Sunder Katwala looks ahead to one of the big questions of 2014 Englishness has now overtaken being British as the primary official identity in England. In the 2011 census, 69% of people said they were English, and only 29% chose British. That dramatic statistic exaggerates the shift. Few ticked two boxes on their census form, but most still say both identities matter. What has changed is the realisation that they are not the same thing. Scotland’s historic independence referendum on September 18th 2014 will accelerate this. Few in England outside the political class have yet noticed this is happening. By…

For this issue’s window on centre-right politics around the world, Oliver Cooper takes a look at the youthful centre-right in Europe “Advance Australia, fair!” went the cry from Conservatives at the victory of Tony Abbott’s Liberals in September. For the first time in 33 years, there are centre-right Prime Ministers in Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. But it’s not just in the Anglosphere where the centre-right is on the rise. Across the EU, only 8 countries out of 28 are led by socialist leaders. Even in the Nordic countries – that bastion of the left – only one socialist…

Penny Mordaunt MP draws on her American experience to ask if the Special Relationship has been damaged by the vote on Syria The short and obvious answer is ‘no’. The relationship enjoyed by Britain and America is not between a president and a prime minister, or a congress and a parliament, but between two peoples. Certainly the course of that relationship is eased when there is personal and political accord between the nations’ leaders, but it is not contingent on the avoidance of any divergence in policy. Ed Miliband was right about that, but I suspect that I am right…

Iain Martin on why economists should look to Teddy Roosevelt’s attack on crony capitalism rather than FDR’s spending impetus When the financial crisis hit and the economy went into a tail-spin, there was briefly a renewed interest in several giants of the 20th century whose reputations were forged in the aftermath of the economic disaster of the early 1930s. After our own financial crisis and sustained slump, some on the centre-left argued that Keynes had all the answers. Others pointed to FDR, citing him as the President who had shown how to deliver a stimulus, in the the form of…

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry on why addressing inequality with family policy is the biggest problem for the American Right and the best Cameroon idea that Cameron dropped The central challenge of political economy in the rich world since the Industrial Revolution has been to make free-market capitalism politically sustainable. Free markets create wealth and prosperity. But they also create churn and disruption, big winners yet also big losers, and thus undermine their own political sustainability, as populations see their way of life disrupted and rebel against the whole idea. The best way we’ve found so far to thread the needle has been…

Bright Blue has been building relationships with think tanks across the pond. Over these pages, four experts tell us what Tory policy can learn from their research Once upon a time, before George W. Bush, before George H.W. Bush, there was Vannevar Bush. Roosevelt’s wartime science advisor, Bush, V., helped shape not just American but global approaches to the public funding of science. His 1945 report Science, The Endless Frontier, remains relevant and readable. Read it antiphonally with his somewhat unnerving prophecy in Atlantic of the World Wide Web – as a technology evolved from microfiche. As Americans are too…

Bright Blue has been building relationships with think tanks across the pond. Over these pages, four experts tell us what Tory policy can learn from their research American conservatives have always been of two minds about immigration. The first instinct extols the virtues and benefits of immigration – a process that makes America wealthier and more culturally prosperous, as well as being consistent with our old historical roots. The second is concerned that immigrants make America less American – less prosperous, less free, and less culturally familiar. In line with the second instinct, Republicans are typically more opposed to immigration…

Peter Hoskin on his favourite political film Sorry to spoil it for you, but at the end of this year’s White House Down Jamie Foxx’s President Sawyer isn’t actually shot dead – you’re just made to think he is. What saves his life is an old pocket-watch inscribed to Abraham Lincoln from his wife Mary Todd, which stops the bullet. “Abe took a second bullet for me,” deadpans Sawyer as he raises himself from the ground. For that line, and even worse infractions against taste, you wish Abe hadn’t bothered. Thankfully, cinema hasn’t always treated Lincoln so cheaply. Directors from…

Brooks Newmark, the American-born MP and Vice-President of the Harvard Alumni Association, tells British students to head to the Ivy League I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to attend both Harvard and Oxford, so I feel well placed to compare and understand the best of America and Britain’s respective education systems. Whilst many tertiary level academic institutions in both countries offer exceptionally high standards of education, American universities offer that little bit more at undergraduate level by encouraging students to study a wide range of subjects, and offering the flexibility to change the core subject of your…