WELCOME TO MATT RIDLEY'S BLOG

The big difference is that Britain seeks more, not less, free trade My Times column on Brexit, Trump and free trade:   In the week that Theresa May reveals the trajectory of Brexit and Donald Trump enters the White House, these two “revolutions” are once again linked by coincidence of timing. For much of the […]

Heavy-handed regulation will deter innovation My Times column on UK university policy: The government’s higher education bill will run a gauntlet of opposition starting today in the House of Lords, where many members are chancellors, fellows or other panjandrums of the grander universities. Some criticisms will be self-serving and wrong: the bill has good features. […]

Starting in 1917 communism did more harm than good whenever tried My Times column on the year that marks the centenary of the Russian revolution:   Human beings can be remarkably dense. The practice of bloodletting, as a medical treatment, persisted despite centuries of abundant evidence that it did more harm than good. The practice […]

Evolution, the double helix, IVF, DNA fingerprinting and more… My Times column on Britain’s strong track record in the life sciences:   Mitochondrial replacement therapy (misleadingly termed three-parent babies) is to be permitted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. I’m glad. The scientists who have developed the technique, Sir Doug Turnbull, Mary Herbert and […]

The cost of renewable subsidies has been deliberately understated My Times column on the high cost of Britain’s climate change policies: We now know from three different sources that Britain’s climate and energy policy is not just too expensive but has also been dishonestly presented. Peter Lilley MP, an unusually numerate former cabinet minister, has […]

Unification prevents experimentation and talent moving across borders My column on European fragmentation in the Times (5 December):   The Italian referendum and close-shave Austrian election are symptoms of a continent that may be teetering on the brink of political disintegration. It’s just possible that an empire may be collapsing before our eyes, as the […]

Identity politics is taking us backwards to division and prejudice My Times column on identity politics: The student union at King’s College London will field a team in University Challenge that contains at least 50 per cent “self-defining women, trans or non-binary students”. The only bad thing Ken Livingstone could bring himself to say about […]

It will be no different from the automation of farms or factories My Times column on the overdone threat from robots:   The tech industry, headquartered in Silicon Valley, is populated largely by enthusiastic optimists, who want to change the world and think they can. But there is one strand of pessimism that you hear […]

Ten reasons campaign rhetoric will not be the same as reality My Times column on Trump’s electoral triumph (originally published 14 November): Years of compensating for the media’s tendency to look on the dark side of everything has taught me that it generally pays to seek silver linings. It’s possible of course that Donald Trump […]

Why collective guesses outperform experts in certain decisions My Times column on the wisdom of crowds, published the day before election day in the US: ‘In these democratic days, any investigation into the trustworthiness and peculiarities of popular judgments is of interest.” So begins an article entitled Vox Populi, which is not about Donald Trump […]