Reporting News and Opinions
In 2002, under Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria decided it had had enough of importing what it could literally dig out of its own soil. Thus was born the Backward Integration Policy (BIP)—a grand industrial strategy designed to turn Nigeria from a cement importer into a self-sufficient producer
you walk into a department store in London or Manchester, a decent washing machine will set you back roughly £350 to £400. For an average British worker earning a median wage, that purchase is a routine replacement—perhaps a week and a half’s disposable income or an easy three-month split on a zero-interest card
To outlast a prime minister always counts as some kind of achievement for an opposition leader, although Kemi Badenoch cannot claim credit for Sir Keir Starmer’s downfall. Sir Keir’s wounds were mostly self-inflicted. To the extent that opposition pressure was involved, it was electoral threats from Reform UK and the Green party that stoked Labour party frustration to a regicidal pitch. The Tory leader’s role was largely as a spectator.
The theory behind all of it, gas, telecoms, water, rail, was called popular capitalism, and it rested on a wager: that if enough ordinary Britons held shares directly, they would develop a stake, literal and psychological, in the fiscal health of the nation. Capitalism would stop being something done to people and start being something done by them.
There is an old British habit that refuses to die. When the public finances look awkward, someone reaches for the national costume box, pulls out the Union Jack, and declares that the only patriotic course is to ask the people with the least to tighten their belts a little more. The word of the hour is always “austerity.” The justification is always necessity. The result is almost always the same.
