In the new issue of Prospect, Chuka Umunna, the shadow Business Secretary, says that Britain is at risk of losing out in the global economic race.
“While the British brand remains strong overseas,” he says, “it is clear we are at risk of being outpaced by more aggressive rivals in the crucial emerging markets where we need to be doing better.”
He blames the Government for this, saying that there is an “ideological reluctance to pursue an industrial strategy with the rigour needed to produce private sector growth.”
Helen Gao, a Beijing-based writer, writes about book censorship in China, which now has the largest publishing industry in the world.
“Compared to the more clear-cut censorship rules applied to films and news—topics like Taiwanese Independence and the Tiananmen Square massacre are strict taboos—publishing censorship is more fluid.”
In Whitehall, says Rachel Sylvester, the government’s big plans for welfare reform are causing trouble.
“Universal credit has become the focus of deep and growing tensions between politicians and their civil servants. It’s the fiercest battle in the war between ministers… and mandarins.”
PLUS
Bjorn Lomborg warns that the EU could end up killing people by encouraging excessive caution.
Guido Mina di Sospiro writes on the physics of ping pong
Philip Augar wonders how different things might have been if the City had not been deregulated during the 1980s.
To read these pieces in full, buy the October issue of Prospect—out on Thursday 19th September—or subscribe
