Austerity

One damned thing after another: Britain’s crisis-ridden century so far

29 June 2024 9:00 am

The Iraq war, the financial crisis, Brexit and Covid have seen many prime ministers blown off course. Will Keir Starmer be any luckier than his predecessors?

A strong whiff of goodbyes: The Pole and Other Stories, by J.M. Coetzee, reviewed

9 December 2023 9:00 am

‘The cogs are seizing up, the lights are going out.’ As Elizabeth Costello clears her desk in this collection of stories, we feel that Coetzee may be doing the same

Boris, Biden and the era of big government

13 March 2021 4:22 am

Bill Clinton’s declaration that ‘the era of big government is over’ summed up the late 1990s political zeitgeist. Centre-left political…

Toxic regulations, not the fire brigade, are to blame for the Grenfell deaths

2 November 2019 9:00 am

It has been bizarre to hear the London Fire Brigade taking the brunt of the blame for the deaths of…

£350 million for the NHS: How the Brexit bus pledge is coming true

26 May 2018 9:00 am

A fortnight before Philip Hammond delivered his last Budget, the chief executive of the NHS gave a speech making the…

Corbyn can be beaten – here’s how

8 July 2017 9:00 am

The Tory party is suffering from an intellectual crisis of confidence. Before 8 June, its collective view was that Jeremy…

The great austerity con

6 February 2016 9:00 am

Not so long ago I stumbled into a little pop-up in Hoxton: a delightful tearoom hardly bigger than a walk-in…

The King of Greece tells it like it really was

6 February 2016 9:00 am

Athens Viewed from Mars, this is a sunny, peaceful city. Up close, however, things ain’t what they used to be.…

Pig-ignorant click activists are in charge now. Jeremy Corbyn’s success proves it

5 September 2015 9:00 am

Daily they drop into my email account — alongside the more obviously useful stuff about how I might elongate my penis…

Please come on holiday to poor, broken Greece. It needs you

18 July 2015 9:00 am

At the weekend, I tried — and failed — to get some money out of an empty cashpoint near Omonia…

Labour’s austerity tradition

27 June 2015 9:00 am

The spirit of 1945 No one would have been more surprised at the sight of 100,000 people marching in London…

The dinner where laissez-faire banking died

20 June 2015 9:00 am

Last week’s deadline did not allow me to report from ringside at the Mansion House dinner, but there was so…

Let Greece leave the eurozone

21 February 2015 9:00 am

To listen to Greek government ministers addressing the outside world during their breaks from negotiations with eurozone leaders this week,…

France's political system is crumbling. What's coming next looks scary

7 June 2014 9:00 am

The desperate state of its politics seems to signal the end of the Republic

How France’s left-wing government learned to love austerity

10 May 2014 9:00 am

How France learned to love cuts

George Osborne is entitled to look smug

26 April 2014 9:00 am

The popular pastime for financial commentators this season is sticking pins in George Osborne. To those on the left who…

George Osborne has seen the light on tax cuts. Now he needs to implement some more

7 December 2013 9:00 am

George Osborne has not been a complete disappointment as Chancellor. He has, it is depressing to note, ended up giving…

Ireland's back, and luck had nothing to do with it

16 November 2013 9:00 am

My man in Dublin calls with joy in his voice to tell me ‘the Troika’ — the combined powers of…