For thousands of years, governments have been tempted to respond to inflationary pressures by imposing caps on prices. Diocletian’s AD 301 Edict on Maximum Prices is a famous early example, but there were repeats throughout the ages. By the 1970s, prices and incomes policies were being used by many governments to try to counter inflation. […]
There were no new policies announced in today’s Spring Statement, so in economic terms, all eyes were on what the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) would say in its revised forecasts. As always, there was some significant stuff to see. The core story was one of things getting worse before they get better. And only […]
Keir Starmer was out and about on Monday, desperately trying to save his Chancellor and his own premiership (for their fates are now inextricably intertwined) from the aftermath of the Budget. He denied Rachel Reeves had misled everyone in the run-up to the Budget and sought to convince his MPs that things will get better […]
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is short on options. She seems unlikely to meet her fiscal rules unless something changes, and with bond markets raising the cost of borrowing to new highs, not changing something doesn’t seem like an option. The Government’s attempts to cut spending ended in tears, as many people predicted they would. Labour backbench […]
Reform is now well ahead in the opinion polls and has been for some time. Labour is the Government and has a massive Parliamentary majority. Furthermore, Reform is widely seen as the most right-wing of the four political parties with highest polling support and Labour the most left-wing. So it is natural enough to see, […]
Rachel Reeves gave her Spending Review Statement today. It was largely a tepid affair. She spent a large share of the speech rehearsing Labour’s alleged ‘achievements’, standard Labour speech bingo about VAT on private schools and Liz Truss, an absolutely lame joke about Kemi Badenoch upgrading her own skills and a slightly better joke about […]
Those with pro-market leanings are not having a good time of it at the moment. In Britain, the Labour government is taking the largest share of the economy in tax that has ever been sought in modern times. In the US, Donald Trump’s tariff policy involves the most explicit repudiation of pro-trade concepts since World […]
Under Donald Trump’s mass tariffs scheme, the UK is one of a number of countries on the minimum rate of 10% (along with Australia, Singapore, Brazil, Argentina, UAE, Egypt and others). Much of the world economy is on much higher tariff rates. The EU rate is 20%. Vietnam’s is 46%. China’s is 54%. The fact […]
The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed an acronym doing the rounds over the last few years: CANZUK. This is the name given to the idea of forming a close partnership between Canada (C), Australia (A), New Zealand (NZ) and the UK (you can work that one out). The modern CANZUK movement formed in the […]
In a video-call address to a summit being held in Kyiv on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a further package of UK assistance to Ukraine accompanied by additional sanctions. He said the aim was to increase pressure on Vladimir Putin to make concessions in peace talks, declaring: Russia […]
The most important month for the public finances each year is January, because that is when self-assessment receipts come in. So economists’ eyes were peeled this morning, as the January 2025 data was released, particularly as that starts to give us the real picture about how much trouble Rachel Reeves’ Budget plans are in. The […]
Rachel Reeves needs the economy to grow faster if she’s to get in the taxes required to make her spending plans sustainable. Hence why the Government is in the market for growth-stimulating ideas. I’ve offered long lists of those in the past, both in general and those consistent with a left-wing philosophy, and don’t intend […]
Some 30 years ago, Conservative intellectuals dominated the British policy landscape. Today, by contrast, people ask ‘Where are the big ideas? Has the Right run out of intellectual energy?’ The answer isn’t that the intellectual Right ran out of ideas. It’s that the Conservatives stopped listening in the early 2000s, attempting to copy Tony Blair’s […]
Rachel Reeves’ Budget involved major changes. This was no mere tweaking. There was no ‘steady as she goes for the first couple of years to see where we are’, akin to the early period of the Blair government in which it initially matched Tory spending plans. Instead, Reeves has opted more for a ‘go big […]
The Commonwealth is an assembly of 56 countries, vastly different in wealth, values, objectives, size and location. Most, but not all, are former members of the British Empire, from which the Commonwealth originally formed. According to the most recent figures available, its poorest member, Malawi, has a GDP per capita of US$324 (vs the UK’s […]
A range of technical advances sit on the cusp of widespread introduction or are already spreading fast. These include AI, driverless cars, lab-grown meat, cancer vaccines, green tech and a new set of frontiers for space exploration. A number of these innovations have the potential to render irrelevant many of the assumptions on which current […]
The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee has today published its report ‘National Debt: It’s Time for Tough Decisions’, which follows on from its Inquiry: ‘How sustainable is our national debt?’ As the report’s name suggests, it is not a proclamation that good times lie just around the corner. Its theme is that UK government […]
As outlined in the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday, the Government’s fiscal situation is very difficult. Labour are, quite predictably and naturally, saying things are even worse than they thought they were in opposition. However, their claim that their economic inheritance is the worst since World War II is clearly absurd – for example, the situation […]
On the Bank of England’s target measure of inflation, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), inflation rose slightly in the year to July, with prices up by 2.2% versus 2% in June. A rise was expected because of the way energy prices have moved, but a rise to only 2.2% was less than anticipated. More generally, […]
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been talking in recent days about Labour’s ambition to revise the UK’s trade deal with the EU. Closer alignment of regulation is a key part of that. One of Labour’s main ambitions, set out in its manifesto, is an agreement with the EU on veterinary regulations. But in Reeves’ view, […]
