The Ideas

Essays & reflections

The numbers tell one story. These pieces try to say what the numbers mean — and why they might matter more than we usually let ourselves believe.

Essays

Essay one

A Letter of Thanks to People I Never Met

I want to say thank you to people I will never meet.

When I was young, you paid for things I could not have paid for myself.

You ensured I was born fit and healthy and (relatively) normal. You helped pay for my education, which taught me to read, to write, and to make sense of the world. When I needed glasses, I got them - and an eye patch which allowed me to fulfil my calling as a very small pirate. When I broke my arm (twice - thank you for supporting a child of limited coordination), it was fixed.

Most of the time, I didn't notice any of this happening - but happen it very much did.

I grew up with the quiet confidence that if something went wrong, there was a system there to catch me, not because I had proved myself deserving, but because I was a child, and children are occasionally unlucky, sometimes fragile, often in need of help and almost always worryingly stupid.

You didn't know me and you definitely weren't thanked at the time. You didn't get to choose me, but you supported me anyway.

Now I find myself on the other side of that arrangement.

Some of what I have earned will pay your pension, or maybe the pension of somebody you love. Some of it will educate your children, children I will never meet or indeed call my own but are deserving of my support simply by being born.

This is how a society works when it is at its best: quietly, unwittingly, without demanding gratitude or keeping score (although in case you are, I'm probably still on the wrong side of the ledger).

Thank you for allowing me to become me. I wouldn't have been able to without you.

And I'm not saying everything was perfect or that it couldn't be better or that we shouldn't strive to make it so, but you gave generously and I accepted gratefully (and let's face it thoughtlessly).

I only hope my shoulders have grown broad enough to carry forward some of the kindness that once carried me.

Notes

A note on language

Are You an Illegal Immigrant?

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. So sayeth the Bard.

Unfortunately, that is not how we use language when it comes to immigration. We allow terms to be conflated so that the political class can create anger against individuals, rather than our legal system and our administration of such that allows for their presence.

If we are to argue for a thing, we must know what defines that very thing, so produced for your delectation and delight are definitions pertaining to immigration.

Illegal immigrant (also known as unauthorised migrant)

In UK law this term is genuinely narrow. It refers to someone who has entered the UK without valid permission, who has overstayed their permission to be here or was born in the UK to parents who were themselves unauthorised migrants. It doesn't apply to asylum seekers — under the 1951 Refugee Convention, which the UK signed and has never repudiated, you cannot be made illegal by the act of seeking asylum, regardless of how you arrived.

An asylum seeker who crossed the Channel in a small boat is not an illegal immigrant under UK law. They are a person exercising a legal right to seek protection, whose claim is being processed. Whether their claim will succeed is a separate question from their legal status during the claim.

This matters because politicians routinely describe people arriving on small boats as "illegal immigrants" when they are, as a matter of UK law and signed international treaty, specifically not illegal at that point. If they fail to claim asylum at the earliest possible moment or use deception to obtain entry (like fake documents), they may then become illegal immigrants.

Asylum seeker

Someone who has formally claimed protection under the Refugee Convention and is waiting for their claim to be determined. They have specific rights and specific restrictions during this period — for example, they can't normally work, they're given minimal subsistence support, they're housed where the Home Office assigns them. When politicians say "illegal asylum seekers" they're using a phrase that is a legal nonsense, because being an asylum seeker is the legal status, not an illegal act. You can only be an asylum seeker or not an asylum seeker. Much like being pregnant.

Refugee

Someone whose asylum claim has been accepted — who has been determined by UK authorities to face persecution if returned to their home country. They have a legal right to remain in the UK with a defined status. So, a refugee is a legal determination, made by this country and assigned to an individual; it is not a pejorative term.

Migrant

In the most neutral sense, anyone who has moved from one country to another is a migrant. Can cover everyone from a Silicon Valley engineer on a skilled worker visa to an agricultural labourer on a seasonal scheme to a retiree moving to the Costa del Sol to a university student.

Economic migrant

Someone who moves primarily for economic reasons rather than protection. This is a legitimate category — most people who have ever moved countries in human history have been economic migrants. In current political usage it's often deployed to dismiss asylum seekers whose claims haven't been determined yet, implying that they're really economic migrants dressed up as refugees. That dismissal is usually made without any individual assessment of the specific case.

Foreign national offender

Someone not a British citizen who has committed a crime in the UK. Can be a visitor, a student, a long-term resident, a refugee. The specific immigration consequences depend on status and offence. "Foreign criminals" as a general category suggests a unified category that doesn't exist legally — for example, someone who has committed a crime in a foreign country and is seeking asylum in the UK might be categorised by the press as a foreign criminal but legally would not be a foreign national offender.

Overstayers

People who came legally with permission to be here for a fixed period and didn't leave when their permission expired, or failed to leave after going through the asylum process (including appeals) and being rejected. These are genuinely illegal residents under UK law. Estimates suggest there are hundreds of thousands of overstayers in the UK, mostly from countries with no small-boat crossings. They are the single largest contributor to the number of illegal immigrants in the UK, with widely varying estimates. UK government figures show that in the four years to March 2020, an average of around 63,000 non-EU visa nationals a year were not recorded as having left the country before their visa expired.

Which all begs the question — are you an illegal immigrant? If you've ever overstayed a visa anywhere in the world, possibly yes. If you arrived on a small boat and claimed asylum, almost certainly not. Isn't language fun?

Coming soon

Essay two

Government as Investor

Why the state's relationship with its citizens is better understood as a portfolio investment than a welfare arrangement — and what that changes.

Essay three

The Dividend Not the Fine

Progressive taxation reframed: not punishment for success, but the return mechanism on a shared investment in unknowable human potential.

Essay four

Reimagining Pensions

The triple lock, the generational bargain, and why the pension is the purest expression of the intergenerational contract we have.

Essay five

IHT A-OK

Inheritance tax is not the state confiscating private wealth. It is the state collecting its equity dividend on the investment that made that wealth possible.

Essay six

The Arbitrage Nobody Talks About

When a working-age immigrant arrives, someone else paid the development costs. The UK acquires a productive person at zero investment. Why this never appears in the debate.

Essay seven

The Price of a Title Deed

Property rights don't exist in nature. Asset values are created by state investment, state monetary policy, and state-created demand. The implications are significant.

Essay eight

What Does Efficient Mean?

The only measurable part of public service efficiency is the cost. The valuable part — what the service actually achieves — resists quantification entirely. This is a problem.

Essay nine

Who Paid for Your Education?

A stranger, born twenty-five years before you, paid for your schooling. You are now paying for a stranger's child. This is not redistribution. It is civilisation.