Economy

Sunday

David Blackburn

Worrying developments in the Middle East

It’s been an eventful , if worrying afternoon in the Middle East. First, the initial Egyptian election results confirm the expectation that Islamist parties would dominate the first round of elections: they’ve taken more than 50 per cent of the vote. Douglas Murray wrote a Spectator cover story two weeks ago on how the Arab Spring is turning to winter; it is required reading. Events in Iran are much more disturbing, though. Iran claims to have shot down an US drone in the east of the country and added further threats about further retaliation for the incursion. The reports have not been confirmed by American agencies as yet; but, following the recent diplomatic

David Blackburn

The referendum question

As French and German officials make final preparations ahead of tomorrow’s meeting on fiscal union, it’s worth reconsidering the coalition’s triple referendum lock. James Kirkup has an incisive post on the issue, describing a potential government split. The division was evident on TV this morning: Iain Duncan Smith told Dermot Murnaghan that a referendum would be held ‘if there is a major treaty change’, while Nick Clegg told Andrew Marr that only ‘an additional surrender of sovereignty from us to Brussels’ can spark a vote. Kirkup argues that IDS reflects the broader sceptic position on the Tory backbenches: that the PM has promised a vote on all substantial treaty changes.

David Blackburn

The importance of being earnest | 4 December 2011

The absence of growth and the importance of credibility are recurring themes in this morning’s papers. John Lord Hutton has told the BBC that revised growth figures make pension reform even more urgent, and he added that the deal that was put before trade unions was ‘perfectly credible’. Meanwhile, David Cameron has insisted that ministers increase their pension contributions by an average of 4.2 per cent (more than the 3.2 average across the public sector) to show that ‘we are all in this together’. Pensions also feature in an Independent on Sunday interview with Tim Farron, the Lib Dem President. Farron says he has ‘sympathy’ with state employees who are caught

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Austerity is not enough

The Euro crisis is terrifying, as Peter Oborne rightly says in today’s Telegraph. But what scares me even more is the paucity of the debate. Right now, the summitry is aimed at saving the euro as if this were an end in itself. Merkel’s logic (‘if the euro fails than Europe fails’) is dangerously simplistic: there are millions out of work, including half of young people in Spain, and they won’t be helped if their dole money is paid in euros. Recovery is needed. Jobs are needed. The euro has always been a project that puts politics first and economics second, with disastrous consequences. It cannot now be solved by

David Blackburn

The Gospel according to Delors

An old enemy of England nestles in the pages of today’s Daily Telegraph. Charles Moore travelled to Paris to meet Jacques Delors, the architect of the euro and advocate of Europe’s ‘social dimension’. Moore found defiance where one might have expected humility, perhaps even repentance. Delors insists that the fault was in the execution not the design of the euro. He thinks that the euro’s ‘Anglo-Saxon critics’ were correct in their analysis of the euro’s structural failings; he believes that Europe’s political leaders did not go far enough in ‘founding [economic] co-operation between member states’, which would have promoted the beloved ‘social dimension’ by harmonising fiscal, welfare and employment policies.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Balls’ blindness

This week has marked something of a watershed in the British economic debate. The story of the strike on Wednesday was not one of paralysis, but of resilience. There was an 85 per cent turnout in NHS staff; Cumbria council kept every office open as so few staff went on strike; Aussies landing at Heathrow cleared passport control in record time, due to the large number of volunteers who were qualified with two days’ notice. As I say in my Daily Telegraph column today, the union leaders went rather quiet afterwards: they misjudged the mood of the country. As has Ed Balls. He is attempting what economists call ‘fiscal illusion’

David Blackburn

A tale of two cities | 2 December 2011

Nicolas Sarkozy is grudgingly admired by French socialists as a political fighter, capable of thriving even in the most desperate situation. David Cameron is coming to understand what they mean. It is the best of times and the worst of times between Paris and London. Two months ago, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy assumed the victor’s garlands in Benghazi; today, they met at odds, if not yet in animosity, over the contested logic of ever closer union in Europe. Sarkozy appears to have got his wish: the 17 countries of the Eurozone will deepen their economic and political relations in an attempt to save the single currency — and with it, he

Thursday

David Blackburn

Woolf tucks into perfidious Albion

Yesterday night’s news that a senior FCO official lobbied Oxford University on behalf of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi adds more ordure to the already fetid story of Britain’s role in Colonel Gaddafi’s rehabilitation. The Woolf Inquiry into Saif’s dealings with British universities and businesses found that, ‘It was made clear [to Oxford] … that the FCO would appreciate help in this case since Libya was opening up to the West again.’  Oxford resisted; but this episode has hardly covered Britain’s elites in glory: the civil service, BAE and august universities are all criticised in Woolf’s report. Murmurs of disquiet about the Labour Party’s relationship with the Gaddafi clan continue to sound in certain quarters

Jonathan Jones

What did the public make of the Autumn Statement?

The lack of growth in the economy has taken its toll on the government – and George Osborne – according to YouGov’s post-Autumn Staement poll. After the Budget in March, 34 per cent said the Chancellor was doing a good job – now it’s just 24 per cent. And the percentage saying he’s doing a bad job has risen from from 40 to 49. Here’s how the public’s view of the economic performance of the coalition as a whole has declined since Osborne’s first Budget: Despite this, Labour have failed to seize the initiative. Osborne still leads Ed Balls on the question of who’d make the better Chancellor, 30-24. Indeed,

Wednesday

Will Straw

Another voice: Why the strike is right

If I were a teacher, I’d be on strike today. Public sector workers are being asked — in what is now a well-rehearsed soundbite — to work longer, receive less, and pay more. In these austere times, with deficit reduction a necessity,  two of those three aims might be reasonable. But doing all three at once, and conflating the package with the spurious notion that public sector pensions are ‘unsustainable’, justifies the direct action being taken today.   The rise in contribution rates — in effect a three per cent tax rise — will be especially hard to bear for those on modest salaries who are already facing a prolonged

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Rowdy and raucous — but that’s how we like it

It was vicious. It was frenetic. It was full of rage and class-hatred. It was great political sport. If you like a serious punch-up, the Commons at mid-day was the place to be. The viewing figures at home were boosted by the many millions of strikers who couldn’t quite make their local anti-cuts demo and were sitting out the revolution with a nice cup of tea and PMQs on the Parliament channel.  Ed Miliband started by claiming that the PM had been seen in private rubbing his hands, like Moriarty, and boasting that ‘the unions have walked into my trap’. Cameron, although not denying this, slammed the Labour leader for

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Meanwhile, in Europe…

There probably hasn’t been a meeting of European finance ministers as important as the one tonight. The euro is still at risk; with new governments in Spain, Italy, and Greece incapable of calming the markets, and Angela Merkel unwilling to let the ECB act. In a speech in Berlin, Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski put it clearly: ‘I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity.’ It is a fear shared in London and Paris as well. The 17 finance ministers will discuss the range of options on the table: from setting up an EU Treasury to the possibility of eurobonds or establishing a supra-national process

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Osborne plays a tough hand well

Today was always going to be a difficult day for the Chancellor. The figures from the OBR were always going to dominate the headlines and the restrictions of coalition meant that there couldn’t be as much as the Tories would have liked on the supply side. It was striking that the loudest Tory cheer of Osborne’s statement came when he reiterated his opposition to an EU-imposed financial transactions tax. But the silver lining for Osborne and co is that Labour still lack economic credibility. It is hard for Labour to savage Osborne for borrowing more than he said he would — which he is to the tune of £158 billion

Robert Halfon-Mp

Fuelling the recovery

Today, the government has listened. In his Autumn Statement, George Osborne scrapped the fuel tax bombshell that was scheduled for January 2012.    As regular Coffee House readers will know, more than 100 MPs supported my cross-party campaign for cheaper petrol. At its height, it saw an e-petition attract more than 124,000 names — triggering a full MPs’ debate in Parliament. It has been a very long campaign, working with many organisations, from FairFuelUK and the RAC, to the independent forecourt industry, The Spectator and the Sun, to thousands of members of the public who wrote to me in support. Over several months, I have asked questions in Parliament, spoken

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Osborne has made the right choice — but it’s not without its costs

Today, George Osborne had a choice. Growth prospects have evaporated, and tax revenues along with it. Should he reopen the 2010 Spending Review and cut the spending totals? Or stick with those totals, and finance this with extra debt? He chose the latter. And I think, on balance, he was right to do so. Credibility is the most valuable currency in this eurozone crisis, and Osborne said it was a fixed five-year plan. He chose more debt over less certainty, and it looks today like the markets believe he chose correctly.  But all this comes at a cost. The government will now run deficits higher than those which Labour proposed.

Peter Hoskin

Growth has upset Osborne’s plans — and it’s likely to get worse

The real story, as everyone expected, wasn’t in the Pre-Budget Report ‘Green Book’ — but in the supplementary document produced by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility. Growth forecasts have taken a dive. And while that is both unsurprising and not all that revealing, it carries grim implications for so much else. I mean, just look at the graphs we produced in our last post: forecasts for debt, unemployment and borrowing are all up. It is not a pretty picture. But despite the dreariness of it all, I suspect that the numbers are far too optimistic. The clue comes at the start of the OBR report: ‘The central economic and fiscal

Peter Hoskin

On the road to break-up?

Before we plunge into the Autumn Statement, we really ought to mention the poison cloud hanging over Brussels today. European finance ministers, including George Osborne, are meeting there later — and it’s certainly not going to be good for their collective health. Klaus Regling, the head of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), is expected to tell them that there’s basically no chance of them boosting the bailout fund to €1 trillion in the near future, as was promised at the end of last month. Back then, David Cameron urged eurozone leaders to bring a ‘big bazooka’ to the fight. They have barely managed a cap gun. This is far

Monday

James Forsyth

Osborne has a few cards up his sleeve, but no aces

In some ways, George Osborne will always be haunted by his 2007 Tory conference speech. That speech and the reaction to his commitment to raise all estates worth less than £1 million out of inheritance tax contributed to Gordon Brown not calling an early election. It has a claim to be one of the most important speeches in modern British politics — it is certainly the one that saved the Cameron project. But it has also created an expectation that Osborne has a set of aces up his sleeve every time he stands up to give a big speech. Tomorrow’s speech won’t see the Chancellor pull out any unexpected trumps.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Preparing for the strike

Wednesday’s strike is going to be big — unlike the one in June, which I suspect most people didn’t really notice. You’re not going to be able to miss this one as 90 per cent plus of schools shut — compared to a third in June — and it takes half a day for anyone coming to Britain to pass through passport control. Michael Gove’s speech this morning is being widely seen as the government taking a more confrontational attitude to the strike. But I think that’s only half the story. What Gove was trying to do was appeal to the union membership while attacking those union leaders who really

Peter Hoskin

Those gloomy OECD projections in full

Thanks to the tremors along Westminster’s grapevine, we already knew that today’s OECD Economic Outlook would make for pretty dreary reading. But now that the report is actually out, we can see the organisation’s numbers for ourselves. The headline point appears to be that the eurozone is in, or is facing, ‘mild recession’. Or to put it in graphic form: And the current situation isn’t look particularly encouraging for the UK either. The first heading in the section on us reads ‘The economy is weakening sharply’. And a subsequent pair of graphs predicts, first, that we’ll experience a mild recession of our own across the next two quarters, and then