Economics newsletter
The Greens’ Zack-onomics doesn’t add up
Tax the billionaires, nationalise the utilities and abolish the Office for Budget Responsibility. Green party leader Zack Polanski has set out his vision for how Britain’s economy should be run. The sticking point? There are plenty, not least the fact that there is little in his speech today at the New Economics Foundation to suggest
Richard Tice’s tax trickery shows he is a true patriot
Reform’s Richard Tice has been the subject of what I fear is intended as a hit-piece in the Sunday Times. “The Deputy Leader of Reform UK avoided nearly £600,000 in corporation tax after obtaining a rare legal status for his company,” it reports. “Richard Tice then channeled the company’s dividends into an offshore trust and a string of dormant businesses. Several did not
Is it cruel or kind to sign someone off work for anxiety?
Each batch of new statistics reveals the scale of Britain’s mental health crisis. This week, we learnt that the number of people claiming health benefits because they are deemed too sick to look for work has, for the first time, topped three million. Since the start of 2022, nine-in-ten new claims have been for people
The inconvenient truth about Britain’s ‘nuclear renaissance’
The Red Queen warned Alice, ‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.’ Her quip captures a cruel reality: things decay all by themselves when left unattended; keeping up – let alone making progress – requires sustained effort. And so it goes with Britain’s decaying
Replacing Churchill with wildlife on our banknotes is a mistake
The Bank of England has announced that pictures of wildlife will replace famous faces on our banknotes. A cute kitten, perhaps? Or a puppy doing some tricks? Or, given that China may well have hacked into the system, even a panda bear? Whichever animals end up making the cut, it’s goodbye to Winston Churchill, Jane
No, Britain is not about to run out of gas
Over the weekend, following continued US-Israeli attacks on Iran and the resulting disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, several newspapers warned that Britain has ‘just two days of gas’ left in storage. This line appeared prominently in coverage from outlets including the Guardian and the Times, leaving readers with the impression that the
What will Ed Miliband do when the lights go out?
How many times has Ed Miliband told us that his renewable energy policies were helping to free us from ‘fossil fuel dictators’? Wind and solar energy, he assures us, are saving us money and making us more energy-secure. Then we wake up to find that actually, Britain has only two days’ worth of gas left in storage.
What to expect from Rachel Reeves’s spring statement
Before the first missiles landed in Tehran, Rachel Reeves was looking forward to today. Her spring ‘forecast’ statement was going to be a doddle. The plan – to have the smallest intervention by a Chancellor since Philip Hammond in the spring of 2018 – was a sensible one. Britain’s fragile economy could not have handled
The bond markets aren’t done with Rachel Reeves
Never has Rachel Reeves been so glad to be so boring. The Chancellor will deliver today her spring update on the public finances at a time of unusual calm in the often overdramatic story of UK economic policy. One of the biggest actors in the story, the bond market, is currently happy and sleepy. In
MAGA-nomics is working
Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, the longest in history, served as a reminder of the relentless will and unstoppable energy he brings to the office of the presidency. In a coup de grace he humiliated Congressional Democrats, securing footage of them remaining seated en masse as they refused to accept that the role