Economy

It’s traditional to describe Budgets as a political gamble. Rachel Reeves is actually making two bets. First, that voters can be persuaded to see the big picture of the economy – and second, that Labour MPs can be persuaded to take the long view of this parliament. Both are long-odds flutters. On the macro numbers, Britain is… fine. Not flourishing, but not failing. GDP is still inching forward – up 1.3 per cent on the year to the third quarter of this year – better than France (0.9 per cent) or Germany (0.3 per cent). Services output is growing modestly; productivity is edging upward; and household debt is at its

For a party long described as Britain’s ‘natural party of government’, the Conservatives have spent an astonishing amount of time recently behaving as if the electorate suffers from acute memory loss. Every crisis they now attempt to offer solutions to in opposition is one they helped engineer in government. Every principle they defend today is one they discarded yesterday. And every lecture on restraint or prudence is delivered with the tone of a headteacher whose school burned down on his watch. Take Send as an example. (‘Send’ stands for special educational needs and disabilities.) After years of cuts, expansions and unfunded, changing statutory obligations to the system by which pupils

Why are so many young adults not in education, employment or training? The latest statistics show that almost one million 16 to 24-year-olds are unemployed, or ‘Neet’, to use the inappropriately cheery-sounding acronym. Fractionally down on the previous quarter, this is still close to a ten-year high. The number of Neets has been consistently above 900,000 since early 2024, peaking at 987,000 – around one-in-eight young people – earlier this year. Falling out of education and employment in your early twenties can have a devastating impact. More than half a million of those who are not currently working or studying have never had a job. Neets face not just financial

How, I wonder, did a shortlist of candidates to succeed Sir Mark Tucker as chairman of HSBC come into the public domain? The three names ‘exclusively’ revealed by Sky News, if they really are the final contenders, ought to be a secret kept between a board committee led by senior independent director Ann Godbehere and the headhunters on the job, named as MWM Consulting. Two of the three – Kevin Sneader from Goldman Sachs and Naguib Kheraj, formerly of Barclays and Standard Chartered – might feature in a round-up of usual suspects. But the third is the former chancellor George Osborne, who has no public-­company chairmanship experience and is, to

For the first time since May, the Bank of England has inched a little closer to its 2 per cent inflation target. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics this morning show that last month the Consumer Price Index fell to 3.6 per cent from 3.8 per cent in September. Unfortunately for the government, the slight improvement offers limited relief ahead of the upcoming Budget next Wednesday. October marks the 13th consecutive month above the target. Food and drink inflation, a primary issue to the majority of voters, increased to 4.9 per cent from 4.5 per cent in September. To make matters worse, transport costs, another expense felt keenly

Another day at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), another apparent data mishap – this time on net migration figures. The agency published revised figures for 2021 to 2024 this morning, which set out a very different picture on who’s been coming in and out of the country. The ‘Boriswave’ was larger than previously thought For a start, the ‘Boriswave’ was larger than previously thought. When Brits are excluded, net migration is now thought to have peaked at over one million people in the year to March 2023 – some 110,000 higher than the previously estimated record high. Including Brits, there was a substantial downgrade in the revision. Total net