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Australia offers an example for post-Brexit Britain An expanded and updated version of my Times column on free trade agreements and Brexit:   The prime minister will soon press the button and launch Article 50 on its inexorable, ballistic trajectory towards impact in March 2019. From the political class here, let alone in Brussels, comes […]

The various ways our statistical reasoning lets us down My Times column on the frequent statistical reasoning mistakes that lead to bad policies:  Budget week might be a good time to remind ourselves of the fallacies on which bad policies feed. Last year the University of Michigan’s Professor Richard Nisbett wrote a short book called […]

Medicine, agriculture and conservation all stand to benefit   My recent Times column on gene editing’s possibilities: Scientists at the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, said last week that they had edited the genomes of pigs, rendering them immune to a dangerous virus. The announcement is extraordinary precisely because it sounds almost routine these days. Gene […]

The dash for diesel was the result of lobbying by greens and companies My Times column on Britain’s self-inflicted diesel scandal: Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, is right to try to switch the capital away from diesel engines as fast as possible, even if this is tough on those duped into buying diesel cars […]

Why is feminism making common cause with religion against freedom?   A longer version of my Times column on free speech: “In a free state, tongues too should be free,” wrote Erasmus 501 years ago. In truth, although Britain was often more tolerant than many countries, people have never been entirely free to speak their […]

There is no bee decline, let alone evidence it’s caused by pesticides An expanded version of my Wall Street Journal article on bees, pesticides and how environmental activists gamed the system:   To those who have engaged with environmental activists in recent years, the concept of fake news is old hat. From Greenpeace’s hundred-fold exaggeration […]

A whistleblower exposes political bias in data recording My Times column on the revelations of problems with the global surface temperature record at NOAA: Back in December, some American scientists began copying government climate data onto independent servers in what press reports described as an attempt to safeguard it from political interference by the Trump […]

Outside the EU, UK can devise a policy based on results, not intentions My Times column on British environmental policy:   Andrea Leadsom, the agriculture and environment secretary, is to set out her plans for the British countryside in two green papers: one on the environment this week and one on farming later. She should […]

Too much state intervention was a mistake in the past My Times column on the Industrial Strategy: Theresa May’s “modern industrial strategy”, launched today, must avoid the ignominious fate of its predecessors. One by one they failed. Diagnosis of Britain’s problems is not difficult; treatment is harder. How can a government close the productivity gap, improve […]

The big difference is that Britain seeks more, not less, free trade My Times column on Brexit, Trump and free trade:   In the week that Theresa May reveals the trajectory of Brexit and Donald Trump enters the White House, these two “revolutions” are once again linked by coincidence of timing. For much of the […]