Economy

Upbeat or downbeat? I asked last month whether the mood where you live is energised by enterprise or demoralised by public-sector retreat — or both. Replies poured in while the news mostly got worse. Governor Carney warned that ‘the UK cannot help but be affected by an unforgiving global environment and sustained financial market turbulence’ as shares took another dive. BP and Shell announced profit falls and job cuts. The Brexit debate took off, but the migrant benefits row overwhelmed any sensible discussion of economic pros and cons, on which voters must so far be utterly confused. Then again, it wasn’t all bad: like-for-like retail sales surged by 2.6 per

Many have rightly attacked the police for their handling of the demented accusations against Field Marshal Lord Bramall, now at last dropped. They ostentatiously descended on his village in huge numbers, chatted about the case in the pub and pointlessly searched his house for ten hours. But one needs to understand that their pursuit of Lord Bramall — though not their exact methods — is the result of the system. Because the doctrine has now been established that all ‘victims’ must be ‘believed’, the police must take seriously every sex abuse accusation made and record the accusation as a reported crime (hence the huge increase in sex abuse figures). Even if you

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatfakewar/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discussing the Autumn Statement and Spending Review” startat=870] Listen [/audioplayer]The Autumn Statement on 25 November had long been circled in Downing Street diaries as the season’s defining political moment. Its importance only grew after the Lords rejected the government’s tax-credit changes and George Osborne announced that he would present his revised proposals in this statement. But now it is not even seen as the defining political moment of this week, pushed down the news agenda by the terrorist threat in Europe and David Cameron’s decision to make the case to the Commons for Britain extending its anti-Islamic State bombing into Syria.

Without George Osborne, we’d probably be living under Prime Minister Ed Miliband right now. His value to the government goes far beyond his brief as Chancellor; he is across most departments most of the time. But as Chancellor, he is judged by the success (or otherwise) of his Budgets – which is why he is now in a moment of great danger. His love of complexity has come to threaten not just his own reputation, but that of the Conservative Party too. Sometimes, Osborne is so clever that he can be downright stupid: This is one of these times. In my Telegraph column today, I say that Osborne is currently

George Osborne received a fulsome banging of desks last night at the 1922 Committee, joking that he should come back again once he’s won a vote if he gets that sort of reception when he’s lost. Tory MPs were doing the desk banging for the benefit of those hacks skulking outside, but they are now holding their breath to see what the Chancellor actually comes up with to mitigate the tax credit cuts in the Autumn Statement. Inside the meeting, the Chancellor was upbeat, but made clear that there will be movement on the issue. The waiting game means that David Cameron had to refuse to answer the same question

Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t even been elected Labour leader but the campaign to undermine him begins today. David Cameron will give a speech on the economy, in which he will warn that Corbyn will threaten Britain’s security — a strategy I wrote about earlier this week. According to today’s Times, the Prime Minister will make his first significant attack on a Corbyn-led Labour by focusing on the threat to Britain’s financial security: ‘I have watched with some bewilderment the Labour leadership election of the past few months. ‘Whoever wins . . . this is now a party that has completely vacated the intellectual playing field and no longer represents working people. It is arguing at the extremes

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/theosbornesupremacy/media.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman and George Parker discus how George Osborne rules Westminster” startat=38] Listen [/audioplayer]Against the heavy artillery fire of the Labour leadership battle, the struggle of the Conservative leadership contest goes almost undetected outside Westminster. It is no less intense, even though the Conservatives will not elect a new leader for at least three years. After a week of the parliamentary recess, there is no question about who is winning. This week, for the first time, George Osborne overtook Boris Johnson as William Hill’s favourite. Not so long ago, Osborne was a mere limpet on David Cameron’s wetsuit, clinging on thanks to the patronage of his boss. Booed

George Osborne had a ringside seat for New Labour’s dominance of British politics and you could see the influence that this has had on him in the Budget. First, there was Osborne’s determination to unpick the structural changes that Gordon Brown had made to move British politics to the left. So, Osborne took the axe to tax credits not only limiting the numbers who’ll receive them in future, down from nine out of ten families with children in 2010 to five in ten by 2020, but he also attacked the intellectual rationale for them, arguing that they have actually kept wages down. But the Budget also owed something to Tony

During the election, Ed Miliband’s opponents regularly criticised the Labour leader for naming his life experience outside the Westminster bubble as ‘teaching at Harvard’. Still, the naysayers haven’t put his former sidekick Ed Balls off returning to the university he once studied at. Today the ousted Labour MP has confirmed reports that he is joining the Ivy League establishment as a senior fellow. In a statement John Haigh, the executive Dean of the Kennedy School, announced the appointment: ‘We’re delighted to welcome Ed Balls to the Mossavar-Rahmani business and government centre. Ed brings enormous depth and breadth of experience in the public sector and we’re confident he will make a valuable contribution to our students, to the