News & Insight

7 January 2015

One of the best things Einstein ever said was about the complexity of filing a tax return: “this is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher”. He meant that the act of filing a return raises the implicit...

6 January 2015

I voted in my first general election back in 1992. Yet, in all my active democratic life, a mainstream party has never stood up and presented tax as a good thing. Neil Kinnock, whose famous tax hikes supposedly lost him...

5 January 2015

Tax is at the heart of the relationship between the citizen and the state. The fundamental conflicts around John Hampden’s trial in 1637 for his refusal to pay King Charles’s taxes for ship money, and the Boston Tea Party in...

5 January 2015

It’s largely off the front pages and out of the headlines, but the secretive negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership (TTIP) will change trade between the EU and the US, potentially permanently. As the general election approaches, Labour must...

24 December 2014

When Emily Thornberry tweeted a picture of a house in Kent draped in St George’s Cross flags, it wasn’t just a momentary lapse in manners which led many to feel the episode was so damaging. The tweet gave life to...

23 December 2014

If Thomas Piketty had been born in Essex and married Katie Perry he might have written a book like Revolution. Russell Brand’s first foray into political writing is part manifesto, part memoir, part polemic and a stand out contender for...