Philip Hammond, in the Autumn Statement, confirmed that the Queen will continue to pay the highest tax rate in the country, then those on the incoming Universal Credit, then the rest of us. This is not, perhaps, quite how we should arrange a taxation system. It is, however, the one we’re going to get. The […]
Much of the focus of this Autumn Statement will not be on policy announcements from Philip Hammond. It will, in fact, focus on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR’s) assessment of growth forecasts in a post-Brexit world. The forecasts set out by the OBR are likely to be highly contentious due to the potential political […]
When Philip Hammond stands up to deliver the Autumn Statement, almost all of the attention – if the past is any guide – will be on how he decides to spend the nation’s money. But it’s time that the Chancellor, and the country, took a much closer look at the other half of the equation: […]
It’s easy to take markets for granted. We have become so dependent on them that if we woke up tomorrow morning and found that they had completely disappeared, we would be in complete disarray. I certainly would not know how to go about growing my own food, making my own suits or fixing the roof. […]
Philip Hammond will give his first Autumn Statement on Wednesday and the press has already mentally written the headlines: “Jam tomorrow!”. JAMs are the latest Whitehall acronym, standing for those “just about managing” – whom, we are told, Theresa May has ordered him to help. While doing something for those who work hard, play by the […]
Most Americans are watching out for how President-elect Trump proposes to govern at home and what he intends to do. The rest of us, while considering that, are also paying attention to what his presidency might mean for international relations and foreign policy – nowhere more so than with regard to China. If his rhetoric […]
Here we go again. The TUC is telling us that, horror of horrors, the UK is near the bottom of the world rankings across all categories of infrastructure spending. The statement is part of their submission to the Treasury for the Autumn Statement – presumably the idea being that we’ll all be so ashamed of our […]
Now that Donald Trump has been elected, one of my main goals will be to convince him and his team that it would be wrong to leave government spending on autopilot (and it would be even worse to spend more money and increase the burden of government!). Since Trump semi-endorsed the Penny Plan, I don’t […]
There is no direct equivalence between the UK’s historic decision to leave the EU and the extraordinary election of Donald Trump in the US. Yet to some extent, a number of common denominators explain both populist movements. If centre-right movements want to survive across the Western world, they will need to consider how best to […]
This is a transcript of a speech given at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on November 14th. My Lord Mayor, My Late Lord Mayor, Your Grace, My Lord Chancellor, Your Excellencies, My Lords, Aldermen, Sheriffs, Chief Commoner, Ladies and Gentlemen. We meet tonight in a world transformed. A year ago, few among us would have predicted the […]
Since the UK voted to leave the EU, British politics has lurched from one crisis to another, as the government and British people struggle to grasp the implications of this choice. After Trump’s unexpected victory, on the back of a promise to reinvigorate a disaffected working class, the stakes of failure for social and economic […]
And now it gets interesting. In a piece written on the eve of the election, I argued that a Trump victory would be a “peasants’ revolt”, given that it could only come from turning out an overwhelmingly number of white men (and women) without college degrees, who had flocked to his banner even as the […]
Yesterday, millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump for president – for good reason. They are tired of sluggish economic growth, a weak image abroad, and political correctness run amok. They also feel betrayed by politicians who offer change but fail to deliver. Just as in Britain, when voters chose Brexit rather than staying in […]
“Carneynomics” doesn’t really roll off the tongue, does it? “Yellenomics” and “Draghinomics” sound catchier. But they all amount to much the same thing, which is activism by independent central bankers — Mark Carney of the Bank of England, Janet Yellen of the US Federal Reserve, Mario Draghi of the European Central Bank (ECB) and others […]
Shortly after becoming prime minister six years ago, David Cameron reiterated his much-mocked idea of a national “happiness index”. “It’s high time we admitted that, taken on its own, Gross Domestic Product is an incomplete way of measuring a country’s progress,” he said, before going on to quote Robert Kennedy’s endlessly repeated dictum that GDP […]
Living Wage Week is here again, along with the announcement, on Monday, of the new level at which the wonderful wage has been set. Sure enough, we’ve been told that it will be going up in London by 35p an hour to £9.75, and in the rest of the country by 20p to £8.45 an […]
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