On 23 November the new Chancellor Phillip Hammond, will present his first Autumn Statement – it’s likely to contain a range of major policy announcements. As always the Treasury has invited submissions, and this year MSE and felt it was time to take them up on the offer – we’ve submitted two. The first was unfreeze the student loan...

How good is your knowledge of the election?  I popped into Radio 2 yesterday to chat to Jeremy Vine about the sheer joy of election maths. I feel a certain frisson at the massive complications and bizarre nature of a first past the post general election. It’s a bit like Eurovision, some watch for the songs and...

Politics is a tribal game. Like football fans, supporters of each team often position themselves at odds with each other, even when differences can be intangible. Therefore, when one of our country’s former Prime Ministers dies, that polarisation makes its difficult for our ruling elite to decide the appropriate treatment. The problem here, what makes a "great...

I’ve just watched the BBC One o’clock news. In it the headline (give or take a word) said… “The UK economy didn’t shrink as much as expected during the last quarter, falling only 0.7%. The real question though is how long this recovery will be sustained.” Hold on, the economy SHRANK -0.7% in three months. That’s not...

During the last year, behind the scenes, I’ve been agitating on what I believe is a scary major public policy hole with Childcare Vouchers and Childcare Tax Credits. In a nutshell, some people using these government schemes designed to make childcare more affordable are actually potentially £100s or even thousands WORSE off and they don’t even know...