Tuesday review Articles

First, let’s talk about what yesterday’s speech by Ed Balls was not: it was not a hammer blow to the welfare state. I still believe that the universal principle is an essential pillar of the welfare state, but it’s more than a little bit overwrought to claim that a...

There’s a column I want to write, and it goes like this: Beneath all the froth about motivations, beneath the wild statements about heresy and depravity and rampant immigration, the English Defence League and the jihadists aren’t so very different: they are...

Ed Miliband is wrong: it’s time for a referendum on Europe. While we’re at it, I’ve never been consulted about the abandonment of the gold standard, so let’s throw that one in there, too. Ed Balls is a controversial figure: let’s have a referendum on whether or he...

I used to think that coalition was the way forward: any hue that wasn’t blue would do me just fine. I thought that British politics was a disastrous night out: a nation determined to go for a pub crawl forced into Starbucks by three determined coffee-drinkers. But I...