Christm(ASI) Bulletin:
Dr. Eamonn Butler, our Director and Co-Founder, takes you through the past year at the Adam Smith Institute.
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We’ve been very busy this year…
…trying to save the nation from complete ruin. I suppose the fact that everyone’s not living off roots and berries indicates some partial success, despite the best efforts some of those in Westminster.
Among much else during the year, our under-35s Next Generation group heard from speakers like the Spectator’s James Heale and Cindy Yu, rising star Bim Afolami MP, Lords Hannan and Frost, and IEA iconoclast Chris Snowdon. We also held another hugely successful Freedom Week with 30 of the brightest freedom-minded students in discovered space, with profs Victoria Bateman, Richard Teacher and David Collins, and many others. That’s alongside countless school talks and university debates.
We also added former ministers Nadhim Zahawi and Sir Brandon Lewis as Patrons, with more being named soon.
We achieved over 300 major national media hits (and thousands of minor hits!), including stints on Moral Maze and Sunday Morning Live, and research report coverage in national newspapers, plus lots of mentions on local TV, radio and press. Even The Economist gave us credit for the full expensing idea now made permanent in the recent Budget: It’s the ASI wot won it, as they say.
January
The Prime Minister makes a video from the back seat of his car. But he forgets to put his seat belt on, causing much chatterati mouth-foaming and calls to resign. Prince Harry publishes Spare and 40,000 RMT members go on strike (are these two events related, though?—Ed.)
James Lawson, ASI Senior Fellow and tech guru, joins our leadership team as Chairman. He brings youthful vigour (not that youthful anymore!—Ed.) and experience from the real world outside SW1 (yes, the private sector—Ed.) He was recognised by Microsoft as being in their top 1% "Platinum Club" of employees, and now is a Director in Europe's largest AI company. He's also a policy wonk though, having been elected as the youngest ever member of the Mont Pelerin Society and completed a sabbatical as a Cabinet Office Senior Special Adviser for the last couple of PMs (If only they had heeded his advice we wouldn't be in this mess—Ed.)
February
Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer says Labour will focus on growth, energy, our beloved NHS, justice, and education. This is greeted with dismay that motherhood and apple pie didn’t make the cut. There is a Cabinet reshuffle and 475,000 workers go on strike. (There’s a pattern building up here—Ed.)
Back in the real world, the ASI publishes (to much acclaim) Levelling Down, on how the government’s acceptance of a global minimum corporation tax would kill UK competitiveness. We found that it will undermine investment zones and freeports, business tax credits, super-deductions for the depreciation of equipment investments. Not good!
March
Furious luvvies threaten to quit the BBC after it politely questions Gary Lineker’s right to post lefty tweets whenever he darn well chooses. Scottish boffins scratch their heads wondering why on earth the SNP needed a £100k camper van.
Meanwhile, ASI publishes The Forgotten Medium, explaining how policymakers are skewed towards the smallest and largest companies in the UK, who benefit from support not offered to the “Forgotten Medium.” There are many barriers preventing Britain’s medium sized companies from scaling up and boosting economic growth. With over 83% of MSBs outside of London and the South East, their products are overwhelmingly in non-services sectors such as retail, wholesale, and transport. It’s important to modify the Enterprise Investment Allowance & Venture Capital Trust schemes, and make the Annual Investment Allowance unlimited.
April
The Royal Mail unveils new stamps featuring the new king, Charles III. Unfortunately, at £1.10 a pop, nobody can afford them. A Just Stop Oil protester sprays orange powder over the World Snooker Championship table, an obvious blasphemy against the national religion.
ASI publishes Leave Them Kids Alone, explaining how to solve the childcare crisis by scrapping the £100k cliff edge, introducing tax credits, making the child:carer ratio unlimited, and easing informal childcare rules. The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, took on some of our recommendations on-board in his Spring Budget, such as reforming the ratio. But the battle continues.
May
The national religion suffers a blow when the World Snooker Championship is won by a Belgian. (Immigration is far too lax. Why do we keep letting in people who beat us at everything?—Ed.) The Tories lose 1000 council seats, but nobody notices because they’re all too busy buying Coronation China.
And in a blow against bloated bureaucracy, ASI publishes analyst Tim Ambler’s book Shrinking Whitehall, which argues we can lose nearly half the civil service without us noticing any difference.
June
Ex-Cabinet Minister, Nadine Dorries, announces she will stand down. But just to keep up the tension, doesn’t. A Commons Committee says that Boris misled Parliament over Partygate, which isn’t regarded as news because MPs think Boris routinely misleads everyone about everything. Perhaps time would be better spent examining why Sweden has the lowest excess deaths in the OECD post pandemic.
Tax Freedom Day- the day when Britons stop paying tax and start putting their earnings into their own pocket- fell on the 18th June. This was the latest Tax Freedom Day since reliable records began in 1995—and compared to earlier (less reliable) data it is the latest since the mid-80s.
This gloomy news aside, a few days later we celebrated Adam Smith’s 300th birthday with a reception at the House of Lords, featuring diplomatic advice from the then Foreign Secretary.
And we published Optimising for Openness, in which we help solve the immigration problem (That’s more than the government has been able to do—Ed.) by suggesting that visas should be auctioned, so that the employers most in need of foreign labour can buy it. Oh, and that’s a nice little earner (At £27bn, quite a big earner, I’d say—Ed.) for the Treasury.
July
The Foreign Office advises against travel to France because of anti-Macron riots. Though given the train strikes and the Air Traffic Control system shutting down, you can’t get there anyway.
Here, my colleague Dr Madsen Pirie slashes through the UK’s most intractable political problems—including healthcare reform, homelessness and much else, with a radical new agenda for government.
August
The UK economy grows by 0.2% on quarter, and government borrowing is down, prompting dismay throughout Leftendom. To depress the mood even further, the Bank of England raises interest rates to their highest in 15 years.
Meanwhile, a new ASI report, The Price of Everything, The Social Value of Nothing, takes a swipe at government procurement, showing how the current system focuses on getting companies to prove that they are working towards nebulous social goals, such as protecting the environment, tackling economic inequality throughout their whole supply chain, and introducing expensive cybersecurity licensure- even if they are an analogue business. Unsurprisingly, we say that this is a load of nonsense and that it is wasting taxpayer’s money on inefficient procurement- so we call on the government to return to a system of ‘Most Economically Advantageous Tender.’ It also kicked off our campaign to Repeal the Social Value Act.
September
The RAAC concrete crisis sees schools, hospitals and other public buildings closed down. Mind you, in Birmingham they weren’t open anyway because the local council had gone bust. XL Bullies are banned, reminding everyone that dangerous dogs are for Christmas, not for life. And national mourning is declared after someone cuts down a tree somewhere.
The ASI’s Tipping Point report makes the case for boosting R&D in artificial intelligence, including fast-track visas for AI experts and (we always say this) lower corporation tax rates.
October
The Prime Minister uses his Party Conference speech in Manchester to say that HS2 won’t be going to…er, Manchester.
We hosted a grand reception at Conservative Party Conference, with the then Health Secretary Steve Barclay MP as our star guest. And we were there at the Labour Party Conference with a panel with political gurus Hugo Gye, Tom Harwood and Alice Perry, explaining what Labour candidates need to do to be elected. (Er…give up socialism?—Ed.)
And in Homes for All, we explained how compulsory purchase could be redesigned such that local people benefit—reducing the opposition to development and leading to 3.8m new houses being built with almost £1 trillion for the Treasury.
And we launched Madsen Pirie’s new series of Freedom’s Fighters with an exclusive interview with Nadhim Zahawi. You can watch that here.
November
Nitrous Oxide, known as ‘laughing gas’ is banned. This illiberal policy is designed to stop people having a giggle at the political mess we’re in. New Zealand scraps the generational voting plan that Rishi had praised so much at the Tory Conference, so in a fit of pique he reshuffles his Cabinet.
The ASI is also active, with three major reports.
Smoke Free Rooms shows how the hated WHO being down on reduced-harm tobacco products (such as vapes) would actually harm public health. And Fission Impossible (What’s with all the catchy titles these days?—Ed.) concluded that the UK should accelerate nuclear energy by re-processing waste and embracing the latest technologies. Embracing Private Sector investment? That’s exactly what we, and DESNZ, want.
Our polling in Rooms for Debate confirmed that young people in particular (who can’t afford to get on the ladder) would not oppose more housebuilding- and this received plenty of attention across national and local press, including a write-up in the Telegraph and a big interview with our Patron Brandon Lewis on Sky News.
Events too: In our Conservation with Mick Mulvaney, the former White House Chief of Staff reviewed the prospects for the upcoming US election (and treated us to some amusing anecdotes about his former boss, Donald Trump).
And in our Innovation Roundtable, we developed plans to push ahead innovative technologies to make Britain a tech superpower. Read Sir Graham Brady’s CityAm piece on it here, and sign our innovation declaration here.
December
During a cold snap with heavy snowfalls, drivers are trapped in their cars, in freezing conditions, for 19 hours. So on the whole, no worse than an average wait at A&E, but without the fear that a RAAC ceiling might fall down on you. And statisticians believe that the number of new government plans to ‘stop the boats’ could soon exceed the number of boats they aim to stop.
Not even some wry digs about Old Etonian ministers from the principal guest at our end-of-year bash (read The Spectator piece on it here) and hosting the UK film première of Ayn Rand’s We the Living brought our activities to a close— watch out for our next report between Christmas and New Year. Phew!
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And I quote…
And to round off Adam Smith’s 300th birthday year, an improving thought from the great sage himself:
It is the highest impertinence and presumption…in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense…. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.
The Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chapter III.
Well, quite.
Bye…
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