Economics newsletter

Michael Simmons guides you through the week’s biggest stories across news, business, money, property, stocks and shares, and, of course, the economy.

Britain’s state pension is about to blow

Health Secretary Wes Streeting says that the changes to the Welfare Bill will ‘give people peace of mind’. Perhaps for some, but certainly not economists. Britain’s welfare crisis is staggering – £313 billion a year is spent on disability payments, Universal Credit, winter fuel payments, Motability, child benefit, and, most expensive of them all, the

Northern Ireland is still paying a heavy price for Brexit

This week heralds the arrival in Northern Ireland of yet more overregulation, bureaucratic overreach, and political incompetence. No, Keir Starmer isn’t making an unannounced visit to Belfast. From this month, many thousands of food products imported from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will have to display warnings on their packaging highlighting that these goods are not

Your pension fund is right to flee Labour’s Britain

One of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s few big ideas for boosting growth was to persuade pension funds to invest more of their assets in Britain. But hold on. Today, we learned that Scottish Widows, one of the biggest funds, is dramatically reducing its exposure to this country – and it is quite right to do so.

Michael Simmons

Why is the ONS saying inflation has gone down?

The rate of inflation remained flat at 3.4 per cent in May – still well above the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. Bizarrely, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), in their figures released this morning, claims this is down from 3.5 per cent the month before, even though just a couple of weeks

Michael Simmons

Rachel Reeves’s non-dom crackdown has truly backfired

Rachel Reeves may finally have seen sense. A report in this morning’s Financial Times suggests she is ‘exploring’ performing a 180 on the changes to inheritance tax rules which meant non doms would have to pay the death tax on their global assets – even on wealth earned before they came to the UK. As I explained in

Michael Simmons

The good and bad news about the UK-US trade deal

Donald Trump and Keir Starmer’s transatlantic trade deal has finally been signed. Before making an early exit from the G7, the US president approved an executive order giving legal effect to parts of the US-UK deal. The outline of the agreement was settled weeks earlier during a conference call, with Trump in the White House

Motability won’t give up its lucrative business without a fight

Motability, the scheme set up to provide vehicles, scooters and powered wheelchairs to disabled people, has become something of a monster. By the end of 2024, Motability supported a staggering 815,000 vehicles, up by 200,000 in the last two years alone. It is clear that the scheme has extended way beyond its original purpose and is