Money

Katja Hoyer

Germany is caught in Putin’s trap

A collective sigh of relief went through Berlin this week as Russia resumed its gas deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline after a scheduled ten-day maintenance break. But even with the immediate crisis averted, Germany remains palpably jittery: it is unclear whether it will have enough gas to get through the winter. Threats from Vladimir Putin to curb or even stop energy supplies to Europe altogether have been part of the Russian war strategy right from the beginning. Shortly before the invasion of Ukraine in February, when the German chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a halt to the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev sneered: ‘Well. Welcome to

Why inflation will soon be over

Here’s a quick test: do you feel, in your bones, that we’ve entered into a new inflationary era or is this just a blip? If you feel we’ve entered into a new inflationary era, you are an economic conservative. You may believe in secular inflation thanks to the following: Brexit, trade wars, de-globalisation, Covid and Ukraine, which have all created shortages in manufacturing, oil, and wheat that we are powerless to fix. Perhaps you believe that sinister world leaders, business interests, and cartels control the markets in all this stuff and have decided to restrict it. Or you may think that central banks have been printing money so recklessly, and

Hannah Tomes

Draghi’s resignation leaves Italy in turmoil

Mario Draghi has resigned as Italian prime minister – for the second time in a week. But this time his resignation was accepted by President Sergio Mattarella, with a snap election expected in September or October. The resignation came after a fiery debate in parliament yesterday in which the populist Five Star Movement joined the right-wing League and Forza Italia parties to abstain on a vote of confidence in Draghi’s national unity coalition, which was ushered in and saw Draghi installed, unelected, as PM during the pandemic. Draghi will stay on as a caretaker prime minister until the autumn but he is leaving Italy in a state of economic chaos

Kate Andrews

Do Truss and Sunak’s spending pledges add up?

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have only a few weeks to make their case before postal voting begins on 1 August. Sunak has vowed to be ‘the heir to Margaret Thatcher’ in a comment piece in the Daily Telegraph today, in which he promises to deliver a ‘radical’ set of reform, without expanding much on what that reform would look like. Meanwhile Truss joined BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning to double down on her plans to grow the economy, admitting that ‘twenty years of economic policy haven’t delivered growth’, even if the majority of this time has been under Conservative leadership. But there’s a big economic elephant in the room:

Is the eurozone about to plunge into a recession?

A reforming prime minister has been ousted by a fractious, divided parliament. The central bank is raising interest rates to try and stem inflation that is running out of control. Everyone is being urged to use as little electricity as possible as officials scramble around to secure enough energy, and the currency is crumbling as the economy turns down. It would, in fairness, be a reasonable description of a chaotic and struggling Brexit Britain. As it happens, however, it is a summary of the EU and the euro-zone as it stumbles towards its next crisis. As chaotic as Brexit Britain is looking, it will be just as difficult on the

Soaring inflation could tank Rishi Sunak’s Tory leadership bid

Wages are rising. The economy is growing. The stock market is on the way up, and exports are booming. As he prepares for a long summer trying to persuade the membership of the Conservative party to make him prime minister, Rishi Sunak probably wishes he could be transported to some parallel universe where he could boast about his record as Chancellor. The trouble is, he is stuck with this one: and the news is relentlessly bad. This morning, inflation was up yet again, hitting a 40-year-high of 9.4 per cent. Yesterday, it was real wages falling sharply, as workers’ income failed to keep up with rising prices. Over the next

New Zealand’s economic woes will come back to bite Jacinda Ardern

New Zealand has been voted the second worst country in the world to move to, according to a survey of immigrants encompassing most regions of the world. The survey, by the expatriate networking organisation InterNations, collated the responses of nearly 12,000 immigrants, living in 181 countries. It found that Mexico tops the list of the best country to live as an expat, while New Zealand ranked second worst, beating only Kuwait. Survey respondents ranked their new countries based on criteria such as cost of living, safety, bureaucracy and quality of life. While New Zealand ranked 51 out of 52, its Trans-Tasman neighbour Australia received a credible ninth place, with people

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Britain’s sclerotic state

To listen to the would-be prime ministers of the Conservative party, things in Britain are going pretty well. Sure, Covid knocked the public finances off course, and the war in Ukraine has driven up prices at the pump, but structurally, Britain holds strong. This is about as far from the truth as it is possible to be. Unless the next prime minister can shake off this delusion, Britain is facing a second lost decade of economic growth. It’s important to put into perspective just how bad the last few parliaments have been. If the UK continues with the same level of growth it has seen for the last decade, Poland

The anti-drinking lobby’s twisted logic

In 2018, the Lancet published a study from the ‘Global Burden of Disease Alcohol Collaborators’ which claimed that there was no safe level of alcohol consumption. This was widely reported and was naturally welcomed by anti-alcohol campaigners. The BBC reported it under the headline ‘No alcohol safe to drink, global study confirms’. (Note the cheeky use of the word confirms, despite the finding going against 50 years of evidence.) The study wasn’t based on any new epidemiology. Instead, it took crude, aggregate data from almost every country in the world, mashed it together and attempted to come up with a global risk curve. As I said at the time: The

Michael Simmons

As the NHS shut down, the wealthy chose to die at home

Since January, some 22,000 more Brits have died at home than would be expected in a normal year. These so-called excess deaths at home had stumped doctors and left GPs calling for an investigation. The causes remain unclear but a study published today offers the first clues to what’s going on. The study, funded by Marie Curie, found that deaths at home increased sharpest in the most affluent areas during the pandemic. While excess deaths occurred in all groups, in England there were 33 per cent more at-home deaths than pre-pandemic in the least deprived areas. Meanwhile, deaths in the most deprived areas grew just 21 per cent. In Scotland the

Fraser Nelson

Suella Braverman is right about welfare

At a time of a worker shortage, we are somehow managing to keep 5.3 million people on out-of-work benefits. This is too much, says Suella Braverman. My colleague Stephen Daisley fervently disagrees and in his riposte, he quotes various figures about how Britain doesn’t spend very much on welfare compared to other countries. This is precisely what New Labour argued when it was keeping five million on benefits throughout the boom years and the argument didn’t stack up then either. The below shows the problem to which Braverman alludes: it really is quite a scandal and points to massive government failure. Set aside the wasted money: keeping 5.3 million working-age people

Ian Williams

China’s Ponzi banks are teetering

What began as a run on a handful of provincial banks is rapidly morphing into one of China’s worst financial scandals, threatening the stability of the country’s heavily indebted financial system. It poses a serious challenge to a Communist party obsessed with social order, which has thuggishly cracked down on desperate depositors demanding their money back. At the weekend, protesters in Henan’s capital Zhengzhou were charged, beaten and dragged away by unidentified security officials dressed in white shirts and dark trousers, who appeared to be working in concert with uniformed police. An estimated 1,000 angry depositors had gathered in front of a branch of the People’s Bank of China, carrying banners

Kate Andrews

Is Rishi’s tax cut pledge enough to rally MPs?

Rishi Sunak has a reputation for sleek and snazzy presentation, and his leadership launch this morning was no exception – by Westminster standards, anyway. The air-conditioning was on full blast as young activists lined up with their ‘Ready For Rishi!’ signs, next to heavily branded backdrops. And the guest list was long. MPs in attendance included many who had already declared for Sunak: Bim Afolami, Claire Coutinho, Helen Whately, and Liam Fox. There were also surprise guests, including the Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, who introduced Sunak and credited him for delivering ‘the biggest tax cut for working people in a decade’ by lifting the National Insurance threshold for millions.

Cutting taxes isn’t irresponsible

Everyone is supposed to have their 15 minutes of fame. Perhaps I have just had mine, after the contenders for the Tory leadership were invited to endorse the ‘charter for tax cuts’ that I co-wrote for Conservative Way Forward. It was certainly pretty cool to be namechecked at the launch event on Monday both by the new Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, and by a strong candidate to be the next prime minister, Suella Braverman. The thinking behind the charter was simple. I wanted to summarise the case for tax cuts and respond to some of the arguments against; including that we cannot afford them, or that they would be inflationary. The

Susanne Mundschenk

The problem with euro-dollar parity

The euro is nearly level with the dollar. It should not matter in theory, because of the relatively low share of the US in EU trade. But it does in practice. Some predict that the euro will fall below parity. There is a straightforward explanation for this: the war in Ukraine and unpredictable Russian gas supplies to Europe make the dollar a safe haven for investors. On top of this, US interest rates offer a higher return on investment. But it is not only the dollar. Looking at the broader picture, the European Central Bank’s measure of the euro’s real effective exchange rate against 42 partner countries confirms this trend

How to fix Britain’s childcare problem

Childcare in the UK is among the most expensive in Europe. A full-time nursery place for a child under five costs in the region of £14,000 per year; if there are multiple children, this easily rises to an amount that means women would be paying to go back to work after maternity leave. The result: if a couple can’t afford to support a family on a single income until children are school age, then quite likely they can’t afford to have a family at all. One typical reason given for these high costs is that regulations for the number of adults per child are more stringent than in many other

Fraser Nelson

Are the Tories ready for a real contest?

Will this leadership contest provide a debate? The Tories got into this mess because have spent years asking who can bring them power, rather than what they stand for or who has the best ideas for the country. The leadership contest should come in two stages: first discussing what has gone wrong and then next who best to remedy. So far, this is my test for the candidates. Have they said anything that moves beyond platitude and cliche? Do they show any signs of being thoughtful? Do they recognise that there is a fight ahead, and that they are prepared for that fight? I fervently hope the Tory party abstain

Mark Galeotti

Russia is militarising its economy

The ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine isn’t a war – there’s a law and a possible maximum sentence (though no one seems to have faced it yet) of 15 years in prison to stop you claiming it is in Russia. Yet Russia does seem to be inching towards a wartime economy, for all Vladimir Putin’s recent bullishness. At the recent (if rather sparsely-attended) St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin struck a triumphalist note, crowing that ‘the economic blitzkrieg against Russia never had any chances of success,’ and ‘gloomy predictions about the Russian economy’s future didn’t come true.’ That’s both true and not true. There has been no meltdown, not least

What the Tories should look for in their next leader

The Conservatives are selecting a new leader, who will become Prime Minister. What sort of a person should that be? It needs to be someone with the spark or edge of a leader, able to carry others with them – not just a clubbable ‘Yes Man’ type. It needs to be someone able to press a vision and policy agenda across a range of issues, not just something narrow like finance, defence, international relations or legal issues. It needs to be someone able to convey an optimistic message, but have a serious mode that can be turned on when necessary. Someone who is willing to be unpopular, taking tough decisions

If the EU disliked Boris, they’ll hate his successor

Three, five, or perhaps even ten whole minutes. In a more civilised, parallel universe, perhaps Europe’s big wigs would have allowed a slightly more dignified period of silence following Boris Johnson’s resignation speech before cracking open the foie gras and champagne. In this one, however, the gloating started immediately.  ‘The departure of Boris Johnson opens a new page in relations with Britain,’ wrote ex-chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. ‘Boris Johnson’s reign ends in disgrace, just like his friend Donald Trump,’ tweeted the former Brexit coordinator of the European parliament Guy Verhofstadt. No doubt we will see a lot more in that vein in the hours and days ahead. But hold