HEATHER WAKEFIELD | We may never know if Gordon Brown’s fondness for Dear Prudence stemmed from a love of the Beatles’ 1968 vintage White Album track, but he was in the Fab Four’s home town yesterday...
MIKE BREWER | The Centre for Social Justice have published a report in association with Oliver Wyman on how to reform the benefits and tax credits system, with the aim of reducing the number of...
ROBERT CHOTE | There is a lot we do not yet know about how Labour and the Conservatives would go about repairing Britain's battered public finances over the next few years. But last week's speeches...
ROD ALDRIDGE | As the sponsor of two academies, I am very much in favour of Schools’ Secretary Ed Balls’ announcement last week bringing the end of the £2m entry fee for future academy sponsorships
MELISSA BENN | In his last PF blog, Conor Ryan suggests that union opposition to academies is based largely on uncertainty about performance; oh, and just a smidgen of carping self interest and...
ALAN DOWNEY | I think the basic premise of the Institute of Directors/Taxpayers Alliance report, How to save £50bn, is virtually impossible to argue with
PETER HETHERINGTON | Essex leader Lord Hanningfield’s call for the power to set local benefits is just one of the radical ideas local government is throwing up in the recession
JUDY HIRST | In politics, as in comedy, timing is everything. So the news that Britain might be out of recession should have provided a favourable backdrop for the chancellor’s Callaghan lecture...
CONOR RYAN | With 200 academies open today, this independent state schools programme – launched in 2000 by Tony Blair and David Blunkett – has certainly come of age
ALAN DOWNEY | The proposals in the leaked McKinsey report on the NHS, suggesting that one in ten health service workers should lose their jobs, are not the answer. Change must come from within the...
The problem with Paul Cook’s sustained metaphor for the proposed housing finance reform as flogging a dead horse is that just as he expects his horse to be sleek and glamorous, he’s clearly expecting...
JUDY HIRST | It seemed a good idea at the time. Tony Blair’s ten-year target of getting 50% of young people into higher education – attacked by some as utopian – fitted the meritocratic mood nearly...
KATE STANLEY | As politicians come back from their summer breaks and the last party conference season before the general election approaches, attention is sure to return to the issue of public...
IAIN MACWHIRTER | Rarely has compassion come at such a cost. The Scottish Government’s decision to release the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, from prison on humanitarian...
