The Martin Hutchinson Place
The new Keir Starmer Labour government’s energy secretary Ed Miliband, former leader of the party (2010-15) has overruled his officials to ban offshore North Sea energy drilling, sued to stop a coal mine project to which the Tories had given the go-ahead, announced the resumption of new onshore solar and wind projects and promised greater […]
France’s cuisine is probably civilization’s finest creation, and its art, music and fashion aren’t bad, either. Yet the French people fall for every leftist scam that is pulled on them, notably in the second round of elections last week, and are far too prone to revere intellectuals who would best be placed in solitary confinement. […]
For 200 years, leftist political economists and low-wage sweatshops have lobbied governments to put in taxes and regulations that lower wage rates, supposedly to “create jobs.” Such interference with the market, by making labor artificially cheap prevents the “creative destruction” that alone produces productivity gains and better living standards. The policy mix that produces high […]
If polls are correct, the British “Conservative” party will suffer a huge defeat on July 4, with Labour winning a large majority and Nigel Farage’s Reform party eating a big share of the previous Tory vote, albeit winning few seats in Parliament. Given the “Conservative” party’s abominable performance in the previous 14 years of government […]
The United States Supreme Court’s season ends in the next few weeks with a slew of decisions, after a year in which it has been subjected to increasingly vitriolic criticism by a left that feels neglected. In Britain, the “Supreme Court” set up by Tony Blair has been a fount of leftist Establishment wokery and […]
Benjamin Disraeli’s 1868 nationalization of the British tech sector does not get a mention in Robert Blake’s 800-page biography, yet it has had deeply damaging repercussions for Britain’s well-being over the 150-plus years since it happened. That illustrates our most important hidden problem: government’s regulatory meddling, utterly without regard to economic principles, may well produce […]
The election win of Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico dooms that country to at least six more years of violent Marxist wokery. Yet in a few countries elsewhere in Latin America, the universal gloom of socialism is lifting – Xavier Milei’s government in Argentina and Nayib Bukele’s in El Salvador both offer hope for the future […]
At the end of the 19th Century, it appeared that slavery had almost been eliminated worldwide. With slaveowners in British colonies bought out by Britain, an appalling Civil War in the United States, confiscation in Brazil and a major effort by the Royal Navy to extirpate the trade, its prevalence had been reduced to a […]
All of us who are old enough can remember where we were when it happened – the fantastic sight of demonstrators breaking down the Berlin Wall that had divided Germany and mankind for several decades, apparently marking the death-knell of the evil Communist tyranny. But a generation later, the question has to be asked: did […]
The Industrial Revolution is currently 256 years old, if you agree with my chronology in “Forging Modernity” dating its inception to 1768, plus or minus a year or two. Even given that it soared beyond mere human limitations, you would expect it to be showing signs of age by now. Yet in recent years, it […]