For those of you who have not seen it, the UK National School of Government’s ‘Policy Hub‘ is a useful resource.

Participated in a useful roundtable discussion on performance reporting and management, organised by Public Finance magazine  – for a full report see Public Finance

A flagship policy of the New Labour government was that it would introduce greater stability – no more ‘boom and bust’ as Gordon Brown loudly and frequently boasted. A key component of this approach was more a ‘strategic’ approach to public spending – embedded in the new 3-year ‘Comprehensive Spending Review’ (CSR) process first announced […]

In the USA there are reports of so-called ‘tea-party’ protests, modelled on the famous ‘Boston Tea Party’ protests against taxation imposed by the British government on the (then) US colonies. But the US protesters (in reality the Republicans) rather the miss the point – the ‘Boston Tea Party’ was not a protest against taxation, but […]

So where are we now, after Budget 09, in terms of the size and shape of the state and public services for the future? The reduction of annual growth in public spending to a mere 0.7% in real terms, whilst protecting some big and sensitive areas like health and education, will mean real terms cuts […]

When is a cut in public spending not a cut – when you can disguise it as an “efficiency saving”. The first big round of ‘fantasy efficiency savings’ took place before the 2005 general election when the Labour and Conservative parties competed via the Gershon and James reviews – the two aforementioned gentlemen being business-persons […]

New readers start here: Damian Green, a Conservative opposition spokesperson on immigration had his parliamentary and other offices raided by police investigating the leaking of secret information from the Home Office.

An intriguing new poll from PoliticsHome suggest an important shift in public attitudes on “tax and spend” issues. “The results of this special deliberative study, involving a balanced group of over 1,400 people, point to a new landscape of public opinion on issues of tax and spend.