Money

The UK still needs fossil fuels, whether activists like it or not

The Supreme Court is hearing a case today that, if successful, could mean the end of new fossil fuel projects in the UK on climate grounds.  The justices will decide whether to reverse approval for oil extraction at Horse Hill based on downstream emissions from the use of the oil. Whatever the outcome, this case is a damning indictment of the UK’s absurd climate laws.  This is a long-running affair. Horse Hill was first test drilled in 2012 and permitted by Surrey County Council to expand to a commercial scale in 2019. This is the teeth of opposition from local campaigners, including the Weald Action Group, Friends of the Earth, and

Rishinomics isn’t working

Tax rises would bring debts under control. The Bank of England would bring inflation back down again. The government would steadily win back the confidence of the financial markets, repair relations with the EU, remove some of the obstacles to growth and, once all that was in place, try and cut a minor tax or two. When he became Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak promised a very orthodox, centrist economic programme, and one that would have the full backing of the IMF, the financial markets and just about every respectable commentator. There is just one problem, however, and it is not exactly a minor one. It is failing, and failing badly.

Michael Simmons

Sunak’s debt target is slipping out of reach

Threadneedle Street will have all the economic limelight this week as the Bank of England sets interest rates tomorrow. With this morning’s grim inflation update, a rate rise looks all but certain. But this morning, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released an update on Rishi Sunak’s third pledge: to get debt falling. The figures show another target quickly escaping Sunak.  Public sector borrowing in the month to May rose to some £20 billion, almost £11 billion more than the same month last year. That makes it the second most expensive May on record. Meanwhile, in the first couple of months of this financial year, the government borrowed just under

Kate Andrews

Britain risks turning into a stagflation nation

Inflation figures out this morning make for grim reading: the headline rate didn’t budge, sticking at 8.7 per cent on the year in May. Far worse, core inflation (which excludes food and energy) rose once again, to 7.1 per cent on the year in May, up from 6.8 per cent in April. This latest update from the Office for National Statistics carries far more weight than your usual monthly report. With mortgage costs spiralling into a crisis, the Bank of England will have been looking for any excuse to stick to a dovish interest rate hike or to even hold rates, as the Federal Reserve did last week for the first time

Tom Slater

Mark Zuckerberg won’t kill Twitter

Is Mark Zuckerberg losing his touch? Having just thrown tens of billions at his weird virtual-reality ‘metaverse’, only to see it flop with users, the Meta CEO and co-founder of Facebook appears to be spying another questionable new venture. It’s reportedly called Threads, a cloying techspeak name for what is essentially a rip-off of Twitter. You might think that the last thing the world needs is another Twitter, den of sanctimony and cancellation that it is. But not our Zuck. Threads appears to be an attempt to capitalise on the unease over at Twitter Towers, as advertisers and high-profile users alike have been rattled by Elon Musk’s unpredictable new leadership

Isabel Hardman

Neither party is fully trusted on the economy

Jeremy Hunt was bombarded by MPs worried about the ‘mortgage timebomb’ when he took Treasury questions in the Commons today. Everyone on all sides was concerned, and offering their own ideas of what to do and who to blame. One problem for the Chancellor is that ‘everyone’ includes members of his own party, many of whom are pushing him to do something ‘more Conservative’. The main ‘more Conservative’ policy that Tory backbenchers were promoting was mortgage interest relief. Jake Berry suggested it, arguing that without this kind of support, all the other money spent by the government would be wasted if people lost their homes. Other Conservative backbenchers including Jonathan

Ministers are addicted to intervention

This week Rishi Sunak ruled out direct government intervention to protect homeowners from impending catastrophe. It’s a welcome development – bailing out mortgage debtors would be financially ruinous and grossly unfair on renters. But just a few days ago the Prime Minister was ordering banks to shield borrowers from surging rates, and the Treasury still insists that the chancellor wants banks to ‘live up to their responsibilities’ – the vagueness of which leaves a lot to be desired. There are reports of ministers working with banks to offer more indirect help, like payment holidays. The government has led people to believe that politicians will shield them from any hardship It’s unclear whether the Tories will

Kate Andrews

Are mortgage rates the next crisis?

The average two-year fixed mortgage now sits at 6 per cent, according to financial data group Moneyfacts – just below the 6.65 per cent reached in December last year, after the fallout from Liz Truss’s mini-Budget. Five-year fixed rates aren’t too far behind, at 5.7 per cent. For many of the 2.4 million homeowners whose mortgages are up for renewal between now and the end of next year, this is, at best, cause for alarm. At worst, it’s an alert to a crisis. Later this week, we’ll get last month’s inflation data – and the next rate update from the Bank of England. Threadneedle Street’s dilemma is only getting worse. Between

The Vodafone-Three merger could be a Brexit win

There are plenty of reasons for viewing today’s huge merger deal between the UK mobile networks of Vodafone and Three with suspicion. It could reduce choice for consumers. It may lead to job losses. And it is possible that they will downgrade their service even more than they already have, cut back on investment, and squeeze more money out of a captive market. Yet that is not quite the whole story. In fact, done right, the merger could even turn out to be a rare Brexit win.  Today’s tie-up between Vodafone and Three was widely expected. The two companies will combine their British networks, and will have 27 million users

Could cutting inheritance tax keep the Tories in power?

Is cutting, or abolishing, inheritance tax the key to keeping the Tories in power? Inheritance tax is certainly unpopular and is described by some voters as a ‘death tax’. Back in 2007, the Tories were in a similar predicament to the one they find themselves in now: they consistently trailed Labour in the polls. But that year, the party made a surprise announcement, pledging to raise the inheritance tax threshold. The Tories subsequently regained their lead and went on to win the next general election. As the next election looms, and Labour continues to lead in the polls, Conservative MPs are feeling nervous. Some think that a major announcement to

Kate Andrews

Andrew Bailey’s evidence session was the opposite of reassuring

‘There are obviously lessons to be learned,’ said Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey at today’s House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee. It was a point he repeated many times over, in reference to the inflation crisis that has plagued Britain for close to two years now. ‘We have to learn lessons from the experiences we’ve had, of course we must… We have to work out what those lessons are.’ But despite repeating this sentiment over and over again, Bailey could not meaningfully come up with one good example of such a lesson, nor could he go into much detail on the mistakes the Monetary Policy Committee has made over the

Ross Clark

Don’t get too excited about deglobalisation

One difference between the rivalry with China and the cold war is that the Soviet Union was completely economically segregated from the western world. That is not the case with China nowadays: cheap goods have flooded western markets for decades. But are we heading back to the multipolar world of the 20th century? China and the West are out of step in terms of monetary policy. China’s central bank actually moved to reduce interest rates this morning, after stronger-than-expected data on wages. A short-term lending rate was cut from 2 per cent to 1.9 percent. How come? Because inflation in China is beginning to go into reverse as its economy

Kate Andrews

Will the tax burden finally start falling?

Is the government ready to start cutting taxes? After taking the burden to a post-war high, it seems ministers are preparing to change direction – in one area, anyway. This morning Jeremy Hunt announced that the energy levy on oil and gas companies, known as the ‘windfall tax’, will come to an end in 2028 – a direct response to growing fears that the effective 75 per cent tax on profits was driving business and investment out of the country. Divestment from the North Sea has become a heavily contested topic. Keir Starmer announced that Labour would ban all new production in the North Sea, perhaps putting into perspective for

Sunak has hitched a ride on Biden’s climate gravy train

Sometimes it helps to have a banker as Prime Minister. They have plenty of faults. They can be dry, calculating, and they are typically far too rich to connect with ordinary people. But if they have one thing going for them it is this: they can spot free money when they see it. And Rishi Sunk has seized a chance for the UK to take a percentage of the unlimited cash that President Biden is spraying at American industry.  Hundreds of billions in corporate bungs are available, and because it is all in tax credits there is hardly any oversight Most people will dismiss the Atlantic Declaration that Sunak negotiated

Kate Andrews

Britain faces plenty of economic pain – even if it dodges a recession

The UK will narrowly avoid a formal recession this year. That’s the consensus that is emerging based on the current data. This morning’s Economic Outlook from the OECD – which forecasts 0.3 per cent growth in 2023 – reflects similar projections from the IMF’s latest update and the Office for Budget Responsibility, which have revised their figures upwards in recent months. But to what extent will this modest growth actually be felt by Brits? Here the picture is far less positive. Inflation – which remains stubbornly high, in Britain especially – continues to eat away at real wages. The OECD predicts that the UK will continue to suffer from some

Ross Clark

The madness of Sunak capping food prices

It wasn’t long ago that supermarkets stood accused of selling food too cheaply. Their price wars and two-for-the-price-of-one deals were destroying farmers, undermining local shops and making us fat. How long ago that now seems, with the government now considering 1970s-style price controls. While the measures would apparently be voluntary, they would fix the prices of a number of basic foodstuffs – the sort which Jack Monroe keeps her eyes on. The price of price-fixing is likely to be more pictures of empty shelves, which of course will be blamed on Brexit You don’t need to have studied economics in any depth to understand the problem with price controls. In

Kate Andrews

Sunak should stop pretending that he controls inflation

The government is delighted with today’s inflation update. Rishi Sunak released a clip this afternoon, talking about his government’s efforts to ‘halve inflation’ by the end of the year. ‘I know it’s still tough’ he says, but ‘the plan is working, and we are delivering.’ The problem is that it is not in his gift to deliver on his particular pledge. The economics in this video rival his chancellor’s coffee cup video from a few months back – in that they simply don’t add up. Politicians do not control inflation. They have no reliable mechanism for doing so. Windfall taxes do not bring down inflation, as he suggests in the video; and

Ross Clark

What will it take to crash the housing market?

Is there anything that might cause the much-predicted crash in UK house prices? Not – evidently – a pandemic (which perversely caused prices to surge). A sharp, upwards jerk in the Bank of England’s base rate to 4.5 per cent didn’t do it either.    The latest edition of the Office for National Statistics’s UK House Price Index – the most comprehensive of house prices indices, but which tends to trail Halifax and Nationwide – shows that prices rose by an average of 4.1 per cent in the 12 months to March. That is down from 5.8 per cent in February and is lower than inflation, indicating a real-terms fall in house

Michael Simmons

Britain’s economy is struggling with so many off sick

One of the UK’s biggest economic problems is having so many people out of work – and the slowest return to pre-pandemic workforce levels in Europe. This is costly and slows growth, as taxpayers foot the bill for benefits while employers struggle to fill vacancies. Today’s figures show that it is getting better – but slowly.  The official unemployment count crept up to 3.9 per cent in the latest statistics. This is, ironically, a good sign as it shows more people are actually looking for work (about 12 per cent of the working-age population are on out-of-work benefits, although this is a figure that ministers seldom update and never publicise).

Kate Andrews

Why interest rates continue to rise

The Bank of England has hiked interest rates again, taking the base rate from 4.25 per cent to 4.5 per cent. This is the 12th consecutive rise, voted for 7-2 by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). It takes rates to their highest level since 2008. The Bank had hoped it could stop raising interest rates months ago. It would require evidence of ‘persistent pressures’ on prices for them to keep hiking the base rate, the MPC said in February. But since then, we’ve had two more rate rises: one in March, which took the base rate from 4 per cent to 4.25 per cent. And another today. So when will