Two ongoing stories demonstrate with pellucid clarity how populism gains first a foothold and then strength against a political elite which seems to have lost its way entirely. First is the new business rates. Due to start in April, the new rates are widely predicted...
In a week when Parliament is making an attempt to widen and deepen the discussion around Brexit and the conditions of our departure from the EU, a new report from the New Weather Institute - Brexit - The Blackbird Leys Memo - warns that the government is now taking...
Sometimes, you have to reach for metaphysics to explain the sheer idiocy of large centralised systems. I speak of the way that government policy seems designed to undermine the economic self-determination of our cities and regions. This is reproduced from my localism...
A global rise in temperature of just 2°C would be enough to threaten life as we know it. But leading climate scientists think even this universally agreed target will be missed. Could dramatic action help? The New Weather Institute teamed up with The Guardian to take...
In a rolling Utopian 'Think Tank', hosted by Utopia 2016 Artistic Advisor and co-founder of bread, print & roses, Ruth Potts, and Andrew Simms from co-operative think-tank, the New Weather Institute, at Somerset House in London, the only rule is that you have to...
New readers start here. Listening to the BBC, you might easily believe that the crisis involving rail services across Sussex and Surrey was just about industrial action. For the poor benighted passengers, that really isn’t the case – the serious chaos has now been...
Green isn't always positive. If you are so green you would make a cabbage blush; it means you are naive at best, ignorant and thoughtless at worst. That seems pretty much to be us, the voters. If we had taken proper care to safeguard the short lived Green Investment...
Each year the Financial Times conducts a survey of leading economists on the UK’s upcoming prospects. The New Weather Institute is part of that survey and predicts a bumpy ride. Here are the answers we gave on issues ranging from economic growth to Brexit, monetary...
Next week, we may see a five-day Post Office strike in the 300 Crown Offices which are mainly in city and town high streets. It's maximally inconvenient and will be grim if it happens. Cue huge amounts of spluttering from government spokespeople, and Conservatives...
There is a tendency for those of us on the radical fringes of conventional politics to remain happily oblivious to the fact that nobody in the mainstream is listening. But suddenly the speed of the conventional seems to be accelerating and so much more seems possible...