Abstract Action on climate policy in the UK has been at a crossroads since 2021. The UK's previously world‐leading performance in emissions reduction was derived largely from eliminating coal from electricity supply and relied on a broad political consensus regarding the issue's importance. The next stage of emissions reduction is more contentious, however, and at the same time, the underlying consensus across political parties has collapsed. Actors pushing for accelerated climate action need to consider that such action is now fiercely contested. The UK's local elections in 2026 provide the latest signals regarding how political‐electoral pressures may shape climate action. We argue that there are powerful reasons for governments not to give in to pressures to backtrack on climate action, especially where such action might also generate electoral payoffs.
Abstract The Cabinet statement, Rewiring the State, published in July 2026, promises a radical devolution of the British state and a remaking of territorial politics. We review this development and assess its political and historical significance. We argue that the present conjuncture is distinctive because claims of the English North are driving a new phase of devolution, albeit with uncertain effects and unintended consequences. We identify a ‘Machiavellian moment’, full of promise and peril.
Tourism is one of the fastest-growing internationally traded service industries. The articles in this special collection examine the circumstances under which it can act as a driver of sustainable, equitably shared growth. The introduction argues that tourism offers a promising path to regional development-not only in southern Europe and the Global South, but also in the UK-as long as the economic rents that it generates are distributed broadly within local communities, rather than being concentrated in the hands of a few investors and siphoned out of the local economy. However, the shift from having too few tourists to having too many can happen swiftly, with serious negative consequences for social, environmental and economic sustainability. Addressing this challenge requires autonomous political leadership, a robust civil society and out-of-the-box thinking across policy areas and scales of governance.
Abstract The Pensions Commission's 2026 interim report is right about the scale of the demographic transformation underway and about the gaps in current arrangements. But it largely treats ageing as a fiscal, adequacy and design problem, when it is fundamentally a political economy problem shaped by two constraints. The economic constraint is output and its evolution. With more beneficiaries and fewer workers, only growth will ensure the pension system is adequately funded in the future, but if anything, productivity and real‐wage and economic growth have collapsed since 2008. The political constraint is that older voters now represent the majority of the voting‐age population in more than half of parliamentary constituencies. Because they care comparatively more about their pension, but comparatively less about long‐run growth, ageing makes the public and social investments, which growth requires, electorally more difficult to deliver. Only linking older voters’ standard of living to economic performance can make pro‐growth policies politically viable.
Abstract The UK's second Pensions Commission was tasked with creating a pensions framework that is ‘strong, fair and sustainable’. Its interim report represents a promising down payment on that ambition. However, unless the Commission moves beyond vague generalisations about intergenerational justice to more precise analysis of intergenerational issues, its inquiries will remain incomplete. As a result, there is a risk that the Commission downplays the valuable role that intragenerational transfers (transfers between elderly households) could play in creating a fairer, more sustainable pensions system.
