The government's push to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 is ill-advised, says the ASI's legal writer Preston Byrne, who argues that the civil liberties protections offered to the British people by the Human Rights Act 1998 must be buttressed, not erased. If there is a problem with the Human Rights Act, it's not that it goes too far – it's that it doesn't go nearly far enough.
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A new Adam Smith Institute briefing paper based on a YouGov poll commissioned by the Institute reveals that large majorities of the British public reject many aspects of the nanny state and prefer to make their own decisions.
The London 2012 Olympic Games have been a triumph of wastefulness, nannying government, corporatism, deceit and incompetence. Our writer Lawsmith asks, how could our political class have gotten it so wrong?
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Politicians claim that a single government block is needed to safeguard children online. However, as Dominique Lazanski argues, this ignores the wide range of market-based solutions that already exist.
In recent years, believers in a small state have largely failed to convert good intellectual arguments against interventionism into concrete political achievements. Whig argues for a change of gears by liberals, away from politics and towards a focus on single-issue group campaigning.
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The old balance struck between rich and poor in a democracy has been circumvented, says Madsen Pirie. A third option, to borrow from the voters of tomorrow, has given politicians around the world a blank cheque to spend their way into oblivion.
In this briefing paper, Karthik Reddy argues that the British constitutional arrangement has changed such that traditional checks and balances against governmental abuses of power have been lost, and says that a codified constitution is needed which clearly articulates the limits to parliamentary sovereignty. Reddy argues that the Prime Minister's presidential powers must be recognised and responded to by separating the executive from the legislature and making the office of Prime Minister directly electable by the British people, with parliament acting as an independent legislative balance against the executive.
In this article Eamonn analyses Ed Miliband's speech to the CBI and argues that Ed's solutions to encouraging economic growth are very much along the same lines as Gordon Brown's. Eamonn proposes instead that in order to re-skill Britain we need politicians to let business people get on with the job of wealth-creation, whilst cutting the burden of regulation and taxation.
A new economic responsibility act is needed to prevent future governments spending and borrowing too much, according to Dr Eamonn Butler. He outlines the rules that would be needed to protect the public finances and secure Britain's future economic growth.
In this think piece, ASI executive director Tom Clougherty reacts to each of the policies contained in the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition agreement.
The Adam Smith Institute is the UK’s leading libertarian think tank...
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