Economy

The Hair Shirt walked abroad at PMQs today. Those attending the Square Mile sleepover finally forced their agenda into the political mainstream. The question is, what is their agenda? A protest that doesn’t define its programme allows others to define it for them. And today both party leaders tried to harness the anti-capitalist spirit for their own political ends. Ed Miliband claimed to be scandalised by a recent, and arguable, surge of 49 per cent in directors’ pay. He demanded that the PM take action. Cameron seemed equally appalled at the news that fat cats have been getting fatter during the recession. But he wasn’t taking any sermons from Labour.

The growth number for the third quarter of this year is out, and it’s a little bit better than expected: 0.5 per cent. Many economists were saying that we’d have to hit around 0.4 per cent to recoup the growth lost to the Royal Wedding and Japanese Tsunami in Q2, so we’ve managed that. But, that aside, this is not the time for party poppers and champagne corks. It may not be Econopocalypse, but it’s not Mega Growth either. We are still living in a bleak, borderline stagflationary environment. Besides, I still reckon that we oughtn’t get especially worked up about these quarterly figures anyway. For starters, the obsession over

The games have started a day early, folks. The latest quarterly growth figures are set to be released tomorrow morning, but already Ed Balls is waxing insistent about what they have to be: “Simply to stay on track for the Office for Budget Responsibility’s most recent forecast, already downgraded three times, we will need to see growth in the third quarter of 1.3 per cent. And to reach the OECD’s latest and more pessimistic forecast, we will need to see a figure next week of 0.9 per cent.” To be fair — and this is not something you’ll read often on Coffee House — the Shadow Chancellor has a point,

A week may be a long time in politics, but it is no time at all in protest. As the inhabitants of Parliament Square have demonstrated, even a decade is as nothing so long as you have a constantly morphing cause, a council with no balls, and a small but steady stream of acolytes. Last weekend I watched a bridal party sneak in through the side entrance of St Paul’s Cathedral. This weekend I went back, curious to see whether the protest that had kept them from entering through the main door had located a point yet. Walking up from Fleet Street the first sight that greets the visitor is

Ipsos MORI’s latest monthly political monitor is just out, and it doesn’t bring much good news for either the government or the opposition. 63 per cent of respondents are dissatisfied with the government and 54 dissatisfied with David Cameron — both the highest proportions since the election. On the public’s number one issue — the economy — just 36 per cent say the government’s done a good job. And even wose, a whopping 77 per cent say they’ve done a bad job of keeping unemployment down — hardly surprising considering unemployment has risen by 100,000 since the election. But while all this presents a great opportunity for Labour, other numbers show how

For all the attention that is being focused in Westminster on the publication of the Cabinet Secretary’s report into the links between Adam Werritty and Liam Fox tomorrow, the real story is the countdown to Cannes. It is now three weeks since George Osborne declared that the eurozone countries had three weeks to save the Euro. So far, they haven’t done anywhere near enough. There’s also little sign that this weekend’s summit will see them make much progress. The Germans are already busy playing down expectations. From a British perspective, the intriguing question is: what does the coalition do if the eurozone continues to show no sign of getting its

Labour may have a narrow leads in the polls, but they continue to lag behind the Tories on the public’s number one issue: the economy. Today’s ComRes poll finds that just 18 per cent trust Eds Miliband and Balls “to make the right decisions about the economy”, compared to 30 per cent for Cameron and Osborne. Worse, the two Eds don’t even have the confidence of the majority of Labour voters: only 48 per cent trust them on the economy. YouGov also find Labour behind when it comes to the economy. 30 per cent think the Conservatives would handle it best, while just 26 per cent think Labour would. And

So, CoffeeHousers, are Eds Balls and Miliband a gruesome twosome or the most sparkling partnership since Torvill and Dean? I ask only because they’re really pushing the double-act shtick today. There’s their first-ever joint interview in the Evening Standard, for instance, in which they reminisce about the Shadow Chancellor’s 30th Birthday party, among other things. And then there was their joint appearance to officially launch Labour’s ‘plan for growth’ campaign this afternoon. They were talking policy, but there was also a strong emphasis on their personal relationship: eye contact, anecdotes, that sort of thing. Blair and Brown we are not, they seemed to be saying. As for the policy, if