Ross Clark

England

Journalist at Freelance

Freelance Journalist at Daily Mail

Freelance Journalist at Daily Express

Freelance Journalist at The Spectator

Writes for Spectator, Mail, Sun. Author, Far From EUtopia. Also Not Zero, and the Denial

Articles

Could the Winter Fuel Payment fiasco bring down Rachel Reeves?

21 hours ago | spectator.co.uk | Ross Clark

When the Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that she was withdrawing the Winter Fuel Payment from most pensioners on the same day, last July, when she awarded fat pay rises to many public sector workers she perhaps imagined herself as striking a blow for inter-generational fairness. Working people would get more money – at least if they worked in the public sector – and wealthy retirees a little less. Yet it is fast becoming the an issue which could prove her undoing.
Labour won’t win back the north with new trams

1 day ago | spectator.com.au | Ross Clark

So now we know how Labour intends to try to head-off the threat from Reform UK. It is going to fight them on the tram lines. Rachel Reeves will announce this morning £15 billion worth of new tram lines in the Midlands and the North as part of a £113 billion package of public investment.
Labour won’t win back the north with new trams

1 day ago | spectator.co.uk | Ross Clark

So now we know how Labour intends to try to head-off the threat from Reform UK. It is going to fight them on the tram lines. Rachel Reeves will announce this morning £15 billion worth of new tram lines in the Midlands and the North as part of a £113 billion package of public investment.
It will take more than 3% to make Britain 'battle ready'

2 days ago | spectator.co.uk | Ross Clark

Does anyone really think that spending 3 per cent of GDP on defence would make Britain ‘battle-ready’, as Keir Starmer claims? (Assuming, that is, that he really did spend all that money rather than merely have an aspiration to do so). Here is the statistic of the day, to remind us of what a wartime economy really looks like. In 2023, according to the World Bank, Ukraine spent 36.7 per cent of its GDP on defence.
Net zero is a gift to Nigel Farage in Scotland

2 days ago | spectator.com.au | Ross Clark

It wasn’t long ago that Nigel Farage seemed a hopeless sell in Scotland. In 2013, on his way to campaign in a by-election in Aberdeen, he didn’t get further than Edinburgh’s Royal Mile before he had to be escorted from a pub by police for his own safety. Ukip, which he then led, had a derisory presence north of the border – even when it was making in-roads into working class areas in the North of England.
Net zero is a gift to Nigel Farage in Scotland

2 days ago | spectator.co.uk | Ross Clark

It wasn’t long ago that Nigel Farage seemed a hopeless sell in Scotland. In 2013, on his way to campaign in a by-election in Aberdeen, he didn’t get further than Edinburgh’s Royal Mile before he had to be escorted from a pub by police for his own safety. Ukip, which he then led, had a derisory presence north of the border – even when it was making in-roads into working class areas in the North of England.
Starmer's welfare cuts are nothing like 'Tory austerity'

6 days ago | spectator.co.uk | Ross Clark

Keir Starmer has already folded on the winter fuel payment, promising a partial reversal of the policy by reinstating it for pensioners in receipt of pension credit. How much longer before the proposed £4.8 billion cuts to welfare benefits go the same way?
Reeves is right to slash funds for wealthy landowners

1 week ago | spectator.co.uk | Ross Clark

It is beginning to feel a bit like 1998 all over again. That was the year of the first countryside march when it – supposedly – rose up in anger at the Blair government over its plan to abolish hunting, introduce the right to roam and build some houses for people to live in.
Don’t pay the junior doctor Danegeld

1 week ago | spectator.com.au | Ross Clark

Who would have guessed that caving into union militancy and paying a whacking above-inflation pay rise, with no strings attached, would lead to even bigger pay demands? In one of its first acts after coming to power last July the Starmer government awarded junior doctors a 22 per cent pay rise, which they accepted and ended their run of strikes.
Don’t pay the junior doctor Danegeld

1 week ago | spectator.co.uk | Ross Clark

Who would have guessed that caving into union militancy and paying a whacking above-inflation pay rise, with no strings attached, would lead to even bigger pay demands? In one of its first acts after coming to power last July the Starmer government awarded junior doctors a 22 per cent pay rise, which they accepted and ended their run of strikes. Is anyone really surprised the BMA has come back this year demanding 30 per cent, threatening yet more strikes?