Money

Kate Andrews

Rishi Sunak will be missed as Chancellor

We will never know the counterfactuals of the past few years. What if another MP had been made Chancellor when Sajid Javid resigned (the first time)? What if a green chancellor Rishi Sunak hadn’t had a pandemic to manage? While we can’t answer these questions, it’s hard to imagine any MP – certainly on the left, even on the right – taking fiscal responsibility as seriously as Sunak did when he had the permission of his party – and politicians the world over – to throw it out the window. I suspect it won’t take long for us to start missing the former Chancellor and the critical role he played

Rishi Sunak won’t be missed as Chancellor

Rishi Sunak’s resignation was, without question, a brave, honourable and dignified decision. By stepping away from the cabinet, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak may well have done enough to salvage his reputation among Conservative MPs and party members. Perhaps he might even have rescued what was once seen as a potentially meteoric career. But although he may be missed as a politician, one thing is clear: Sunak won’t be missed as Chancellor. In reality, he was a catastrophe in the role – and now that he has gone, his successor will have a chance to reverse his policies. The Chancellor leaves a worse legacy than perhaps any predecessor of modern times Whether Sunak

Kate Andrews

There’s little to celebrate on the NHS’s birthday

Birthday celebrations for the NHS this year are relatively quiet. In recent years the health service has received multi-billion pound top-ups from the taxpayer, not to mention high praise from politicians across the political spectrum. This may be in part because the government has already seen to the big NHS pledges, including the 2.5 per cent National Insurance hike, split between workers and employers, which is bringing in roughly £6 billion to pay for Covid catch-up. But no doubt this year’s notable silence is also linked to just how bad that catch-up is going. It’s never been credible to claim the NHS is the ‘envy of the world’; the health

Gus Carter

The rise of the neo-Luddites

Yesterday, a pair of Just Stop Oil protesters glued themselves to a John Constable painting in the National Gallery, covering The Hay Wain with a printout of an alternative vision of England. The cart crossing the River Stour in Suffolk is perhaps Constable’s most famous painting. But instead of a bucolic, biscuit tin Albion, Just Stop Oil’s version shows the Stour tarmacked over, a belching power plant in the distance and a commercial jet overhead. The message is clear: our modern world is sick. I have some sympathy with these student activists, or at least I envy their certainty. Their view of the world is simple: bad things like fossil fuels,

Susanne Mundschenk

Turkey’s grain diplomacy

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is once again using Turkey’s geopolitical position for his own ends, this time dictating grain shipments from Ukraine through the Black Sea. Turkish customs authorities detained a Russian cargo ship carrying Ukrainian wheat on Sunday, following a request of Kyiv. The Russian cargo ship Zhibek Zholy left the south-eastern port of Berdyansk over the weekend carrying 7,000 tons of grain, worth about £1.75 million. The Russian-appointed head of the occupied region had hailed it as the first commercial ship to leave a Ukrainian port after months of war. He said this would take desperately-needed supplies to friendly countries, according to Politico. The reality is, of course, that

German industry is grinding to a halt

The Soviet Union had only just collapsed. John Major was still a relatively fresh-faced Prime Minister. And the internet consisted of a few desktop computers linking together a handful of laboratories. The world was a very different place when Germany last posted a trade deficit way back in 1991. But on Monday, the country recorded that imports outstripped exports for more than 30 years. True, other countries are recording huge deficits, not least the UK. For Germany, though, it matters more. Its entire economy has been built around creating an industrial machine that dominates global markets. That machine is now grinding to a halt. By the standards of Britain, the

Kate Andrews

Britain avoids a recession – for now

The UK’s economy grew by 0.8 per cent between January and March this year, according to this morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics. This means real GDP is now just 0.7 per cent above its pre-pandemic levels. On the face of it, it’s fairly grim news. The spectacular growth originally forecast for this year, making up for lost time in lockdown, did not transpire in the first three months of the year. Signs of a weak economy are starting to show. While consumer spending was up by 0.6 per cent in the first quarter, business investment fell by the same amount, down 9.2 per cent overall from its pre-pandemic levels. Signs

Striking GPs need a reality check

GPs have voted to strike if some contract changes, including forcing practices to open on Saturdays, are not withdrawn. The doctor proposing the motion at the British Medical Association’s annual conference in Brighton urged her fellow medics to ‘channel our inner Mick Lynch‘. This analogy – and the meeting’s decision in favour of industrial action – tells us everything we need to know about the political leanings of the BMA who ought to be unbiased. It was particularly distasteful to invoke a comparison with the RMT’s rail strike which caused travel chaos and distress last week for NHS staff and their patients, among other innocent casualties. The main quarrel of the meeting was the demand by

Macron’s Russian oil plan is bound to fail

It will drain Vladimir Putin of funds for his war machine. It will bring down inflation. And it might even be enough to stop the global economy from tipping into recession. As President Macron put forward his wheeze for solving the energy crisis this week, he no doubt had plenty of persuasive arguments. He appears to have brought the rest of the G7 on board for his plan for a global cap on the price of oil. There is just one problem. Like most price controls, it is not going to work. Indeed. It will only make the crisis worse. Of course, everyone can see where Macron is coming from.

Isabel Hardman

Boost defence spending to prepare for Putin, Wallace demands

Ben Wallace is giving a speech this afternoon in which he will urge Boris Johnson to increase defence spending. The Defence Secretary – who has long been close to Johnson – is making his campaign public, having apparently already secured a nod from the Prime Minister that he will get something. He wants a 20 per cent increase in defence spending in the next five years, and to push Britain’s budget for its armed forces up to 2.5 per cent of GDP, having secured the 2 per cent target. He is speaking at the Royal United Services Institute event alongside the chief of the general staff General Sir Patrick Sanders,

Why the Tories struggle to shake off the ‘nasty party’ label

The Conservatives’ brand is being taken to the cleaners. According to Lord Ashcroft’s focus groups, the words and phrases most often associated with the Conservative party right now are ‘untrustworthy’, ‘for themselves’, ‘out of touch’, and ‘for the few’. The Conservatives are at risk of becoming the Nasty Party again. Given all the years spent detoxifying the party’s brand, how has it come to this?  The reputation of every governing party suffers with time, but the Conservatives seem to have a particular knack for being seen as heartless the longer they are in office. At a time when households are struggling, the Conservatives find themselves in a position where despite

Kate Andrews

Could a row over steel blow up the Tory party?

When Boris Johnson was campaigning for Brexit, he placed much importance on World Trade Organisation rules. The WTO, he’d argue, had an internationally-recognised free trade rule book – which was ready and waiting to be used as a substitute to the European Union system. This is why he could face some very difficult questions next week if he decides to extend tariffs on steel imports in a way that some think flout WTO rules. Last year the PM ignored advice from the independent Trade Remedies Authority – a trade watchdog which his government created post-Brexit – which wanted him to ditch some of the tariffs currently in place that, they

The socialist case against the strikes

Socialists like me are supposed to always support industrial action. But reports that doctors, teachers, local government employees and just about everyone in the public sector are considering joining rail workers on strike have failed to gladden my proletarian heart. Why? Because the reality is that none of these workers have much of a case to make for bringing Britain to a halt. Don’t get me wrong: strikes aimed at improving the wages and conditions of low-paid workers are a legitimate way of ensuring demands are met. Socialists should always back workers when they are driven to strike because they are being treated unacceptably. But is this really what is

Fraser Nelson

Where is the Boris agenda?

It’s a common trap: a Prime Minister is asked whether he or she will fight the next election as leader. To which there are only two answers: to say ‘yes,’ or announce your resignation. But – here’s the trap – saying ‘yes’ can be easily translated into Thatcher-style declaration that you want to “go on and on” – in Boris Johnson’s case, the papers say he wants to last to the 2030s. Not a timescale he mentioned. But he did talk about a “third term” and is blaming his by-election defeats on voters not thinking enough about the future. ‘If you look at the by-elections, people were absolutely fed up

James Kirkup

Are we heading towards a British Donald Trump?

The Tiverton and Wakefield by-elections are, of course, shatteringly bad for the Conservatives and Boris Johnson. They should finally destroy any illusions Conservatives hold about the PM’s electoral appeal. As I and several others have often pointed out, Boris is not a Heineken politician and hasn’t been one since the middle of the last decade. Analysis of by-election results is often bad. In the minutes and hours after the result, commentators scramble to explain what local results mean for national politics, in a crowded field where political actors are doing their best to skew the narrative in their own interests. That being so, I’m not going to try to tell

Boris will keep losing until he tackles inflation

The Tories took a serious beating in Thursday’s by-elections. Whilst Boris Johnson and his government refuse to take responsibility for the big issue of the day – inflation – and fail to convey any meaningful central purpose to their government (‘levelling up’ being clearly nothing more than an empty soundbite) they will continue to face huge electoral defeats. It really is as simple as that. When I say the government needs to take responsibility for inflation the immediate question is: ‘So how would you get it down?’ But that is the wrong place to begin. The first thing the government needs to do is to take political and policy responsibility for

Of course we can afford to cut taxes

The latest data on the UK’s public finances have provided more ammunition for those arguing that the government cannot afford to cut taxes. However, the economic reality is far more nuanced – especially when it comes to interest payments. The bad news is that the government borrowed another £14 billion in May, £3.7 billion more than forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). This reflected both lower-than-expected tax receipts, despite the increase in National Insurance contributions, and higher spending, including £7.6 billion in debt interest costs. This means that the government has already borrowed £35.9 billion in the first two months of the new fiscal year, or £6.4 billion

Freddy Gray

Biden’s racial ‘equity’ plan is bound to backfire

‘America is a nation that can be defined in a single word,’ said the proud Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden, standing outside the White House earlier this year. ‘Alsdfnalcaofjlksfa.’ We shouldn’t laugh. The poor man has a speech impediment. Still, that ‘Alsdfnalcaofjlksfa’ word will strike many Americans as an amusingly apt description of their country in 2022. It sums up Joe Biden’s whole administration: nonsense pretending to be clear leadership. America is, as everyone knows, in an inflationary crisis. The cost of petrol has reached such highs that Biden has called on Congress to suspend gas (petrol) tax for three months. That will do nothing to address the energy supply shortage that

Isabel Hardman

Is Boris able to stand up to Sunak?

The latest inflation figures have sent Tory MPs into a tizz again, unsurprisingly. There are a number of things that they’re upset about: the first is the ongoing refrain that their party should be cutting taxes, not imposing the highest tax burdens in living memory. Another is that Universal Credit is largely ‘an unfinished project’, in the words of one Red Wall backbencher who sees the impact of the malfunctioning benefit on his constituents. What both of these complaints have in common is that MPs feel the Treasury is deliberately pursuing the wrong policy: arguing that now isn’t the time to cut taxes and choosing to spend money on grants for

Robert Peston

Where’s Boris’s plan to stop the economic chaos?

Interest payments on the national debt rose 70 per cent last month to £7.6 billion (compared with a year earlier) – largely because of the impact of inflation on income paid to holders of index-linked gilts, which are inflation-protected government bonds. More worryingly, this was 49 per cent more than the official forecast made in March by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). It suggests the OBR’s forecast that the government will have to pay £87.2 billion in interest payments (a colossal sum) may be too low, especially since the ONS is not factoring in the most recent inflation figures in its calculations of the monthly bill. Little wonder Rishi Sunak says ‘rising