Money

When I spoke to Rishi Sunak on Tuesday, his theme was the importance of being honest about trade-offs in politics. The big problem of lockdown, he said, was that these trade-offs (i.e. the side effects of closing down the economy and society) were never made clear to the public. Should this information have been shared with the public? Or might this have undermined the resolve needed to send a message to Putin? But it wasn’t just in lockdown; he felt the same was true over Ukraine. I didn’t manage to fit this into the interview, but I can say a bit about it now. When the Prime Minister called for sanctions and

At the peak of the lockdowns, thousands were dying every week. Newspaper front pages demanded action. But in the latest week’s data, covering the week to 12 August, some 1,082 more people than would be expected in a normal year died in the UK. These so-called ‘excess deaths’ have averaged 1,000 for 15 weeks of this year. Yet unlike Covid deaths, they are met with near silence. But it isn’t Covid that’s causing these deaths anymore. In the latest figures, published by the ONS, just 6 per cent of English and Welsh deaths had anything to do with Covid. Of nearly 10,000 weekly deaths in England, just 561 mentioned the virus

That today’s inflation figures would come as an immense shock to anyone who has returned from a year in the wilderness goes without saying. A little over a year ago, in May 2021, the Bank of England was predicting that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) would peak at no higher than its two percent target. CPI is now in double figures for the first time in 40 years, at 10.1 per cent – exceeding even the already-grim expectations of many economists. The Bank of England may yet again have to revise its forecast for the inflationary peak – which just two weeks ago it put at 13 per cent. The

As interest rates hit nearly 2 per cent and inflation tops 9 per cent, many Brits are feeling the pinch. But once again it seems that generation rent is worst off. Last month, my landlord hiked my rent by £450, or nearly 30 per cent. I’m far from alone: rents across the UK have gone up by as much as 17 per cent. Renters in the UK have been overlooked since the cost of living crisis began to grip the country earlier this year. With inflation soaring and the cost of energy, water, food, petrol and other essentials also rocketing, life is suddenly, alarmingly, getting more expensive. The Bank of England’s

Twelve-hour A&E waits are at a record high. Doctors fear that tens of thousands will die because of delays in treatment. Already some 10,000 people have waited more than three months for urgent cancer treatment, a consequence of turning the NHS into the national Covid-but-nothing-else-service during lockdown.  Excess deaths at home, the number of people dying above the five-year average, is nearly 17,000 in England and Wales. Meanwhile, fewer people seem to be dying in hospital. That suggests many patients aren’t even getting proper medical attention. We’re used to hearing about NHS crises in winter, but winter now seems to be all year round. The extra cash pumped in by the tories – a 17

This summer marks a truce. But if, as expected, Liz Truss becomes prime minister, it is almost inevitable that tensions over the Northern Ireland protocol will resurface. Britain has been threatened with trade barriers if it tears up the protocol, with implications for import and export industries. But one possible consequence has been largely overlooked, in spite of the gathering energy crisis: the trade in gas and electricity. Imported power via undersea interconnectors is the forgotten but fast-growing element of our electricity system. In 2019, 6.1 per cent of our electricity was imported. Undersea power interconnectors, which have been a feature of the UK electricity system since 1986 when the first one plugged

In times of crisis in the 20th century, voters called for politicians from opposing parties to put aside their differences and unite in a national government. Such is the collapse of the Conservative party we now must beg Tory politicians to stop fighting and unite in a Tory government. Martin Lewis has said that Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson should be able to agree on a package to cover the expected 70 per cent rise in the domestic energy cap in the autumn (with more to come in January).  ‘You’re all in the same party,’ he cried. ‘You should be able to work out some unifying policy, something

It has been a long time coming, given that shares and bonds have been falling for most of the year, but this morning there are the first signs of a slide in house prices. Don’t get too excited: the Halifax House Price Index fell by just 0.1 per cent month on month, and prices are still up 11.8 per cent year on year.  But it is an indication that things might finally be changing in a market which has seemed to defy logic ever since the arrival of Covid. Yes, the deepest recession in recorded history was accompanied by a boom in house prices. Even when interest rates began to

The Bank of England has warned that Britain will fall into a recession this year. Its Monetary Policy Report, released today, predicts that the economy will shrink from October, with the downturn lasting until the end of 2023. The Bank of England also hiked interest rates from 1.25 per cent to 1.75 per cent, the biggest rise for 27 years. The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has never previously raised the base rate by 0.5 per cent in its 25 years of existence. Previously it has only upped rates in quarter-point stages (and there haven’t been many of those, especially in recent years). The rise will, of course, affect

That was quick. Less than 15 hours after pledging a robust reform of public sector pay, Liz Truss has performed a u-turn on plans to bring national pay bargaining to an end. It comes after criticism mounted that slashing pay for new frontline staff was not the most obvious way to handle an escalating cost-of-living crisis. In a sense, it’s a crime of poor timing rather than poor policy. National pay bargaining has long been questioned as a fair way to compensate staff on the government payroll. In part it’s due to the reasons laid out by Truss: there are obvious differences in the cost-of-living throughout the country, which might

Rishi Sunak should have started his campaign offering a 4p cut to the basic rate of income tax instead of going with a Cameronesque finger-wagging ‘stability before tax cuts’ message. His pledge to cut the rate to 16p, unveiled last night, now looks like a panicked U-turn when it is in fact consistent with his long-standing view of politics: that Britain is in danger of turning into a high-tax, high-spend European style social democracy because Tories keep forcing through extra spending without thinking how they’d pay for it. As chancellor, he sought to stand athwart such process by putting up taxes and hoping the pain would force his party to

It’s a platitude that France and Britain are rivals and have been for centuries. But, since the 1904 Entente Cordiale, the rivalry is more a question of competition than conflict. Always, in the darkest hour, each sided with the other, even if post-war they didn’t fully recognise the other’s contribution. Britain congratulated itself over the Dunkirk evacuation when in truth without French troops holding off the Germans, the ‘plucky’ armada would never have completed its mission; to this day the French believe that American troops were more numerous than British in the Normandy landings.  With the passing of the French war-time generation the postwar moral debt to Britain and residual goodwill

You will never measure the depth of our troubles if you listen to the contenders for the Tory leadership. Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss talk as if the 21st century never happened. They cannot see how the world has changed. Like the devotees of an ancient cult, they imagine that it is possible for a prime minister in the 2020s to follow the programme of Margaret Thatcher from 40-years ago. Their lines sound so antiquated because they have no plausible vision for creating a modern, united country. Then, who does? Rather than watch the contest, I have been reading the best modern historians as they struggle to find order amid