Louise King: Children’s rights are being eroded – the Government must take action
In early June, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UN Committee) published its verdict on how well the UK is respecting children’s rights. While it recognised some…
Taylor Ross: A mental health crisis is breaking the NHS
For all the clapping we did, after the pandemic, healthcare workers, who had to bear the brunt of it, showed extreme signs of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. In…
Thomas Nurcombe: Chinese exploitation is rife in the Caribbean – where is Britain?
The Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly MP, has been on a mission to bolster ties between Britain and the Latin American and Caribbean region, visiting Jamaica, Colombia, Chile and Brazil. After…
Alp Yilmaz: Without thriving bus routes, rural communities will fade away
Much Hadham is an unexceptional village in terms of bus connections - its two-thousand residents are served by the Intalink 351 bus once every two hours. For anything more than…
Will Prescott: Clean air schemes can’t forget those who are disabled
Labelled the ‘invisible killer’, air pollution causes health problems throughout people’s lifetimes and is responsible for between 26,000-38,000 deaths in England each year. Unfortunately, recent measures to tackle the problem,…
Abby Ma: Tackling long-term vacant homes will help alleviate the housing crisis
It is ironic that despite a housing and homelessness crisis in the UK, there are more than 34,000 homes remaining ‘long-term vacant’, vandalised, and their garden overgrown that are supposed…
With Scotland’s ageing population and stagnating economy we need far more focus in our politics on our skills strategy, if we are to boost productivity and provide the growth of…
Thomas Nurcombe: The IPCC’s report shows how crucial nuclear energy will be to get to net zero.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) nervously awaited climate report has just been released. It concludes that current attempts to mitigate climate change are failing. The world is…
Henry Horton: 15-Minute Cities: Solution or a Socialist Conspiracy?
One would have thought the Oxford city council announcing plans for more compact and pedestrianised urban planning this March would be a relatively mundane event. The small English city has…
Roni Greenfield: The Government’s Immigration Bill is not enough to stop the small boats
On the 7th of March, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced, in a bid to deliver one of his five pledges, new laws designed to curb illegal immigration. Sunak’s plan was…
Tanya Gauthier: Australia shows why the Immigration Bill will not stop the boats
Recently, the Government introduced an ‘Illegal Migration Bill’ that would detain or quickly deport all asylum seekers if they entered the UK illegally. Not only is this policy inhumane but…
Thomas Nurcombe: Want to cut climate migrants? Boost foreign aid spending
The migrant crisis is currently at the centre stage of British politics. On Tuesday, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, unveiled her plans for the prevention of migrants arriving to the…
Cameron Philp: Rethinking student finance in England and Wales
The change from grants to maintenance loans in England and Wales was intended to improve student perceptions of the value of higher education, have a positive effect on long-term public…
Andrew Forsey: Auto-enrollment is the key to fixing our broken welfare system
There is one characteristic which is shared by some of the most efficient and effective parts of the modern welfare state: auto-enrolment. Whether it is for workplace pensions, Cost of…
Drew Siegal: The liberal-conservative case for recreational marijuana legalisation
In the United Kingdom, if an individual wants to gamble on a football match, they can place a bet online in the comfort of their own home. After placing the…
Mikhail Korneev: The problem of anti-homeless architecture is still here
After the mess and fuss of the recent years in UK politics, one begins to look back on the early 2010s with warmth. A time when the most pressing stories…
Cllr Jude D’Alesio: How can public policy help reduce fuel poverty?
Introduction When Sir Robert Peel wrote the Tamworth Manifesto, he advanced from conventional, Wellingtonite Conservatism and gained nearly 100 additional seats in the 1835 general election as a result. So…
Joshua Taggart: Japan’s turn to the West offers a clear opportunity for Global Britain
The West is looking to forge new alliances in the face of authoritarian state threats from Russia, China and Iran. A major strategic push has been made by both the…
With graduates struggling to find work and the UK suffering from a simultaneous skills shortage, the Government will hope the new T Level scheme is their golden ticket to fixing…
Alison Conway: How increasing financial inclusion is advancing gender equality: progress so far and next steps
In recent years, technological developments in the payments industry and beyond, from open banking to electronic wallets, have undoubtedly improved financial inclusion for women. For some businesses and individuals in…
Ryan Shorthouse: A new chapter for Bright Blue in 2023
Last month, I announced that I’m stepping down as Chief Executive of Bright Blue. I do so very happy and grateful. Thank you to all the people who have supported the organisation:…
Luke Tryl: Culture war concerns are distracting from post-pandemic classroom concerns
Recently, the Government published the first external observations of primary school pupils’ performance since before the pandemic. The results were not a surprise, but that did not make them any…
Mikhail Korneev: A homelessness crisis is on the horizon?
Recent data published by the UK government reveals signs of a potential homelessness crisis in England. Sensitivity to energy price volatility may make social housing rent unaffordable. If there is…
Max Jablonowski: The House of Lords Appointments Commission needs reform now
Keir Starmer has boldly promised to reform the House of Lords to “restore trust in politics” and to filter out the “lackeys and donors.” Starmer’s calls for reform come after…
Mikhail Korneev: Navigating the declining housing market
Fourteen years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the implementation of austerity, the memory of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis remains vivid. The spike in mortgage rates after the…
England is the poor relation of the UK when it comes to democracy. Despite a decade that has had a raft of elected mayors, metro mayors, and police and crime…
Ryan Shorthouse: Looking back after eight years at Bright Blue
I really don’t know where the time has gone but, after eight and half years, I’m today announcing that I’m stepping down as Chief Executive of Bright Blue. I will…
Sang-Hwa Lee: Should Britain pay ‘loss and damage’ climate reparations?
In international climate discourse, ‘loss and damage’ refers to the destructive and irreversible consequences of global warming that cannot be avoided by mitigation or adaptation. The devastation may arise from…
Good Things Foundation: How much does it pay to be “tech savvy” now?
Last time we were here, we were battling the first wave of Omicron. Since then the world around us has dramatically changed: a war, an economic crisis, unprecedented political upheaval…
Hannah White OBE: Pushing the political boundaries?
The British constitution divides opinion. While some laud its gradualism, stability, and flexibility as having served the country well over centuries, others criticise it as both outdated excessively malleable, and…
Bartlomiej Staniszewski: A true blue should always go green
Despite the progress made on net zero by past Conservative governments, there lingers a danger that right-wing voters and politicians are abandoning their environmental commitments. According to YouGov, 70% of…
Picking up the pieces: tackling littering and fly-tipping in England
Introduction England is heavily littered, resulting in many detrimental economic, environmental, and social consequences. In 2021, Bright Blue published our report Nature positive? examining in detail the UK public’s attitudes…
Jonas Balkus: The removal of the banker’s bonus cap: potential impacts
One of the main priorities of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng in the ‘mini Budget’ was to boost growth against the backdrop of a global recession. With the UK having the lowest…
Andrius Urbelis: The government must act to reform commonhold in England
In 2002 the government was presented with a once-in-a-century challenge. Most of the residential leases granted at the beginning of the previous century were expiring. To provide a potential solution…
Hannah Sneath: It is time for DCMS to tackle disinformation online
Disinformation or “fake news” has occupied much of the UK’s political and social discourse over recent years. Measures to control the issue must be reformed before the threat to online…
Cllr Eleanor Cox: Overcoming the Great British Skills Crisis
Manufacturing was at the beating heart of the British economy and is at the centre of our long-term recovery from the pandemic. It is also a key part of Britain…
In his landmark 2006 review of the economics of climate change, Lord Nicholas Stern asserted that “climate change is the greatest market failure in the world.” Market failures are a…
William Miller: What should NATO’s approach be to the Russian-Ukraine conflict moving forward?
Despite all the sanctions that many NATO nations have imposed on Russia - including travel bans and asset freezes of individuals, bans on imports and exports of key Russian materials…
Adam Kearns: If you’re a true capitalist, then you should support working from home
For many people, COVID-19 was a dark period best forgotten, but we are beginning to see the pandemic’s lasting effect on politics and society. One of the more interesting impacts…
US President Joe Biden was right to say in his inauguration week and repeat after that the greatest political battle we have to confront is between autocracy and democracy. While…
Ella King: Sunak and Truss should think twice before abandoning all EU trade laws
Throughout the Conservative leadership race between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, the economy has been a focal point in the bid to be the next Prime Minister and Leader of…
Edward Forman: Producing LIBs domestically is the only way to be self-sufficient
Gazprom, Russia’s largest natural gas company, has once again curtailed its gas supply to Europe. The ‘gas war’ between Russia and the West, which has only continued to spiral, has…
Everyone should know what ‘greenwashing’ means by now. It is when a company or organisation is focused more on how they market themselves as environmentally friendly, rather than actually minimising…
A comment from a participant in the Net Zero Diaries initiative sums up the mood of many: “Debating and making pledges is one thing. Are they going to act?” Net…
Martin Guy: Reform primary care funding or live with long waiting times
Primary care is under significant pressure. Waiting times have been increasing, with the average wait time for a non-urgent face-to-face GP appointment being 10 days; up by 15% since last…
It’s fair to say that ‘pensions’ is not a word that gets people’s hearts racing. Indeed, not a word that people like to talk about much at all, but as…
Johnny Redford: The UK is forgetting its a soft power super-power
The merger of DFID and the FCO in 2020, an exciting prospect for uniting development and diplomacy, was shortly accompanied by the abandonment of the UK commitment, based on a…
An ironic graffiti from Glasgow during COP26 read: “Cannae afford a carbon footprint”. As energy prices and the cost of living soar this spring, there is a risk that consumers…
On February 24th the people of Ukraine woke to a deafening barrage of rocket fire striking both civilian and military infrastructure. War had broken out on the European continent for…
The recent increases in price-capped energy bills and rising inflation rates has provoked a ‘cost of living catastrophe’ in the UK. Emerging as a critical social crisis, fuel poverty is…
Lee Marsons: We need to be cautious about Human Rights Act reform
In the 2019 general election manifesto, the government promised a programme of constitutional reform rebalancing the relationship between the judiciary, government and Parliament (p.48). It then established the Independent Human…
Liana Downey: A blueprint for phasing out coal in Australia
Technology and economics are shifting the energy landscape. Alongside the accelerating decarbonisation agenda of global finance, unanimous agreement to a global ‘phase-down’ of coal-fired generation at COP26 has pressured even…
Mary Friel: Raising our resilience – Climate-related disasters are here and we need to be ready
Every day Red Cross Red Crescent staff and volunteers around the world are out there responding to emergencies and natural disasters. Across the 192 countries we work in, their message…
Stefan Garcia: Space for Improvement? To interstellar Britain and beyond!
Space and the technologies that make it possible are an incredible asset to the UK. Though we have made major and promising strides in space technology, there is much more…
Michael Stephens: Is it over for the Tories in London?
The May local election was not a happy one for southern Tories. With the notable exceptions of Croydon and Harrow, Conservative Councillors found themselves facing a backlash from voters which…
Ed Galvin: Why the government must harness the potential of railways
The Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) set out by the Secretary of State for Transport has promised to improve; transport links across the North and Midlands, reduce train times and improve…
Frances O’Grady: Uniting for the future – Strong trade unions are allies in the green transition
The climate emergency is already transforming the jobs millions of us do. Trade unions are leading the call for a just transition to net zero, so we avoid the devastating…
Sam Robinson and Ryan Shorthouse: A vision for tax reform in the 2020s
Summary This report offers compelling principles and consequent policy ideas for an ambitious agenda of tax reform that tackles the leading economic, social and environmental challenges of the 2020s and…