Business is the wealth generator of the UK, and small and family businesses are the often neglected heart of the UK economy, with family businesses alone employing nearly four in ten of the UK’s workforce. We propose ways to make the UK an economy all businesses can thrive in.
In Sickness and in Health
It seems longer than three months ago that Oliver Letwin and I first wrote about health.
Clear the Decks
Britain’s industrial superiority during the nineteenth century depended upon our control of vital sea routes.
Britain’s Biggest Enterprise
The National Health Service is the biggest enterprise in Britain. It absorbs some £21 billion a year – almost £500 from every adult in the country. It treats almost one hundred thousand patients a day. And it is the largest employer in Western Europe, with just under one million employee – almost twice as many as in our entire civil service.
Victorian Values
Manners and Morals – the expression is peculiarly unmistakable Victorian. Not manners alone: Lord Chesterfield in the eighteenth century was fond of discoursing to his son on the supreme importance of manners, manners as distinct from morals.
The Local Left
There are three main intellectual traditions in the British Labour Party – the Fabens, the Guild socialists and the Marxist.
The Cold War
The Cold War! Many, probably most, of the typical political expressions – the cant phrases, as we would say – of our epoch come from France, and especially from the French revolution.
Science and Politics
In 1872 Walter Bagehot’s physics and politics was published. In it he pointed out that new inventions, particularly the railway and the telegraph, together with the rapid acquisition of physical knowledge were leading to a new world of ideas.
Privatise Coal
The nationalised coal industry is now in better shape than it has been for many years.
Current Choices
Privatisation schemes can have three principal objectives, between which there are potential conflicts.
Britain Resurgent
In 1950, despite all the strains of the aftermath of a world war, the British people enjoyed the seventh highest living standard of major developed nations.
To Spur, not to Mould
For as long as I can remember concern about our economic progress, compared with that of our competitors, has been the staple diet of both politicians and commentators.
The Wealthy Wellfairs
Humphery Wellfair had, during the long minutes his parachute swayed down to the desert atoll in 1944 been blissfully filled with thoughts of Beveridge, promising idyllic security from cradle to grave, at least in Britain.
The Unfinished Task
In a recent television programme about the post war reconstruction of Britain, a film clip was shown of Herbert Morrison addressing the Durham Miners rally on behalf of the Labour government.
The New Capitalism
The ideal of widespread personal ownership as a central goal of social policy has been persistently advocated over the years by a handful of politicians and one or two economists, and as persistently ignored by almost everybody else.
Shares for All
Share ownership is enjoying something of a renaissance. There are many more people today with a direct share in the risk capital of British industry and commerce than there were five years ago.
Morality and Markets
I am speaking here at St Georges house Windsor not as an amateur theologian but as a professional economist concerned with moral values.
