Economy

Today’s GDP figures are useful ammunition for the Conservatives

That the UK economy grew by 0.7 per cent in the final three months of 2013, leading to the fastest growth annually since the financial crisis, is obviously very good news for the Coalition. The quarter-by-quarter figures have zig-zagged, but the overall growth for 2013 is 1.9 per cent over the year, which is the most important figure. These GDP figures from the ONS, published this morning, enable David Cameron to say that this is further evidence of the Coalition’s ‘long-term economic plan’ succeeding, and use the new Tory buzzword,‘security’. And though the economy is still 1.3 per cent below its pre-recession peak (see the graph below), George Osborne can

The Tories’ economic tightrope

When things were going pretty badly for the Conservatives, ministers reassured one another that soon they’d be able to start hitting back at Labour with statistics. They’re doing that now – and are hitting as often as possible, even when it’s Labour’s turn to say something. Today the party has released figures to back up David Cameron’s claim at PMQs this week that people are better off, and they show that most people’s earnings are increasing by more than inflation. Now, Labour is quibbling the stats themselves, pointing out that they don’t involve benefit cuts and tax rises. But while Labour is overall losing in the battle of stats, there

Ed Miliband’s ‘One Nation Economy’ speech: full text and audio

listen to ‘Ed Miliband’s ‘One Nation Economy’ banking reform speech’ on Audioboo Today I want to tell you what the next election is about for Labour. It is about those families who work all the hours that God sends and don’t feel they get anything back. It is about the people who go to bed anxious about how they’re going to pay their bills. It is about the parents who turn to each other each night and ask what life their sons and daughters are going to have in the future. It is about those just starting out who can’t imagine they will ever afford a home of their own.

Owen Jones’s letter to Ukip voters exposes the Left’s blind spot

I try to avoid mentioning Owen Jones because he already gets so much attention from people on the Right, including quite a lot of abuse on t’internet; the poor man’s probably blocked more people than have followed me. But his letter to Ukip voters in today’s Independent interested me as a study in what Jonathan Haidt described as the Left’s blind spot. Owen’s argument is that Ukip supporters have Left-wing views on the economy and therefore should desert former City trader Nigel Farage and join him in voting for a socialist party. A lot of Ukippers (horrible word but I can’t think of any other) do have fairly socialistic views

Ed Miliband’s problems are mounting

Today’s PMQs has left Ed Miliband with a strategic headache. Miliband’s new less-Punch and Judy approach to PMQs isn’t working. In large part, this is because Cameron — who thinks he wins more of these sessions than he loses and that the facts on the ground now favour him — isn’t interested in cooperating. So Miliband is faced with the choice of continuing with this approach and being beaten up every Wednesday or abandoning it after just two sessions. If Miliband does continue with it, expect to see the Tories continue to try to goad Ed Balls, one of the Commons’ most enthusiastic hecklers, into responding to them in kind

Labour’s poll woes as economy grows

Is the improving economy harming Labour’s standing? According to a new Guardian/ICM survey out today, Labour is still ahead of the Conservatives by three points — but the gap is slowly shrinking. Since the last ICM poll in December, Labour’s lead has dropped to just three points, down from an eight point lead in November: Today’s poll also looks at how assured people are feeling about their own financial position and their ‘ability to keep up with the cost of living’. 52 per cent now feel confident about the state of their personal finances — the highest level since October 2010. Confidence in financial situations plummeted in 2010 and a

George Osborne’s New Year speech on the economy

Earlier today the Chancellor gave a speech on the economy where he set up a choice for politicians: cut back on welfare, or hurt ‘hard working families’ with tax rises and cuts to services like the NHS. Here’s the full text and audio of his speech:- listen to ‘Osborne: ‘Cutting the welfare bill is the kind of decision we need to make’’ on Audioboo

Martin Vander Weyer: In my hospital bed, I saw the future of the NHS

I blamed the pheasant casserole, but I did it an injustice. Its only contribution to the drama behind my disappearance in mid-December was a residue of lead shot in the small intestine that briefly confused the radiologist. The real villain revealed by the scan was my appendix, which had taken on the raging, bull-necked, bug-eyed appearance of Ed Balls faced with a set of improving growth figures. And so it was that I spent a week in the Friarage at Northallerton, a small ‘district general hospital’ that has survived every NHS restructuring to date and is cherished by the citizenry of rural North Yorkshire. For someone who hasn’t been hospitalised since

The Tories have to fight on their ground, not Labour’s

At the beginning of the autumn, strategists from all three parties assumed that the theme of the season would be Labour’s poll lead narrowing as the economic recovery picked up pace. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, Labour’s lead has remained and its own poll numbers have actually ticked up. This is, largely, thanks to Ed Miliband’s reframing of the political debate about the economy, making it about living standards But the autumn statement showed that when the political conversation is focused on the broader economy, the Tories have the better of it. Thursday has weakened Ed Balls, strengthened George Osborne and begun to move the political debate off Labour’s turf

Someone rid us of the awful slogan: ‘hardworking families’

This is a message to any politician out there thinking of using the phrase ‘hardworking families’ or ‘hardworking people’ – I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you. A day does not go by without a Tory politician using this highly irritating slogan, especially in the regular spam emails I get from the party. The latest occurrence happened today with the energy minister telling WATO that ‘We are determined to protect hard-working families from fuel bill rises’. I must be out of touch with public opinion, as usual, and this idea must resonate with people in general, because otherwise the media-obsessed Tories wouldn’t repeat

Osborne wants to talk about ‘the responsible recovery’ but energy bills are still Topic A

In the minds of government strategists, the autumn statement is the moment when the coalition gets to turn the conversation back to the broader economy and away from Ed Miliband’s focus on the cost of living. But the first five minutes of George Osborne’s pre-statement interview with Andrew Marr were dominated by the action the government is taking in response to Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy bills. The problem for the coalition on energy bills is that the £50 it is taking off bills now might well not be enough to stop bills rising next year. If household bills go up again in 2014, Miliband’s price freeze is going to

Will George Osborne play Santa next week?

When George Osborne stands up next week to deliver the autumn statement, he’ll have some good news to deliver. Not only is autumn, the dreariest of the British seasons over, but borrowing has come in lower than expected and the OBR will upgrade the growth forecasts. But the return of growth, as I say in the magazine this week, poses a strategic dilemma for Osborne. If he declares the economic emergency over, the public might conclude it was safe to turn back to Labour. But equally he has to show voters that he’s sharing the proceeds of growth. I suspect that Osborne will steer clear of too many sweetners. They’ll

James Forsyth

Filming Bono, fighting Balls – how George Osborne’s preparing for his autumn statement

James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss George Osborne’s 2013 Autumn statement: [audioboo url=”https://audioboo.fm/boos/1763353-isabel-hardman-and-james-forsyth-discuss-george-osborne-s-autumn-statement”][/audioboo] Next week’s autumn statement looks at first as if it should be easy for George Osborne. For the first time, he’ll arrive with unambiguously good news. He can announce an upgrade of the growth forecasts and that borrowing has come in lower than expected. Politically, however, his task is as difficult as ever. He has to wrestle back the initiative from Labour. Preparations for this ‘fiscal event’, to use the Whitehall parlance, have been intense. The government’s top Tories met last Friday to discuss how they wanted to project both David Cameron’s trip to China, which they hope

What Lynton Crosby told David Cameron’s political Cabinet

The next time you see a Tory minister on television, count how long it is until they say that David Cameron is a leader with a long term plan for this country. This is the Tories’ new message. In a presentation to Cameron’s political Cabinet on Tuesday morning, Lynton Crosby told the ministers present that the Tories would probably lose the election if it was held today or tomorrow. But, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, he stressed that the election was still 16 months away so the Tories had time to turn things round. He emphasised that they should play up that Cameron is a man with a

Venezuela: a shining example of how not to help the poor

No serious person today views the Cuban Revolution as anything other than an impoverished tyranny – up to and including the leaders of that Revolution, who have been hastily turning toward capitalism since learning in 2009 that the island was on the brink of insolvency. It remains much easier to find useful idiots willing to defend Venezuela’s so-called ‘Bolivarian revolution’, however, which until recently was supposed to promise something better than its ossified Caribbean neighbour. Not for much longer, perhaps; for Venezuela is on the brink of a social explosion after 15 years of economic incompetence by Islington’s favourite petrocrat. It was reported this week that, absurdly, the most oil

What the Ed Balls is a ‘nightmare’ emails tell us

It has long been suspected that there are tensions between Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. The pair fell out badly over the third runway at Heathrow in government and when Miliband was elected leader, he conspicuously didn’t offer Balls the job of shadow Chancellor. But since Balls became shadow Chancellor the pair has largely succeeded in keeping their differences under wraps. But the leaked emails revealed by Simon Walters in the Mail on Sunday today, show what Miliband’s team privately thinks of Balls. Torsten Bell, one of Miliband’s most influential aides, calls Balls a ‘nightmare’ and complains about how complicated his message on the economy is. Tellingly, he isn’t rebuked

Nick Clegg’s mantra: You can’t trust Labour or the Tories ‘on their own’

‘On their own’ – those are  Nick Clegg’s watchwords for the 2015 election. His speech on the economy last week was spun as ‘one of his strongest attacks ever on the Labour Party’; but, while Clegg certainly did say that Labour would seriously damage your wealth, he remembered his mantra: ‘So don’t be fooled again: you cannot afford Labour. Let loose in government on their own they would wreck the recovery – costing jobs, driving up interest rates and undermining the growth needed to cut tax bills and fund public services. They cannot be allowed to undo all of the sacrifices that have been made and everything that has been

There’s no point in just outsourcing our CO2 emissions

The global warming question is back on the political agenda with David Cameron likening cutting greenhouse gas emissions to house insurance. His argument is that if there’s a risk that they may be harmful, you want to guard against it. But given that ‘global warming’ is no respected of national boundaries, one thing that isn’t sensible is to simply send energy intensive industries and their jobs and profits overseas. But this is just what the EU is doing, according to Bjørn Lomborg. He reports that: ‘From 1990 to 2008, the EU cut its emissions by about 270 million metric tons of CO2. But it turns out that the increase in

Martin Vander Weyer

Luck of the Irish? Ireland’s recovery is down to common sense and graft

My man in Dublin calls with joy in his voice to tell me ‘the Troika’ — the combined powers of the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF — have signed off Ireland as fit to leave their bailout programme and return to economic self-determination. This is a remarkable turnaround in just three years since I visited the Irish capital in the midst of rescue talks — to find a nation in shock, staring at an €85 billion emergency loan facility that equated to €20,000 per citizen, a collapsing banking system and a landscape scarred by delusional, never-to-be-finished property developments. In the special Irish way, almost everyone I spoke

Nick Clegg fires the opening shots at Labour on economy

Nick Clegg’s blast at Labour today is just the opening salvo of a Lib Dem offensive against Labour on the economy. It is another reminder that coalition unity is strongest on the economy. Clegg’s jibe ‘Do you know why Ed Miliband suddenly wants to talk about the cost of living? Because they’ve lost the bigger economic argument’ could easily have been said by Cameron. While his argument that ‘healthy household budgets flow directly from a healthy economy. The two go hand in hand’ echoed George Osborne’s response to the GDP figures. At the top of the coalition, they are immensely frustrated that Labour has managed to change the conversation from