Rubric 03
EconPol
Economy and politics: policy, power and the mechanics underneath.
01EconPol
A Border With No Line: The Thaw That Never Reached the Ground
The easiest assumption to make about India and China in the autumn of 2026 was that the worst was behind them. The supporting evidence looked solid. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping had met at the...
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02EconPol
A School, a Shelter, and Nine Three-Ton Bombs
Komyshuvakha, a village in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, tested that assumption on Monday. The regional head, Mykhailo Semikin, counted at least nine bombs dropped from aircraft, each weighing 3,000kg. President...
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03EconPol
One War, Two Ledgers: The Profit Column and the Bill Column
Column and the Bill Column A war produces two sets of books. One records what the companies selling energy earn; the other records what the households buying it pay. Since February 28, when the United States and Israel...
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04EconPol
Thirty-Six Governorships, Nineteen Open Seats, One Tuesday
On Tuesday, voters in 36 US states will choose a governor. That official is the most powerful elected official in state government, with veto power the power to block a bill passed by the legislature over everything a...
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05EconPol
A Cargo of 120 Units With No One Holding the Manifest
Coalition building in Israel works less like an election night than like loading a container ship: the total cargo is fixed at 120 units, and the question is never how much a party owns but how the weight is distributed...
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06EconPol
The Doctors Are Running, and the Exam Room Is on the Ballot
Most people file a physician's run for Congress under biography: a respectable CV, a good bedside manner, a short detour into public life before real politics resumes. That filing is wrong this year. What is happening...
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07EconPol
The Sixty-One Seats Nobody Could Reach
On the night of October 27, the numbers on the screen stopped being a story about momentum. Netanyahu's coalition stood at 53 seats; the self styled Zionist opposition alliance stood five behind; the majority threshold...
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08EconPol
The Ghost Students Who Cost $130m and Never Sat an Exam
That is the direction the current caseload points in. It is not where the United States stands in 2026. What stands there instead is an aid programme that pays out on enrolment, and an investigation trying to arrive...
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09EconPol
Six Billion Dollars, Half of It Still Missing
Venue and the Largest Loss A firm that dominates its industry is assumed to hold the capital, the lawyers and the engineers needed to absorb a shock. That assumption rests on a balance sheet a statement of what a...
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10EconPol
Four Projectiles Off Khasab, and Still No Author
Attribution usually arrives quickly. When word reaches a desk that something has exploded near the Strait of Hormuz, the reflex is to wait a few hours for a name a navy, a state, a militia because a name is what turns...
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11EconPol
Two Hundred Billionaires, Two Hundred Tax Managers, One £500m Target
The £3.6bn wealthy tax gap is often read as money sitting somewhere, waiting to be collected, as though it were a receipt the treasury has misplaced. What it actually describes is an estimate: the distance between the...
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12EconPol
The Energy Reset That Has Not Yet Decided Who Pays
The phrase to watch from John Healey's budget is "a new cost control framework to drive down all aspects of energy bills." It is a name that sounds like a mechanism and behaves like an intention. A framework, in the...
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