Money

Why is it that some lies get endlessly repeated without ever being challenged, even though they are quite obviously wrong? In her pro-growth speech today, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves asserted: ‘There is no trade-off between economic growth and net zero’. Government ministers, advisers and many others have been saying such things for years – and hardly ever do they get properly challenged. To pretend that no such trade-off exists is foolish It is easy to see why, for political reasons, you might want to argue that committing Britain to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 will not make us poorer and indeed might make us wealthier. You want to

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are under pressure to reduce red tape in the financial sector. “We’ve told our regulators they need to regulate for growth, not just for risk,” the Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said. But the idea that tweaking regulations will somehow unlock growth is a fallacy. The idea that tweaking regulations will somehow unlock growth is a fallacy The problem is that these ungoverned and rogue regulators are manned by second-rate lawyers and special interest groups who present their ideas as mainstream. They have never facilitated growth and have created a labyrinth of rules that suffocate the UK’s financial services industry, serving

Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Climate Change Agreement for the second time and reiterated his desire that America should ‘drill, baby drill’. The US president’s decision exposes the naivety of MPs in Britain who, in 2019, nodded through a legal commitment to reaching net zero by 2050, with the hope that it would inspire other countries to follow our example. The Climate and Nature Bill risks taking Britain back to the dark ages In fact, Britain is pretty well alone in voluntarily choosing to ‘leave it in the ground’, as anti-fossil fuel activists like to put it. The US has been following an unashamed policy

It may prove to be just the first of many screeching U-turns. Whilst hobnobbing among the plutocrats in Davos this week, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves has admitted that she may have to tweak her clamp-down on non doms, to make it less punitive for anyone who isn’t British, and happens to have a bit of money, to live in the UK. Sure, it is good that Reeves is learning from her mistakes. The only trouble is it is going to prove a very expensive education for the rest of us.  It is only a couple of months since Reeves’s Budget introduced tough new rules for non doms, but it already

The news just seems to get worse for Rachel Reeves. After the slight relief of last week’s inflation and GDP figures, this morning brings headlines that are even grimmer than economists expected. The government was forced to borrow £17.8 billion in December, more than twice the £6.7 billion which Rishi Sunak’s government borrowed in December 2023. In just one month, taxpayers had to spend £8.3 billion to service the government’s debt. Interest payments are now consuming over 8 per cent of government expenditure – more than is spent on education or defence – and very nearly as much as the welfare bill, which is itself ballooning. The Chancellor’s immediate problem is that

‘The golden age begins right now’ said the 47th President of the United States as he began his inauguration speech in the Capitol Rotunda. What followed was a 30-minute speech, during which Donald Trump stayed both on script and on message, reiterating his promise to declare a border crisis, deport foreign criminals, return America’s title of energy independence and to ramp on tariffs on foreign countries to ‘protect American workers and families’.  Trump aides had promised that, eight years on, the President’s second swearing-in speech would be different. Gone were the days of promoting ‘American carnage’. Today, the message was to be one of unity.  Here, the President took baby

Drill, baby drill. The mood on Net Zero is changing in the Scottish parliament where a majority of MSPs have signed a petition calling for a reversal on the ban on new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea. This sea change in attitudes to the black stuff, if you’ll excuse the pun, could portend a dramatic reversal of the Scottish government’s opposition to fossil fuels in SNP leader John Swinney’s long-delayed energy strategy. The “presumption against offshore drilling” has been the centrepiece of SNP energy policy since Cop26 in 2021, when Nicola Sturgeon posed for selfies with Greta Thunberg. Sturgeon is gone, of course – and her clean

Perhaps you could gather a group of traffic wardens and ask them how to build a racetrack. Or get the leaders of the Salvation Army over to suggest some cool ideas for a cocktail bar. Think up any improbable brainstorming sessions, and it will still be hard to imagine anything more awkward than the gathering of regulators Chancellor Rachel Reeves summoned to Downing Street today to give her some ideas on growth. After all, that is her job, not theirs.  Just the concept of frog-marching regulators into the Chancellor’s office and demanding ‘growth ideas’ is ridiculous It hardly sounds like fun. The chief executives of such august sounding bodies as

Rachel Reeves has found brief respite this morning, with the Office for National Statistics confirming that inflation dipped to 2.5 per cent in the 12 months to December, down from 2.6 per cent the month before. This is a smaller rise than had been expected (the consensus was 2.6 per cent) and roughly in line with the Bank of England’s forecast from November, which had predicted a 2.4 per cent increase. It’s welcome news for a Chancellor who is under pressure. Core inflation slowed too, from 3.5 per cent in the year to November, to 3.2 per cent in December. This competes for the best news in the update, as core