Money news

The EU is afraid of us, but we’ve got a prime minister who is afraid of the EU. The declaration by the European Commission that member states should prepare for ‘no deal’ is a powerful reminder that EU oligarchs are petrified that we will make a success of independence and expose the flaws in their dream of domination. They fear that we will reform our taxes and update our regulations to raise productivity and take market share from them. Their reaction is not to start improving their own competitiveness but to try to suppress our ability to compete, unfortunately with the willing compliance of the Chequers agreement and its anti-competitive

Both the Brexit and and Foreign Secretaries have resigned. The Chequers agreement, if that is the right word, looks about as enduring as the latest relationship on Love Island. The Prime Minister is staggering so uncertainly from one option to another that even Donald Trump’s advice over the weekend seemed almost sane. The UK’s strategy for leaving the European Union, insofar as we ever really had one, is in tatters. Big Business will no doubt respond to that with calls for a softer and softer Brexit simply in the hope of getting something in place before March next year. We will hear a lot about cliff edges, and the dangers

Earlier I wrote about how a paper circulated to ministers before Chequers makes clear that the UK’s plan to follow a ‘common rulebook for all goods including agri-food’ with the EU ‘would not allow the UK to accommodate a likely ask from the US in a future trade deal’ as the UK would be unable to recognise the US’s ‘array of standards’. But Number 10 are absolutely insistent that this doesn’t mean there won’t be a trade deal with the US; they also say that senior figures in government and trade experts are confident that a deal could still be done and that Theresa May wouldn’t be talking to Donald Trump

At Chequers over the next couple of days Theresa May, along with her chief Brexit-sceptic ministers Philip Hammond and Greg Clark, will attempt to convince others to agree to a soft Brexit. The latest thinking, according to reports today, is that the UK would more or less remain in the single market for goods but would face greater restrictions on trade in services. There would also be some degree of freedom of movement, though it would be more restricted than at present. A necessary compromise that will stave off the fear of ‘no deal’, or a cave-in which will hugely favour the EU? The problem is that the UK economy

Evening Standard editor, Kissinger Fellow, Honorary Economics Professor, Blackrock Advisor and Stanford Visiting fellow George Osborne is a skilled man at many things – namely job applications. However, as Chancellor Osborne struggled with deficit reduction, repeatedly missing his targets. He seems to now be experiencing economic turbulence in one of his new jobs, as editor of the London Evening Standard. BBC Media Editor Amol Rajan reports that in the space of a year the Standard has gone from a two million pound profit to a ten million pound loss. The paper will post a loss of £10m for the year ending in September 2017. Osborne started at the paper as editor

In conversation with Andrew Neil at a Spectator event this evening, Jeremy Hunt defended the principle of increasing taxes to pay for more spending on the NHS. He warned Tories unhappy with the idea that if in an election you offer voters a choice between a low taxes at all costs party and decent public services, they’ll vote for decent public services. He said that this extra money for the NHS was needed to deal with a ‘once in a generation change in demography’ and that it was important that the Tories show the public they are on the right side of this argument. In language reminiscent of David Cameron,

Airbus will abandon the UK. The car factories will all be closed down. Trade will grind to a halt, we will run out of food and medicines, and Harry Kane will be sold to Real Madrid and made captain of Spain instead of England. Okay, I made that last one up, but all the others are among the dire warnings that big business have issued over Brexit in the last few weeks. Project Fear III, or IV, or possibly XXVII by now, keeps coming back. Right now, it seems to have as many sequels as Jurassic World, and with plot-lines that are about as original. That, however, is a mistake,

How do you find the money to pay for a £20bn NHS funding pledge? Usually such discussions – and eventual calculations – would be made before the money was announced. However, Theresa May decided to ditch the rulebook this week when she unveiled her government’s funding package to boost health spending by an average of 3.4 per cent over the next five years. Far from a fully costed pledge, May referred to a rarely-sighted Brexit dividend, potential borrowing and future tax rises. The uncertainty has led to criticism from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour – not usually known for fiscal restraint. But happily it seems the Treasury now has a plan – or