2018 marks the 70th birthday of the UK National Health Service – an institution which commands an unparalleled trust and reverence from the British people.1 Yet, to many casual onlookers, the Health Service appears to be in a perpetual state of “crisis”. To some extent, this is borne out...

Socialism is popular in the UK – not just among students, but also among people in their 30s and 40s. This is confirmed by survey after survey. Surveys also show that support for socialism in general terms is matched by support for a broad range of individual policies that could reasonably be...

Healthcare spending as a proportion of GDP has almost doubled since 1990, from just over 5% to almost 10% now. Healthcare costs rise exponentially in old age. Healthcare costs per capita are relatively stable during the first five decades of life, but they quadruple over the next four decades....

Over the past two years, there has been a worldwide regulatory backlash against new smartphone-app-based Private Hire Vehicle (PHV) operators, with Uber probably being the most emblematic one. While a few regulatory clarifications can be justified, the vast majority of measures have been...

From the mid-1990s to the onset of the financial crisis, prefunded pension systems, based on individual retirement savings accounts, were spreading around the world. The UK was initially a world leader in this, due to the system of contracting out, which had allowed people to opt out of part of...

UK voters face an historic choice between remaining within the EU or leaving and seeking a different type of involvement in the world economy. Such an alternative is clearly possible: the UK has many advantages in an international context as a result of its historical alliances and involvement...

Since 1970, average house prices have risen four and a half fold after inflation. No other OECD country’s experience has even come close. The UK’s housing stock is not just inadequate in total, but much of it is also in the ‘wrong place’, because what little development we have is skewed...

Despite some relative improvements in the last fifteen years, the National Health Service remains an international laggard in terms of those health outcomes that can be attributed to the healthcare system. In international comparisons of health system performance, the NHS almost always ranks in...

Rent controls are firmly back on the political agenda. At the national level the reintroduction of rent controls is now official Labour Party policy. At the London level Mayor Sadiq Khan calls for their reintroduction as well. Politicians, however, are in this case merely following a shift in...

Transport policy is increasingly determined at EU level, with national, regional and local governments heavily constrained by a supranational regulatory framework. This one-size-fits-all approach has meant regulations have frequently been maladapted to local conditions, and as a result have...