Brian Rushton Should Britain abolish the monarchy?

Brian Rushton,

On September 9th, Queen Elizabeth II will become the longest-serving monarch in Britain's history. Below, three Economist writers argue for different futures for the British crown.

The case against the monarchy
The case for the monarchy
The case for modest reform

 

The case against the monarchy

CEASE campaigning, Hillary Clinton; get back to business, Donald Trump: America’s 2016 election has been cancelled. The White House has announced that in the interests of political stability the next president and all future ones will be chosen using the British model. Barack Obama will remain in office until he dies, at which point Americans will welcome their next head of state: his daughter, Queen Malia.

Americans would not stand for this. Why do Britons? The case against hereditary appointments in public life is straightforward: they are incompatible with democracy and meritocracy, which are the least-bad ways to run countries. Royalists say this does not matter because the monarch no longer “runs”...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Britain conducts a drone assassination

Brian Rushton,

IT WAS, Britain's prime minister conceded, “a new departure”. David Cameron’s announcement to the House of Commons on September 7th that a Royal Air Force (RAF) Reaper drone had targeted and killed Reyaad Khan (pictured, at left) in Syria, an Islamic State (IS) fighter from Cardiff and a British citizen, raised as many questions as he was prepared to answer. The strike, which killed two others who were travelling in the same vehicle, including another Briton, took place on August 21st near IS's stronghold in Raqqa. While America has for many years used drones for the targeted killing of terrorists in places such as the tribal territories in Pakistan and Yemen, it is the first time that Britain has done so. Previously, RAF drones have been used for lethal strikes in Afghanistan, but only when British or allied forces were threatened by fighting on the ground.

Mr Cameron’s defence of the attack and its legality was based upon intelligence that identified Mr Khan as actively engaged in the planning of “barbaric” attacks on the West. Military commemorations in Britain, said Mr Cameron, were high on the list of his targets. A key...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Making Britain make things again is proving difficult

Brian Rushton,

ONE of the great claims of prime minister David Cameron’s governments was they were going to rebalance the economy, away from dodgy, speculative bankers in favour of worthy, old-fashioned metal-bashers. In fact, over the past five years, manufacturing’s share of Britain’s GDP has barely budged from about 10%. That is disappointing, especially after a raft of government schemes were introduced to help manufacturers. But now, if new figures are to be believed, there may be worse to come.

The EEF manufacturers’ organisation, one of the main bodies representing the sector, has just published its quarterly outlook report, and it makes for bleak reading. The EEF is halving its manufacturing growth forecast to 0.7% and they warn that output is dropping to its lowest level since the end of 2009, in the depths of the recession. New export orders are at a six-year low. Domestic demand has also weakened.

The EEF report comes on the back of other weak data. The Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) of the sector, a measure of output, fell in July from 51.9 to 51.5. Overall, the British economy grew by 0.7% in the second quarter of...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Brexit, part one

Brian Rushton,

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Brian Rushton Shooting up

Brian Rushton,

LAST year’s figures were written off as an oddity. The expectation was that the number of drug-poisoning deaths would fall back to normal levels. Yet new numbers released today show another rapid rise in the number of drug-related deaths in England and Wales, with 3,346 people dying of overdoses last year, the highest since such figures began being collected 22 years ago. Fatalities are concentrated among men, who are nearly three times more likely than women to die in this way, and in the north, where mortality rates are nearly double those in the south. What has caused the unwelcome rise?

According to the Office for National Statistics, which published the data, short-term factors include a flood of heroin—by far the biggest killer—onto the market, and the increased use of other opiates, including tramadol, a synthetic form of the drug. In 2010-13 there was a “heroin drought”, during which heroin’s average street purity fell by 29%. But last year global opium poppy cultivation reached its highest level since the 1930s. Predictably, this has led to a purer product and more deaths. Harry Shapiro, a drug-policy analyst, suggests...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton March of the greybeards

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FOR 26 years Ann White, a poised 58-year-old, worked in the glazing department of Steelite International, a pottery firm. It was a repetitive, mundane job; the kind where you “hung your brain on a nail”, she says. Retirement may have seemed fairly attractive. No longer. Over the past five years Ms White has taken part in further training at work, gaining qualifications in maths, English and IT. She now manages the 11 cleaners who clear up the factory site, and would like to carry on working and learning for a while yet. “It’s been life-changing,” she says.

Britain’s workforce is greying. Between 1995 and 2015 the number of working people aged over 65 more than doubled, to over 1m. During the same period the number of workers aged 50-64 increased by 60%, to 8m. During the recent recession, while employment rates for youngsters fell, the number of silver-haired workers soared (see chart). By 2020 one-third of the workforce will be over 50.

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Brian Rushton Le wobble

Brian Rushton,

TO GRASP the trick David Cameron is trying to pull off by renegotiating Britain’s membership of the EU and winning an in-out referendum, imagine him edging along a mountain path, a wall of rock on one side and a long drop on the other. As Westminster returns from its recess, that path—the scope for a deal that mollifies the Conservative party’s Eurosceptics, satisfies voters and is palatable to Britain’s European allies—is narrowing.

The prime minister has been touring Europe over the summer, buttering up fellow leaders ahead of a summit in December at which he plans to present his requests. Yet this experience has forced him to curb them. On August 31st it transpired that he had given up demanding British opt-outs from EU employment regulations (concessions Brussels and Paris are unwilling to grant). Then Werner Faymann, Austria’s chancellor, warned that Britain should take in more refugees if it wanted a hearing for its “catalogue of demands”. His comments were echoed in Berlin.

Mr Cameron also faced tribulations at home. On September 1st the Electoral Commission decreed that the planned question for the referendum was...Continue reading

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