Philippe Legrain

Ed West says he took time to reply to my earlier post because his “Chinese maid, Yen or Wen or whatever her name is, took ages to clean up my study” – delightful, isn’t he? He then deliberately misinterpreted my response – or perhaps he’s just stupid? I said it was nonsense to claim that [...]

MigrationWatch have posted a pitifully weak response to my criticisms of their education “report”. 1) They defend their use of cumulative figures. They say it is legitimate because the “sole objective” of the study was to calculate “pupil place requirements stemming from net migration since 1998″. Really? If the sole aim was to calculate the [...]

In a typically delightful post about Sally Bercow and the MigrationWatch libel threat, Ed West of the Daily Telegraph describes me as Philippe Legrain, author of How to Turn Europe into the Lebanon in Just One Ill-thought Out Step. Unlike Andrew Green of MigrationWatch, I don’t believe in trying to silence debate, so I’ll let this [...]

Another day, another twisted use of statistics by MigrationWatch. Their shock report suggests the cost of schooling migrants’ children is astrononomical. They do this: 1) By using cumulative figures. If you add up spending on anything over a long period of time, it looks much bigger than it really is. Using a single year’s statistics, [...]

The notion that university students should pay for their education through a graduate tax is generally seen as a left-wing idea. Yet it isn’t a million miles away from Milton Friedman’s suggestion that people finance investment in their human capital (ie, their studies)  by selling shares in themselves (ie, in their future income). In the [...]

This blog post also appears on the Battle of Ideas blog on the Independent’s website. I will be speaking about mobility about the Battle of Ideas in London on Saturday 30 October. I hope to see some of you there. Further, faster, cheaper, better – ever since the invention of the wheel, human progress can [...]

On Tuesday, two Russian-born scientists at the University of Manchester won this year’s Nobel physics prize. The new immigration cap could have prevented them coming to Britain. Today, they and six other Nobel laureates warn that the immigration cap threatens the UK’s position as a centre of scientific excellence. It would “damage our ability to [...]

George Osborne’s decision to axe child benefit for the richest 10% is clever politics. Does Labour want to defend welfare for the rich? At the expense of the poor?

Geert Wilders is a nasty piece of work. The far-right politician has compared the Koran to Mein Kampf and called Islam fascist. But why, oh why, are the authorities in the Netherlands playing into his hands by putting him on trial for saying the vile things he says? They will only succeed in making him [...]

Why the EU shouldn’t be spending nearly half its budget supporting agribusiness and landowners. Read my new e-brief for the Lisbon Council

This right wing think tank Migration Watch has conducted a study which has revealed that youth unemployment is down to migration which is obviously grossly simplistic. The main reason for youth unemployment is the recession which was caused by the bankers and the bankers are more responsible than the migrants, and it’s fairly dangerous propaganda [...]

Michael Gove points out the benefits of coalition government: What helps is having two parties, different cultures, overlapping perspectives, coming from different positions, challenging each other. True. Different cultures and perspectives challenging each other are also among the biggest benefits of immigration: they leads to innovation and better decision-making.

Martin Wolf writes in the FT: Some argue that we have no right to bequeath higher debt to future generations. But why would it be wise to bequeath a smaller economy to posterity, instead?