Opinion

  • Public Finance
    31 Oct 08
    HELEN DISNEY | This US presidential election has attracted a higher profile in the European media than ever before.
  • Public Finance
    24 Oct 08
    MIKE THATCHER | In the long run, we are all dead, Keynes famously remarked. As a justification for pump-priming an economy out of recession, it still has considerable appeal.
  • Public Finance
    24 Oct 08
    TONY TRAVERS | Many public service finance officers will have thought about ‘risk’ a great deal recently. In the past, the management of local authority, housing association or university reserves...
  • Public Finance
    17 Oct 08
    VICTORIA MACDONALD | For weeks now there has been nothing but unremitting gloom. The collapse of the markets, the failure of Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers, Icesave, etc and inflation soaring to its...
  • Public Finance
    16 Oct 08
    MIKE THATCHER | It seems that councils, police and fire authorities, charities and universities will be disappointed in their calls for the government to guarantee deposits totalling more than £1bn...
  • Public Finance
    10 Oct 08
    MIKE THATCHER | The cherished fiscal rules lie in tatters as the government embarks on a borrowing bonanza aimed at stabilising the turmoil in the UK’s banking sector.
  • Public Finance
    10 Oct 08
    MELISSA BENN | It could be the biggest political news story of the autumn: the return of the Prince of Darkness, or the Prince of Sleaze as one newspaper unkindly called him.
  • Public Finance
    3 Oct 08
    MIKE THATCHER | Responsibility was the name of game at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham.
  • Public Finance
    3 Oct 08
    NICK COMFORT | Governments get tired, and so do ministers. That is why prime ministers are tempted every so often — as Gordon Brown has so publicly been — not just to reshuffle the pack but to...
  • Public Finance
    26 Sep 08
    MIKE THATCHER | It was the speech of his life, they said. An oratorical tour de force. Authoritative and yet apologetic; humble, while still combative.
  • Public Finance
    26 Sep 08
    PHILIP JOHNSTON | As the party conference season draws to a close, does this feel like the run-up to 1979 or 1992?
  • Public Finance
    19 Sep 08
    MIKE THATCHER | It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Gordon Brown might not think so at the moment, but the collapse of global capitalism could save him from the ignominy of an unscheduled...
  • Public Finance
    19 Sep 08
    PETER WILBY | This ought to be a pregnant moment for the Left. The project of free-market capitalism, liberated from the dead hand of state regulation, has unravelled.
  • Public Finance
    12 Sep 08
    MIKE THATCHER | TUC conferences ain’t what they used to be. Gone are the days when prime ministers quaked as the labour movement marshalled its big battalions.
  • Public Finance
    12 Sep 08
    TONY TRAVERS | It is a measure of the Conservatives’ confidence that shadow chancellor George Osborne has let it be known that he is now considering public expenditure cuts.
  • Public Finance
    5 Sep 08
    MIKE THATCHER | Chancellors are not supposed to tell the whole truth. Of course, they shouldn’t lie, but being overly frank is not top of the job description.
  • Public Finance
    5 Sep 08
    DAVID LIPSEY | The US party conventions spark typical British condescension towards our largest former colony. We regard them as exercises in vulgar razzmatazz compared with the deeply serious...
  • Public Finance
    29 Aug 08
    MIKE THATCHER | Payment by results has never been far from controversy. Introduced in England in 2003 as part of an NHS internal market, it has been ignored by every other part of the UK.
  • Public Finance
    29 Aug 08
    PETER HETHERINGTON | Far away from the Westminster village, seemingly out of reach of a questioning media, a rather arbitrary reorganisation of English local government is under way.
  • Public Finance
    15 Aug 08
    MIKE THATCHER | Roy Keane, the manager of Sunderland Football Club, blamed it on wives and shopping. Overpaid footballers, he said, would rather play for an inferior London team than head to...
  • Public Finance
    15 Aug 08
    CONOR RYAN | There might be an August lull in speculation over Gordon Brown’s future. But the prime minister faces a testing September as he seeks to relaunch his government.
  • Public Finance
    1 Aug 08
    MIKE THATCHER | Labour MPs might have broken up for the summer, but there is still a frenzied atmosphere as Gordon Brown clings on to power amid growing concerns about his leadership of the party...
  • Public Finance
    1 Aug 08
    PETER WILBY | ‘Back to basics’ didn’t work for John Major, but it could just work for Gordon Brown.
  • Public Finance
    25 Jul 08
    MIKE THATCHER | Poor old Ed Balls. Just when most MPs are chucking their order papers in the air, as they head off for the long summer recess, the schools secretary is having to stay behind to...
  • Public Finance
    25 Jul 08
    HELEN DISNEY | Welfare-to-work or ‘workfare’ was once a novel concept in the UK. Just a decade ago, in the heyday of New Labour, the idea of using private firms to encourage back into work people...

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