4:48 am

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

13 February 2021 9:00 am

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?

11 November 2017 9:00 am

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

4 November 2017 9:00 am

There are many reasons political journalists get so many things so badly wrong. One is our tendency to overvalue liberal…

The universal credit crunch

28 October 2017 9:00 am

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

24 October 2015 9:00 am

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

28 March 2015 9:00 am

Cameron was right about one thing: not sacking Lord Freud

Benefits Street

Benefits Street exposes Britain's dirty secret - how welfare imprisons the poor

18 January 2014 9:00 am

A documentary has finally exposed what life is like at the bottom. So why is the left so angry?

Welfare wars

11 January 2014 9:00 am

George Osborne is refreshingly uninterested in his public image, believing that he will be judged by the success (or otherwise)…