The Adam Smith Institute approaches 2026 with confidence, not because it underestimates the problems Britain faces, but because it believes those problems can be solved, and because it intends to spend the year proposing solutions to them.

The UK is poised for a rise in unemployment in 2026 fuelled by the collapse of “zombie” companies that have struggled to adapt to a rise in business costs, according to a report.

Although 2025 was, in Edward Gibbon’s words, ‘a register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind,’ with the usual acts of terror and mass murder, earthquakes, floods and wildfires, one of the biggest stories was not about politics or nature, but about science.

Or, apparently, government isn’t simply the things we do together. Even, it’s possible to do things together without it being government - at which point Edmund Burke and the Little Platoons win once again.

It appears that The Spirit Level’s much vaunted finding about inequality - that it makes us all miserable in and of itself - is not, quite, wholly true:

Apparently Uber is allowed to trade under the same terms as all other taxi hailing operations:

“Inequality is a deliberate policy choice. Despite record wealth at the top, public wealth is stagnating, even declining, and debt distress is growing,” said Oxfam’s international executive director, Amitabh Behar, in a statement.

Homeless people have been given £2,000 lump sum payments to spend on whatever they want.

The UK is poised for an influx of cheap Chinese imports that could bring down inflation amid the fallout from Donald Trump’s global trade war, leading economists have said.

Well, to be honest about this, it depends upon who is doing the defining.

We might need a little help here for that title might not quite work - we understand there’s a popular beat combo that could be confused with. But the idea itself works we think.