Kate Andrews is economics editor of The Spectator
To what extent do workers want to return to the office? It’s a question on everyone’s mind – none more so than Rishi Sunak. If Covid working habits stick post-lockdown, with a majority of people continuing to work from their living room, it’s not just the working day that will be fundamentally altered, but the
Last night MPs voted by 484 to 76 to renew the Coronavirus Act, which grants the state emergency powers to further control – and shut down – most parts of society. The Liberal Democrats voted against the extension, along with 35 Conservative MPs who rebelled and voted against the government, citing as their main concern the widening gap between
Do vaccines lead to freedom – or to more lockdown rules? That very question would have seemed bizarre a few weeks ago, when Matt Hancock told this magazine that he’d ‘cry freedom’ when the most vulnerable had been protected. But now, things are swinging the other way. The end of the second wave in Britain
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Unreliable, slow and you’ll never find a charging point – those are some of the things that come to mind when thinking about electric vehicles for many drivers. But are these outdated myths? The government has less than a decade to meet its 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars. With the future of
Slowly but surely, forecasts for unemployment in the UK have been revised downwards. Alongside Rishi Sunak’s Budget earlier this month, the Office for Budget Responsibility significantly changed their prediction for peak unemployment: from the 11.9 per cent predicted in the July forecast down to 6.5 per cent. This was spurred on by an extension of the furlough scheme,
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America has belatedly joined the vaccine diplomacy arena, the progress of which by Russia and China has been covered by The Spectator. On this episode of Saturday’s Coffee House Shots, Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls, James Forsyth, Kate Andrews and Fraser Nelson about the latest developments in the race and whether Britain should be
It’s no surprise that the bill for Covid-19 keeps racking up. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest forecast predicts borrowing will reach £355 billion for the financial year: decisions to extend furlough, boosting public sector spending and supporting businesses that have been closed for months at a time all come with a price tag attached. But that doesn’t
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Andrew Bailey threw his support behind one of the more optimistic scenarios for a post-Covid economic recovery: that the UK will be back to pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year. The combination of the UK’s hugely successful vaccine rollout combined with increased levels of lockdown
Last week The Spectator highlighted new data from the OECD that offers a weekly update comparing a country’s current GDP levels to the previous year. It continues to show the UK experiencing some of the highest levels of economic damage. If you factor in lockdown stringency, you can also make out a rough correlation between
Last week Rishi Sunak presented his second Budget to the House of Commons. Today, three former Chancellors weighed in. Speaking at an online event hosted by the Institute for Government, Norman Lamont, Alistair Darling and George Osborne joined the Institute’s director Bronwen Maddox to discuss the state of the UK economy, and how their past
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This week’s episode features a reading of The Spectator’s leading article, on how devolution has created a democratic deficit in Scotland (00:50); our economics correspondent Kate Andrews on what keeps the Chancellor up at night (7:00); and Rod Liddle on the real cause of food poverty in the UK. (16:35).
Lockdown has always been a matter of trade-offs. The impact of suppressing the economy to also suppress a deadly virus has had consequences on every aspect of life, from non-Covid health treatment, to rising unemployment, to the impact on children’s education. But these costs can be calculated in something much closer to real time. New data
Rishi Sunak’s tax hikes pack a punch: by 2025, over £19bn is estimated to be raised from the freeze to the personal tax threshold, and a staggering £50bn from a new, tiered corporation tax structure. That’s a lot of people out of pocket, and businesses diverting their profits away from workers and consumers and towards
41 min listen
Could a blip in inflation ruin the UK’s economic recovery? (00:50) Why is support for the IRA becoming normalised? (12:20) What makes a great diarist? (31:15) With The Spectator’s economics correspondent Kate Andrews; economist Julian Jessop; writer Jenny McCartney; politician Mairia Cahill; satirist Craig Brown; and historian, journalist and author Simon Heffer. Presented by Cindy
At first, it seems to make no sense. Britain is in the middle of the worst economic crash in recorded history, with a Chancellor who is famously keen on low taxes, spending control and sound money. But Rishi Sunak this week presented a Budget that seems inspired, in parts, by Labour’s last manifesto. Debt surging
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Chancellor Rishi Sunak pledged a further £65bn in today’s budget, bringing the government’s total spending during coronavirus to more than £400bn. But aside from splurges on extending furlough and the Universal Credit uplift, and new ‘restart grants’ offered to ailing businesses, the first belt-tightening measures were announced. Income tax thresholds will be frozen, and cooperation
For a man who has only delivered two Budgets, Rishi Sunak is no stranger to fiscal announcements. Last March’s £30bn spending splurge was just the start of hundreds of billions of pounds spent in the fight against Covid-19. Today Sunak pledged another £65bn: furlough and the Universal Credit uplift were both extended; incentive payments for businesses to take on
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In the first public appearance since Biden’s inauguration, Donald Trump has spoken to CPAC, the annual conservative conference. Freddy Gray reviews his speech with Kate Andrews.
‘Do you miss me yet,’ Donald Trump asked the crowd in his opening remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference this afternoon: the most important annual conference for the Republican party. The former president was given the keynote address at CPAC, with anticipation that he might have a big announcement to make about his future
Rishi Sunak kept his Budget cards close to his chest this morning as he toured the studios for both BBC One’s The Andrew Marr show and Sky News’ Ridge on Sunday. The Chancellor batted away questions about spending and possible tax hikes, repeating over and over again that it’s only ‘appropriate’ to wait until the