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Economics newsletter
Is X still worth £38 billion? Elon Musk thinks so
When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, his many critics gleefully predicted a catastrophe. We were told that everyone would quit the site for its rivals, such as Bluesky and Mastodon. The rebranding to X made Musk the object of ridicule. Musk was warned that he was unlikely to see a return on the $44
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Does it matter if Rachel Reeves fibbed on her CV?
Rachel Reeves is in the headlines again, for all the wrong reasons. The Chancellor’s entry in Who’s Who lists her as a contributor to the Journal of Political Economy. The problem? Reeves has, in fact, only published a single article in a far less prestigious publication, the European Journal of Political Economy. At this rate,
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Kemi Badenoch is more interested in liberalism than conservatism
Kemi Badenoch made a speech today which mentioned the terms ‘liberal’ or ‘liberalism’ seven times before the word ‘conservative’ got a look in. The liberalism she was extolling in her address at the ARC conference in London was not of the leftist kind, but the ‘classic liberalism of free markets, free speech, free enterprise, freedom
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UK recession fears ease but Rachel Reeves has little to celebrate
The UK economy grew by 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics’s latest report. December, when the economy expanded by 0.4 per cent (the market consensus had been 0.1 per cent), was the saving grace. This helped tip the final quarter of 2024 onto the
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Cheaper mortgages won’t save Britain from recession
Electricity bills are going up. Netflix is adding a couple of pounds a month to the price of a standard subscription, and council tax is going through the roof. Most of us are probably struggling with the cost of living. There is, however, one piece of good news: the sub four per cent mortgage is
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Starmer should split from the EU if it hits back at Trump on tariffs
The European Union has hit back against Donald Trump’s decision to impose 25 per cent tariffs on steel imports. “Tariffs are taxes – bad for business, worse for consumers,” the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said, adding that the levy “will not go unanswered”. Yet for all the fire and fury, Europe will
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Trump’s tariffs could kill Europe’s steel industry
So, it seems that Donald Trump wasn’t bluffing after all. On his way to the Superbowl, the president made time to impose 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium imports into the United States, ramping up a trade war that has been looming ever since he moved into the White House last month. Speaking
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Badenoch is leading her party in the right direction on migration
Since becoming Conservative leader in November, Kemi Badenoch has taken a restrained approach to saying what she’d do if she wins the next election. Given the slapdash ‘policy by press release’ approach of recent Conservative governments, it’s easy to see why Badenoch has been keen to avoid making careless policy announcements. But four years of
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Why the Bank of England is cutting interest rates
The Bank of England has cut interest rates for the third time since the inflation crisis, taking the base rate to 4.5 per cent. The Monetary Policy Committee voted by seven to two to further reduce rates by 0.25 percentage points – a move that was widely expected by markets, but had been put into doubt
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Asda and the absurdity of ‘work of equal value’
At last, some news of an industry in Britain that is flourishing. Unfortunately, it is one that is helping to suppress growth in every other sector of the economy. I am sure that the lawyers who have brought a case involving 60,000 female workers at Asda think they have won a famous victory after an