Ross Clark
Verified- Journalist, Freelance
- Freelance Journalist, The Spectator
- Freelance Journalist, Daily Mail
- Freelance Journalist, Daily Express
England
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Writes for Spectator, Telegraph, Mail. Author Not Zero, the Denial. A Lark, musical about Ursula Vaughan Williams, at Green Room Theatre, Dorking 19-21 Apr
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Articles by Ross Clark
The price we’ll all pay for the minimum wage hike
How Chancellors love jacking up the minimum wage, as John Healey has just done in his Budget, by 3.9 per cent. Look, here’s a pay rise on me, he is saying, and it doesn’t even require a penny on tax to pay for it. Left-wing economists have a word for it: ‘predistribution’, which means trying to achieve economic equality without having to tax and spend (not that there aren’t also numerous benefits on offer the poor as well).
We need a crackdown on the cycling menace
A modest request to HM Government: if we have to have an ‘active travel commissioner’ can we please make it a pedestrian next time, rather than an Olympic cyclist? In the past five years the number of fines issued by police forces to cyclists fell from 6,000 to 3,660. Some police forces last year failed to fine a single cyclist, while just ten were fined in the whole of Devon and Cornwall.
Who cares if Barclays lays off 5 per cent of its staff?
Imagine if the City of London were full of largely unmanned office blocks, and that this had occurred not because their former occupants were working from home but because they were not working at all. There are a few people wandering around, technicians mainly, who are checking things as the computers purr away.
The green light for Jackdaw is a small victory for common sense
It will likely only be brief, but the government is in danger of looking half-sensible. Not only has John Healey backtracked from imposing a Capital Gains Tax rise on business, but the new energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has this morning announced that the development of the Jackdaw gas field can go ahead. The case for it is overwhelming, even on environmental grounds.
How close did Britain come to a blackout in June?
Just how close did Britain’s electricity grid come to collapse on 23 June? Allegations began circulating soon after that date of a cover-up by the National Energy Systems Operator (NESO). While external observers could see that something abnormal was happening, with the frequency of the grid falling below operational limits for several hours, NESO quickly denied that anything was wrong.
Will Labour MPs allow Burnham to end the Neets crisis?
I can’t fault the sentiment contained in a piece which has appeared under Andy Burnham’s name this morning about the crisis of having a million young people not in education, employment or training (Neets), and what the government plans to do about it. Writing in the Times, the Prime Minister or his ghostwriter has it spot on with the words: Today, the welfare system provides an assessment, a payment and after that, a goodbye.
AI is blowing apart the case for net zero
Remember how ‘green jobs’ were going to transform the UK economy, creating new opportunities for well-paid careers which would sweep away the dirty, old economy jobs? It is been blown apart by the industry of the moment, Artificial Intelligence, or AI. Suddenly, it doesn’t look quite so clever to build an industrial future based on green energy when AI is gobbling up investment.
WFH has turned the public sector into an economic deadweight
I always rather admired the airline pilot who managed to keep two marriages going, one on either side of the Atlantic. His job gave him the perfect excuse for his absences while avoiding the risk of an awkward moment if his two wives bumped into each other in the supermarket. But that is nothing compared with when I heard that a civil servant had been accused of holding down five public sector jobs at once, using the ability to work from home in order to disguise what he was up to.
Why Tom Cruise’s Digger flopped at the box office
Has climate hysteria finally run its course? I ask because the latest Hollywood blockbuster on the subject seems to have bombed. Digger, in which Tom Cruise plays an oil tycoon so intent on drilling that he causes an ice shelf off Greenland to collapse, provoking climatic disaster, took only about $8 million in its first weekend, not great when it needs $280 million of box office takings just to break even.
Zack Polanski is on the brink after his Holborn by-election defeat
Zack Polanski’s failure to win the Holborn and St Pancras by-election is not just a disappointment; it undermines the Green party leader’s entire strategy for his party and will inevitably bring his leadership into question. In a few months, Polanski has gone from being just about the most successful party leader of the moment to being the one who is surely now in greatest trouble.
The Tories are right: the Environment Agency must go
You can almost feel John Selwyn Gummer, Zac Goldsmith and the rest of the Conservatives’ green lobby quaking. Kemi Badenoch has incurred their wrath by proposing that the Environment Agency and Natural England be abolished. It is part of a package, which also involves the reduction in levies charged to housebuilders, which the Tories claim will reduce the cost of building a new home by £50,000.
Trump is exposing Britain’s energy folly
Exploiting more of our North Sea oil and gas reserves will make absolutely no difference to our energy security nor the prices we pay in the shops because the oil or gas would just be sold on international markets at the global price. We know this because Ed Miliband and others keep telling us so. Not for the first time, it has taken Donald Trump to expose the falseness of this argument.
Burnham will regret dredging up the Brexit debate
Andy Burnham tells us that he left the House of Commons in 2017 because he was disillusioned with the place. It was not at all because he had lost the 2015 Labour leadership campaign to Jeremy Corbyn and fancied his chances of building a power base in the Manchester mayoralty, just as Boris Johnson had successfully done in London. But did he have to go and hide his head under a stone after he left Westminster? Burnham now seems to think that he has an answer to Brexit.
Burnham’s National Care Service is a Tory vote winner
Andy Burnham wants to thank the nation’s carers – except, possibly, the one he told us slipped his Granny Kitty’s engagement ring off her finger while she was in a care home a couple of decades ago. I don’t think the Prime Minister is ever quite going to eliminate light-fingered care workers, but he did confirm today that he wants to create a National Care Service which will be free at the point of delivery.
Andy Burnham’s Great British Grid is doomed
There was a very big hole in the Chancellor John Healey’s claim yesterday that he is going to generate a new age of industry. Why would anyone want to open a factory, or any other kind of industrial plant, in Britain when they would be paying far more for their energy than in other countries?
Tactical voting is Burnham’s secret weapon
For Andy Burnham the biggest challenge is to avoid going down like Gordon Brown, who passed up the chance of calling an election in autumn 2007, when he was newly in office and public opinion of him was still quite high, only to crash to defeat two and a half years later. The memory of that time, when Burnham himself was health secretary, has no doubt fed into the reports that Downing Street advisers are considering the case for an election next spring.
Could slavery reparation demands save Reform UK?
Small boat arrivals are down a bit. Meanwhile, Reform UK has had a difficult year over its donations and seen its vote eaten into by Restore Britain. Compound this with the arrival of a prime minister more energetic and popular than the last one and it has become possible to imagine Labour winning the next election – and with a healthy majority.
Why green zealots want to drop ‘net zero’
First, the good news. The Commons select committee on energy security and net zero has called on the government to drop net zero. Now the bad news: they only mean the term ‘net zero’ not the actual policy of trying to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050. They complain that the term has become a ‘lightning rod for opposition to climate action’, and that it has become a ‘distraction’, even though it describes perfectly what the government is – ruinously – trying to achieve.
If Burnham won’t make cuts, the IMF will do it for him
Even the weather has been playing along with the bizarre 1976 tribute act in which we seem to be trapped. We have had a mid-term change of Labour Prime Minister, a Chancellor called Healey, a government presiding over low growth and lingering inflation. We are back to punitive levels of taxation. Wealthy individuals, like hedge fund billionaire Chris Rokos this week, are fleeing.
Oil at $100 a barrel is a disaster for Trump
When Donald Trump’s political obituary comes to be written, none of his colorful phrases over the years will seem quite as outrageous as his remark in June, when the Consumer Prices Index hit 4.2 percent: “I love the inflation.” He later claimed that he meant he loved the inflation figures because they weren’t as high as they could have been.
Ryanair is right to fume about the chaos at Britain’s airports
In a crowded market, the National Air Traffic Control Service (Nats) still has a good claim to be our most croaking public service. Yesterday’s collapse of the system, which has led so far to more than 2,000 flights being cancelled, is hardly the first such failure. Three years ago a similar collapse over the August Bank Holiday weekend led to 700,000 passengers being delayed or prevented from travelling altogether.
Are our maps colonialist?
It has been clear for years that the UN has fallen under the influence of left-wing activists and rapacious developing countries who are using it as a vehicle to press to slavery and climate reparations. But the UN’s latest initiative is possibly the nuttiest of them all.
Sadiq Khan is the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice
Who – at least among those of a Conservative mind — didn’t feel a pang of pleasure at the news that Sadiq Khan has been convicted of failing to pay road tax? Won’t that serve him right, he who has been merrily handing out fines to people who fall foul of his Ultra Low Emissions Zone? Well no, actually. Whatever you think of Khan and ULEZ, it shouldn’t blind you to the outrage against justice that has just been committed against him.
Burnham is a big state man heading for disaster
Should public utilities be in public hands? I am prepared to see both sides of that argument, especially as some privatised companies – Thames Water, for one – have hardly been great adverts for private enterprise over the years. Monopolistic private companies seem to me to be as bad as monopolistic nationalised ones. If we can’t have competition, then maybe state ownership in some cases is the lesser of the evils.
Why the drive to turn Britain into an AI superpower could leave us gasping for water
Get your news delivered straight to you by 7am - sign up to our new Morning Mail newsletter for FREE It rained in Slough last week but like most of southern England it has spent the last month sweltering under a hosepipe ban. Its lawns and parks remain parched and brown and children's paddling pools lie folded up in the garage.
Net zero isn’t bringing down our energy bills
We know all about climate change deniers; perhaps it is time we turned our attention to energy bill deniers. This morning Ofgem announced that its cap on energy prices will rise by 4 per cent in October, taking the average household dual fuel bill to £1,723 a year. This is £60 higher than it is at present, wiping out the £44 saved by the temporary removal of VAT from fuel bills announced by Andy Burnham last month.
Why is Rayner helping travellers build more sites?
Here it is, finally: Labour’s ‘growth’ strategy. And what does it consist of? Reform of planning laws to make it easier for travellers to set up encampments in the countryside, in places where any other form of development would be banned. Under the previous rules, councils could consider ‘potential environmental damage caused by unauthorised encampments’ when looking at applications for traveller sites.
Why won’t Reform’s welfare cuts apply to the triple lock?
Well done to Reform UK for proposing to make chunky, £50 billion cuts to the welfare budget, more than twice the £23 billion cuts the Conservative have pledged to make. The left will scream about kicking away the crutches of the poor and sick, but the benefits system has become a voracious beast that is rapidly consuming the country. The bill has risen by 27 per cent in real terms since 2014/15.
Clacton has strengthened Nigel Farage
There are two words you will hear endlessly today: ‘hollow victory’. Nigel Farage is back as MP for Clacton, but by doing battle with a bin, he has achieved nothing but embarrassed himself. Look, his refusal to attend his own count just proves it. That is what we will be told by many political commentators, but is it true?
Is this the best Labour can do?
Will Andy Burnham call an autumn general election and take advantage of his prime ministerial honeymoon, or will he go the way of his erstwhile boss, Gordon Brown, who flunked a decision on an election in the autumn of 2007 and went on to defeat in 2010? The latest polls have generated a swirl of speculation because they suggest that Labour has taken the lead for the first time in nearly 18 months.
There’s one rip-off Andy Burnham will never crack down on
Trying to pay my taxes via the HMRC website the other week, my bank thought it had sniffed a rat. “Could this be a scam?” it popped up and asked. I went ahead and made the payment anyway, but the honest answer was yes, ‘scam’ is not an unreasonable way of putting it. Every year, my tax bill seems to sneak upwards while I seem to get a little less for my money.
No, Westminster isn’t banning ‘vertical drinking’
Well, Andy Burnham’s commitment to devolution didn’t last long. It has failed to survive the mildest of challenges: a proposal by Westminster Council to discourage ‘vertical drinking’: i.e. people standing up while they are having a beer. It was enough to launch our beery prime minister into a frenzied Downing Street power grab.
Our airports have won the battle against net zero – but not the war
For anti-airport campaigners it is a double setback. In the space of 24 hours, legal challenges against the expansion of Gatwick and Luton have failed. As a result, Gatwick’s emergency runway will be moved 12 metres away from its main runway, to allow it to be used for routine take-offs and landings, enabling an extra 100,000 flights a year. Luton will gain a second terminal, allowing it nearly to double the number of passengers it can handle.
Why Burnham’s levelling-up drive is sure to backfire
‘Growth in every postcode’, ‘levelling up’ – whatever you call it, it is easier to sympathise with the general aim of raising living standards in downtrodden areas to match those in better-off places than it is to come up with workable policies to achieve it. I really wonder if Andy Burnham has thought through his big idea for the geographical equalisation of wealth, because at first sight it appears as if he is creating an engine to achieve the exact opposite.
Why a ‘social care levy’ is a bad idea
I am not having an election because I am going to stick to the 2024 manifesto on which Labour was elected. That’s Andy Burnham’s position, but could he be about to undermine it by levying a new form of income tax? It is being reported this morning that the Prime Minister is considering a new 1.8 per cent levy on income in order to meet the estimated £18 billion annual cost of his National Care Service.
Will Labour ever cut the benefits bill?
Does anyone really believe that Andy Burnham will succeed in cutting welfare benefits for 16–24-year-olds, as is being reported? Good luck to him if he really does have a go, because it is absolutely needed. The percentage of 16–24-year-olds claiming out of work benefits on the basis of long-term sickness climbed from a low of 5.2 per cent in 2018 to reach 9.3 per cent in 2024.
France may be on fire, but ‘the world’ is not
Share Topics World Want unlimited, ad-free access? Become a spiked supporter. The world is on fire. And now we don’t just have Greta Thunberg to tell us so; we can just look at the ‘apocalyptic’ images from Bordeaux and see for ourselves. That will keep the ‘deniers’ quiet, have them shuffling from foot to foot as they realise just how foolish they have been. That, at any rate, is what we are supposed to believe.
Is Andy Burnham really ready to hand power to Reform councils?
Keen to keep up the momentum on his big (or not so big) ideas, Andy Burnham will apparently announce on Friday that in future some revenue from income tax will be distributed directly to local government so that they, rather than Whitehall, can choose how to spend the money. Will he really want to give up power and money to Reform-led councils who might be minded to do all they can to thwart Labour party policies? Or spend their money hanging the St George Cross from every lamp post?
Only North Sea oil can save Burnham’s cost of living drive
Andy Burnham has made it clear that he doesn’t much like free markets. And they are making it equally clear that they don’t much like him, either. Our new PM has spent every day this week announcing a new initiative to bring down the cost of living. But it has all been spoiled by the galloping price of oil. His £2 bus fares might soon come in handy – for motorists who would not normally dream of taking the bus.
Has Miatta Fahnbulleh learned her lesson on net zero?
Many were the voices arguing that Ed Miliband would be a disaster if appointed Chancellor, frightening markets and sending Britain even further down the dark alleyway of net zero. Few, though, stopped to wonder who would replace Miliband at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).
Would a social care levy work?
We keep hearing that Andy Burnham’s government will be the most left-wing since the 1970s, when the namesake of the new chancellor promised to squeeze the rich (Denis Healey actually said ‘property speculators’) ‘until the pips squeak’. But Burnham is about to give the better-off end of the middle classes a huge handout. Rumours abound that the new prime minister is mulling the idea of a National Care Service which, like the NHS, would provide old age care which is free at the point of delivery.
The little-known government body accused of covering up how close Britain came to heatwave blackout
Ross Clark On the afternoon of June 23, many were enjoying the start of a heatwave that would take temperatures up to 37C (99F), surpassing the June record set in the scorching summer of 1976. As we sweated, most of the country was blissfully unaware that a potentially catastrophic energy crisis was unfolding.
Andy Burnham’s plan to reverse Thatcherism is a little ridiculous
Why not blame Herbert Asquith or Lord Aberdeen? Andy Burnham’s line about reversing ‘40 years of neo-liberalism’ – i.e. since the Thatcher government’s reforms – is beginning to grate somewhat. ‘Britain took a series of wrong turns in the 1980s,’ he told us, while accepting the Labour leadership. We ‘surrendered control’ of water and electricity, while ‘large parts of Britain were deindustrialised’. It might have been an appropriate line for Labour when fighting the 1997 general election.
Nationalising British Steel is not the worst idea
Keir Starmer won’t leave much of a legacy, but his last week has brought one thing which will be seen as a totemic achievement in Labour circles: he has completed the nationalisation of British Steel. Not only will that warm the cockles of his party members, but Starmer has stolen a march on Nigel Farage, who had also proposed to nationalise what remains of the steel industry.
A land value tax would be disastrous
Earnings are taxed too highly, Andy Burnham has hinted, and wealth too little. I don’t hold much hope for a cut in income tax, but I think we can pencil in higher wealth taxes, on property especially.
Is Ed Miliband really changing his tune on North Sea oil?
I’m a little sceptical of reports that Ed Miliband is prepared to back down and accept new drilling for gas in the Jackdaw field in return for being made chancellor. Last time that Miliband was reported to be on the point of granting permission for new oil and gas licences in the North Sea it turned out not to be true. He dug in his heels, and a hapless Keir Starmer let him do so.
How council tenants are renting multi-million-pound properties and 'swapping' them: Ross Clark
If, like millions of millennials and Gen Z-ers, you are paying over £1,000 per month to rent a grotty room in a shared property in a distant borough at the edges of London , look away now. How would you fancy a three-bedroom flat occupying both the first and second floors of a grand, stucco-fronted house on a quiet street in the heart of Pimlico, just a few minutes' walk from the Houses of Parliament – for £143 per week?
What is Farage’s game?
It is a mark of Nigel Farage’s position on the nation’s consciousness that he has succeeded in pushing the judgement in the Prince Harry vs Associated Newspaper’s legal case – an absolute cataclysm for Harry which on any other day would dominate the airwaves and has huge implications for the future of royalty – into second place on the news. Did he deliberately choose to go head to head with Mr Justice Nicklin in order to test his power and influence over national life?
Do doctors think tax rises shouldn’t apply to them?
‘Only the little people pay taxes,’ New York hotel tycoon Leona Helmsley was once reputed to have said. She later discovered, as she was jailed for tax evasion, that that wasn’t quite true. But her ethos still lives on, in the British Medical Association’s (BMA) campaign for a rise in consultants’ pay. Consultants now seem to think that they ought to be compensated for the tax increases which are paying their salaries and pensions.
Only bad parents will let their kids skip school to watch the England game
Is Thomas Tuchel a secret agent sent by Friedrich Merz’s government to ruin the UK economy and education system so as to make life easier for German exporters? I know the answer to that is probably no, but I ask only because of the England manager’s extraordinary call on parents to allow their children to play truant after staying up to watch his plodding footballers muff their chances against Mexico early on Monday morning. “Write an excuse and let them watch football,” he said.
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