Cost of living

The government’s delayed energy strategy is finally due to be released this week. The Prime Minister is due to unveil his plans on Thursday, which will supposedly ensure that the UK is self-reliant on energy supply after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Not that the proposals will lead to much change overnight. Instead, they are focussed on ensuring self-reliance in the long term – with many of the plans likely to take decades to come to fruition.  So, what’s on the agenda? Part of the reason the energy strategy has been delayed several times is a difference of opinion between the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, No. 10 and the Treasury. The Chancellor initially queried proposals for increased nuclear

Nato countries are being careful not to do anything that Russia could claim is an act of war. Just look at the reluctance from the US to provide Ukraine with Polish fighter jets. Yet Britain and other Nato members are involved in a huge effort to break Vladimir Putin’s war machine through supplying Ukraine with weapons and imposing financial pressure on Moscow. Russia, a G20 country, has been severed from the world economy. It has now surpassed Iran as the most sanctioned country on Earth and it is beginning to occupy a similar economic position. The speed with which Russia has been hit by these economic measures has been a

The priority for the UK and other rich democracies is to protect the people of Ukraine from the depredations of Putin’s forces. A close second should be protecting the poorest people in our countries and vital public services from the cancerous impact of soaring inflation, made much worse by the West’s economic warfare against Putin’s Russia. The most basic costs of living are soaring. And that means a devastating recession that has already begun for all those but the richest. This blow to living standards will be the worst in living memory, more pernicious than the impact of either the banking crisis or Covid. Talking to ministers and MPs, it is

If Boris Johnson manages to cling on to his job, he’ll have much more than the parties of lockdowns past to worry about. Britain’s cost of living crisis is worsening still, with CPI inflation rising by 5.4 per cent in the 12 months leading up to December last year. This has, once again, outpaced consensus, surging even further past the Bank of England’s most recent official forecast. There’s little doubt left that heavy government spending is playing a significant role in the inflation we’re experiencing now Inflation is now at a 30-year high. And it’s still rising. Capital Economics now estimates a peak of 7 per cent around April, and there

Keir Starmer is not a lucky politician. He has again been forced into self isolation after testing positive for Covid, which means he misses the first PMQs of the year. This is the Labour leader’s sixth period of self-isolation. So, instead it will be Rayner versus Johnson at PMQs at the later time of 3 p.m. this afternoon. These contests are normally more hammer and tongs than the Johnson–Starmer ones. Rayner’s style is more direct than Starmer’s; and is often more effective in rattling Johnson.  The obvious area for her to go on today is cutting VAT on household energy bills. Labour is already in favour of this and Tory MPs