After disappointing figures last month, public borrowing in September came in lower than forecast, at £9.4bn, figures published by ONS today show. VAT, income and corporation tax receipts were all up on last year, and despite the government debt pile growing, interest payments fell by £420m. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/z63H9/index.html”] But it still look like it will be
Employment figures out today show that the number of people in work rose by 42,000 in the three months to July, and the number of unemployed rose by 10,000 to 1.82 million. Earnings are growing strongly too, up by 2.9 per cent over the year for the whole economy, and by 3.4 per cent in
Shaun Wright, the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire, has resigned after weeks of pressure stemming from the publication of a report into child sexual abuse in Rotherham. Wright was the councillor with responsibility for children’s services in the borough from 2005 to 2010, in the middle of a 16 year period when more than 1,400 children
Inflation slumped back to zero in the year to August, down from a rise of 0.1 per cent in July, figures from the Office for National Statistics show, making seven months of little or no inflation. The costs of food, energy and imported goods have been falling, pulling inflation away from the two percent target. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/XXn28/index.html”]
There must be an element of masochism in Theresa May that leads her to promise the electorate something she cannot give them: net migration in the tens of thousands. Figures released today show that the balance of people coming into the county rose to 330,000 in the year to March 2015, putting the Home Secretary further than
No self-congratulatory tweets from George Osborne this morning: The UK has seen its first quarter-on-quarter rise in unemployment for two years, figures released by the ONS show. The number of people in employment fell by 67,000 in the three months from May to March, and the number who are unemployed rose by 15,000. The unemployment
After a couple of months of teasing the rate of inflation fell below zero to -0.1 per cent in the year to April, thanks largely to the falling costs of good and transport, especially air fares (something that’s affected by when Easter falls). It’s the first time that CPI inflation has fallen below zero since
David Cameron and George Osborne’s campaigning is focused on seats the Tory party wants to hold onto, while Ed Miliband is taking the fight to seats Labour wants to win from them. That’s the view in Labour HQ, and they’ve got figures to back it up: Since 30 March, when the ‘short campaign’ began, Cameron
Nobody’s perfect, are they? The IFS found something to criticise today for all the parties — the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems and SNP — whose tax and spending plans it has examined. The main charges are of leaving questions about spending and borrowing unanswered: The Conservatives ‘have not been completely explicit about exactly what level of borrowing they would
Here’s what to expect 52p top rate of tax Ed Balls won’t be looking for money when he says the ‘additional’ top rate of tax will go back up — there’s no evidence it will raise any. Top-band income tax will be 50p, which added to the extra 2p National Insurance would give Britain an
Academics gathered in London today to discuss how they predict the outcome of the most unpredictable election in living memory (© everyone), and they gave their current forecasts. They vary quite a bit with the predictions for the number of seats the Tories will get between 233 and 296 and for Labour from 261 seats to
Next Tory leader: Code without iframe <div id=”highcharts-ejazuna”><script src=’//cloud.highcharts.com/inject/ejazuna’ defer=’defer’></script></div> Code with iframe <iframe class=”highcharts-iframe” style=”border: 0; width: 100%; height: 400px;” src=”//cloud.highcharts.com/embed/ejazuna” width=”300″ height=”150″></iframe> Next PM: Code without iframe: <div id=’highcharts-itamiqu’><script src=’//cloud.highcharts.com/inject/itamiqu’ defer=’defer’></script></div> Code with iframe: <iframe class=’highcharts-iframe’ src=’//cloud.highcharts.com/embed/itamiqu’ style=’border: 0; width: 100%; height: 400px’></iframe> Next Labour leader https://cloud.highcharts.com/charts/acumut <div id=’highcharts-acumut’><script src=’//cloud.highcharts.com/inject/acumut’ defer=’defer’></script></div> <iframe class=’highcharts-iframe’
When do the descendants of immigrants go from being migrants to being natives? That’s the question raised by a MigrationWatch UK study which says that the impact of immigration on the 4.6 million increase in the UK’s population since the millennium has been ‘substantially underestimated’. Why? Because the government’s statistics agency doesn’t attribute the 1.3 million children born to foreign-born
Have you met Ed Miliband recently? Then he probably namechecked you in his speech earlier today. Unless you talked about the deficit or immigration, that is. Here’s the full list of people he met: 1. Josephine – a cleaner who hadn’t decided how she would vote in the Scottish independence referendum. I was on my
Coffee House is ready to cover the independence referendum results, and we’ll be bringing you news and analysis throughout the night. Isabel Hardman, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson will be blogging – and you can follow them on Twitter @FraserNelson, @IsabelHardman and @JGForsyth for immediate reaction. Polls close at 10 o’clock tonight – but anyone still queuing will
It’s been called rousing, barnstorming, the speech of his life. Gordon Brown’s passionate message for Scotland, which he delivered to an enthused crowd at the Maryhill Community Central Hall in Glasgow, has certainly caught people’s attention: There are people on the streets of Glasgow talking about Gordon Brown’s speech. — Isabel Hardman (@IsabelHardman) September 17, 2014
Rationality doesn’t come cheap — not if you’re buying Richard Dawkins’ brand. In this week’s Spectator, Andrew Brown examines the costly cult of personality that has grown up around the professor; and the stratospheric cost of supporting his work. But your money doesn’t just aid Dawkins’ monstering of tithe-bloated religion — there are discounts and money-can-buy treats
At PMQs David Cameron attacked Ed Miliband for his deputy Harriet Harman’s comments, made on an LBC phone-in show on Monday, that she wanted to see higher taxes on middle-income earners. listen to ‘Cameron: Labour will squeeze the middle more’ on Audioboo
There’s been a bit of a fuss over the claim in Lord Adonis’s growth report—repeated in a draft of Ed Miliband’s localism speech—that four-fifths of the private-sector jobs growth in the UK since 2010 has happened in London. The Prime Minister tweeted: Labour get their facts wrong on jobs – again. How can they ever
Here’s a funny thing: Labour claims to be the ‘party of work’, but the Tories have reasonable claim to be the workers’ party, given that they’ve overseen the creation of 1.5 million new jobs. Anyway, it was one of the slogans that shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves incanted on her Sunday Politics interview
