
Paul Johnson – Times column
Showing 1 - 12 of 132 results












Changes proposed in the fabled Green Book review could end up being highly consequential and tell us how the government is thinking — which worries me
23 June 2025
Rachel Reeves is to allocate between competing priorities with her spending review, and a 2.5 per cent rise for health could mean cuts elsewhere
9 June 2025
The rise of Reform and the Greens is healthy for democracy, but not if their manifestos are sheer fantasy
12 May 2025
Public sector pension rules are a mess that helps neither workers nor the government. Fixing them could be a win-win.
28 April 2025
Rachel Reeves should consider increasing the basic rate, just as Denis Healey did in 1975
14 April 2025
The tortured maths behind the chancellor’s fiscal headroom suggest her ‘ironclad’ fiscal rules are having unintended consequences on real-world policy
31 March 2025
Rachel Reeves gives herself so little room for manoeuvre that she creates costly uncertainty when the choice is obvious: raise taxes or cut spending
17 March 2025
The government’s decision to boost military funding out of international aid felt panicked. But this a watershed moment that needs a proper strategy.
3 March 2025
We borrowed and spent more than other countries to respond to the pandemic and the sharp rise in energy prices two years later.
17 February 2025
Confusion is built into our approach to net zero. We need to be more pragmatic about whether emissions will genuinely be new.
3 February 2025
"Shifting the performance of an entire economy requires a long-term, consistent and persistent direction." Paul Johnson writes for the Times.
20 January 2025
A government with a big majority should have had the political will to do more than just set up another review.
6 January 2025