Kate Andrews is economics editor of The Spectator
The biggest surprise from today’s Budget was not an announcement, but the forecasts that gave Jeremy Hunt room for manoeuvre. The Office for Budget Responsibility has revised its forecasts for economic growth and inflation towards the upside. The OBR no longer expects the UK to enter into a technical recession (two consecutive quarters of negative
Why did nobody see it coming? When the late Queen asked this question about the crash of 2008, on a visit to a London business school, no one had a clear answer. Why, in a financial world crawling with regulators, did no one spot that subprime mortgages were toxic, on the brink of falling apart?
Is the UK’s labour market cooling down? While unemployment remains unchanged at 3.7 per cent, according to today’s update from the Office for National Statistics, the number of job vacancies ‘fell on the quarter for the eighth consecutive period’, down 51,000. The overall number of vacancies, however, still remains above a million. But the biggest indicator things
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Two stories dominated the news agenda over the weekend, one concerning a household name and the other involving a bank which – before Sunday – few had heard of. What is the political significance of Gary Lineker’s row with the BBC? And after the fall of Silicon Valley Bank, are we heading for a regional
A Chancellor’s Sunday media appearance before a Budget often serves as a ‘free pass’ – not because difficult questions aren’t asked, but because they can quite easily get out of answering by saying some polite version of: ‘you’ll have to wait and see.’ So instead of focusing on the upcoming Budget this Wednesday, the BBC’s
The government’s plans for the Illegal Migration Bill – which would see virtually all people arriving outside formal, legal channels deported – has raised many uncomfortable questions. Is a trafficked Romanian girl sold into sex slavery in Britain really exempt from protection under the Modern Slavery Act? Would an Iranian gay man, afraid for his
This morning’s release from the Office for National Statistics shows the UK economy grew by 0.3 per cent in January – an improvement on December 2022 figures, which saw the economy contract by 0.5 per cent. There are no revisions to the last update: the UK still avoids the technical definition of recession, and January’s growth was higher than
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has promised to tackle what businesses tend to fear the most: instability. ‘In recent years, corporation tax has gone up and down like a yo-yo, while the government has papered over the cracks with short-term fixes like the super-deduction,’ Reeves told the manufacturing group Make UK’s annual conference this morning. Under
As tax rates rise in the UK, so do business jitters. The windfall tax on oil and gas companies – raising tax on profits to 75 per cent this year – has energy companies openly discussing plans to divert money elsewhere. The looming hike in corporation tax – from 19 per cent to 25 per cent for
Last month the Bank of England announced its tenth rate rise in a row, taking interest rates to 4 per cent. At the time it was speculated that the BoE might end there: not only were rates now catching up with market expectations of where they would peak, but there seemed to be more agreement
When Liz Truss ushered in the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) last September, her government insisted that a universal subsidy scheme was necessary to make sure no one fell through the cracks this winter. But there was an internal argument for the scheme too: put a big down payment on energy bills now, No. 10 thought,
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Today marks one year since Putin sent the Russian army into Kyiv. Since then, what has been the experience of the Ukrainians who fled their homes and came over to the UK? Svitlana Morenets, a staff writer at The Spectator speaks to Kate Andrews about the year reporting on her war-torn country from Britain. Also joining the
It was only a few weeks ago that Liz Truss started commenting on domestic policy again, speaking to The Spectator not just about what happened during her time in No. 10, but about what she sees as prescriptions for Britain’s stagnant economy. Today she weighs back in on foreign policy. In Tokyo this morning, the
I used to think that the early hours of the morning were for sleeping. Sometimes they might become an extension, or at worst a hangover, from a sloppy, messy night before; a party that keeps going, a person you can’t get enough of – these are the reasons to be up at dawn. Now I
Inflation remains at near a 40-year high – but finally, we’re starting to see some signs of good news. This morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics shows CPI falling to 10.1 per cent in the 12 months to January 2023, down from 10.5 per cent in December 2022. It’s a better update compared
The latest labour market update – published by the Office for National Statistics this morning – looks a lot like last month’s update: that’s to say, a mixed bag of news. Unemployment rose again, up 0.1 per cent between October to December, to 3.7 per cent. But this quarterly rise was once again off-set by a
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This week has seen the return of Liz Truss, firstly with her op-ed in the Telegraph and then her Spectator TV exclusive interview. Has enough time passed to revise our opinion of her pro-growth agenda? Or will her legacy forever be one of failure? Cindy Yu speaks to Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews.
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New GDP figures show that the UK economy narrowly avoided recession at the end of 2022. Between the final quarter and the third quarter of last year, there was no change in the economy’s output. Is this really good news? And do GDP figures matter if people still feel poorer? Max Jeffery speaks to Kate
Britain has avoided recession – for now. This morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveals that there was no overall GDP growth between October and December last year. The UK has swerved the technical definition of recession – two consecutive quarters of negative growth – in the least glamorous way possible. It
Treasury select committee meetings are not usually the stuff of great television. But this morning, it was. The Bank of England’s governor Andrew Bailey was up as a witness to give evidence on recent Monetary Policy reports. And the committee’s new chair, Harriett Baldwin, came ready to highlight where (many) mistakes had been made. Starting
