Kate Andrews is deputy editor of The Spectator’s World edition.
45 min listen
On the podcast: It’s been a busy week in Westminster. On Monday, Rishi Sunak’s first major reshuffle saw Suella Braverman sacked and David Cameron make a surprise return to politics. Then two days later, the Supreme Court’s Rwanda ruling left the government’s pledge to ‘stop the boats’ in tatters. It was meant to be the
13 min listen
Fifty-six Labour MPs rebelled last night and voted for an SNP amendment calling for a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza. Keir Starmer had ordered his party to abstain on the vote, and said afterwards that Israel had suffered ‘its worst terrorist attack in a single day’ on 7 October, and that ‘no government would allow
11 min listen
The Supreme Court has ruled that the government scheme to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda is unlawful. Why? And how will Rishi Sunak respond? Will he try to take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.
Inflation has slowed significantly, according to the latest update from the Office for National Statistics. The headline rate was 4.6 per cent in the year to October, down from 6.7 per cent the previous month. The sharp slowdown is largely attributed to last year’s hikes in energy prices dropping out of the data with the figures now
Slowly but surely, the labour market in the UK appears to be cooling down. Data from the Office for National Statistics this morning shows the number of job vacancies across the economy fell by another 58,000 between July to September, taking the total figure to an estimated 957,000. This is still far above pre-pandemic levels, but the
The UK economy grew 0.2 per cent in September. This followed 0.1 per cent growth in August, revised downwards from 0.2 per cent. Monthly figures don’t always tell a story on their own, but these past two months of data reflect the UK economy’s trend for the year – one, unfortunately, of virtually no growth.
There were no big surprises in the King’s Speech today. That’s a shame. Rishi Sunak and his ministers like to insist their agenda for the next year is an ambitious one. They’re making ‘difficult but necessary long-term decisions to change this country for the better’, as read out by the King to parliament. Yet the
14 min listen
The Bank of England has once again taken the decision to hold interest rates at their 15-year high. There is growing market consensus that this second pause is a sign that interest rates have peaked, or nearly reached their peak. Will the Bank be able to tread the thin line between tackling inflation but also
The Bank of England has held interest rates at their 15-year high for a second time. Markets were expecting another pause, but there was no guarantee: once again the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) was split on the decision, voting 6 – 3 to hold rates at 5.25 per cent. The minority on the committee were
Good headlines are coming out of the Eurozone this morning, as the inflation rate slowed to 2.9 per cent in October. This is a spectacular fall from its double-digit peak last October, when the rate sat at over 10 per cent. Today’s news brings inflation to a stone’s throw away from the European Central Bank’s
18 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud, Peter Oborne reads his letter from Jerusalem (00:55), Kate Andrews talks about why Rishi Sunak has made her take up smoking (07:20), and Jonathan Maitland explains his growing obsession with Martin Bashir (12:15). Presented by Cindy Yu. Produced by Cindy Yu and Natasha Feroze.
What has Rishi Sunak’s government achieved in its first year? The highlights include a renegotiated Brexit policy and setting more practical net-zero deadlines. But Sunak asked the country to judge him on his ability to deliver his pledges set out at the start of the year. If polls are to be believed, voters are preparing
The UK’s unemployment rate rose to 4.2 per cent in the three months leading up to August this year, according to new experimental data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This is a 0.2 per cent increase compared with the previous quarter (March to May 2023), but not a big change compared to previous data sets.
16 min listen
This week there have been some interesting developments in the public Covid-19 inquiry where scientists and mathematical modellers have been giving testimony on how prepared the government was to tackle the pandemic and how they used expert advise. Within the sessions, WhatsApp messages revealed that Dame Angela McLean – who at the time was chief
Timing is a funny thing. The Chancellor received some good news about the public finances this morning, just when everyone is focused on fairly catastrophic election results for the Tories. A few hours after it was announced that strong Conservative majorities were overturned in the Mid-Bedfordshire and Tamworth by-elections (Katy Balls analyses the results here), we
12 min listen
September’s inflation data was released today, and showed that it was at the same level as August. Is inflation getting stuck a problem? Cindy Yu talks to Kate Andrews and Katy Balls. Also on the podcast: Labour’s Israel headaches and a look ahead to tomorrow’s by-elections. Produced by Cindy Yu.
‘As we have seen across other G7 countries, inflation rarely falls in a straight line,’ said Chancellor Jeremy Hunt this morning in response to UK inflation data for September. We’ve seen this in the UK, too: at the start of the year, the rate of inflation rose from 10.1 per cent on the year in
‘We are in a horrible fiscal bind’ says the Institute for Fiscal Studies this morning, as it publishes its Green Budget report ahead of the Autumn Statement. A combination of stagnant growth, stubborn inflation, rising debt interest payments and a tax burden at a postwar high has produced a grim assessment of the UK economy, which the
It was a year ago this weekend that Liz Truss sacked her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, over the fallout of their ‘growth plan’. This marked the beginning of the end of Truss’s premiership: she then appointed Jeremy Hunt to the role, and he swiftly dismantled almost every part of her infamous mini-Budget. Since leaving No. 10,
The International Monetary fund has published its biannual World Economic Outlook report – and it’s more bad news for the UK. While the IMF’s predictions for 2023 fall broadly in line with other forecasts – which show Germany having the most economic trouble this year – the IMF predicts that the UK will be an outlier come
