Philippe Legrain

Is Britain full?

The Times asked a number of people, including me, whether Britain is full. 

The country's supposed overpopulation is now the argument of choice for opponents of immigration, many of whose real objection to having more foreigners around is cultural. 

After all, Manhattan, Paris and Kensington & Chelsea are the most densely populated areas of the US, France and the UK respectively, yet they are hardly hellholes.

Read the full article here:

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article7028212.ece

Mr Reid's continental dog's breakfast

When John Reid became Home Secretary, he promised to get a grip on Britain’s shambolic immigration system. But less than six months later, he is already making an even bigger mess of it.

The world gets poorer when all we trade are insults

As Churchill might have said, the World Trade Organisation is the worst way of governing the world economy, except for all the others. That is what the seething globaphobic masses and padded ministerial suits who conspired to wreck the WTO’s recent meeting in Cancún may soon find out. With prospects for freeing world trade — the engine of global economic growth over the past 50 years — in tatters for now, the consequences could be devastating. Indeed, finance ministers who are in Dubai for the World Bank/IMF meeting have already been expressing regret for the Cancún debacle.