Matthew Lynn is a financial columnist and author of ‘Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis’ and ‘The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031’
Infections are rising. Hospitals will be overwhelmed. And very soon the vulnerable will start to die. From today, the Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford is closing down Wales with one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe, shuttering all but essential shops. For the next 17 days, hotels, pubs, restaurants and for a while, schools, will
More help for bars and restaurants. Grants for businesses that are forced to close. Additional funding for the self-employed. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak has started shaking the magic money tree again, promising extra assistance to keep the economy alive during a second wave of Covid-19. There is a problem, however, and as the Chancellor runs
More jobs will be lost in the long run. Businesses will go under. And government debt will soar even higher. Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds is pushing the argument that a circuit breaker — that is a short, sharp national lockdown — will be cheaper in the long run. It will keep the virus under
Border posts have been dismantled. The armed guards and sniffer dogs have been retired. And the surly looking official who glances at you suspiciously before curtly handing back your passport has long since been consigned to the pages of dusty old spy thrillers. Over the last couple of decades, if the European Union had one
Fake companies set up under false names. Phantom employees invented to claim compensation. Start-ups trousering loans for ventures that don’t exist. Meals that were never eaten. The British economy has been in a bad place for the last six months. But it turns out one small corner of the economy has been flourishing: defrauding the
It will involve hundreds of hours of haggling over thousands of different products. It will have to pass torturous debates in Congress. And it will have to survive an election cycle or two. There are lots of hurdles in the way of a British trade deal with the United States. But now we have perhaps
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Vaccines are normally in the realm of scientists; but not this time as world leaders race to be the first. (00:50) Brexit is heating up, but is the government in a stronger position than it seems? (13:35) And a modern day Caligula – the life and times of the Thai king Rama X. (22:40) With
It could be the most audacious piece of political theatre of modern times. At the end of next month, just a week or so before Americans choose their next president, we could see Donald Trump standing on the White House lawn in front of a handful of friendly journalists, rolling up his sleeve and looking
Even a politician as tenaciously optimistic as Matt Hancock was struggling to put any positive spin on it: the world has woken up to the disappointing news that trials of the Oxford vaccine for Covid-19 had been paused after an adverse reaction in one patient. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was one of seven in Phase 3
It is, by any measure, a heck of a lot of pizza. The ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme turns out to have been a huge success. We learned today that is was used more than a 100 million times in August. In many cities, it was virtually impossible to get a table from Monday
Donald Trump is, perhaps predictably enough, pulling out of the World Health’s Organisation’s global vaccine programme. The Russian president Vladimir Putin has been cutting every corner to get a Russian shot out first, while allegedly sending spies to steal the Oxford one. And China is racing to have the first vaccine on the market, already
No more commuting. An end to irritating conversations with slightly dull colleagues. The boss can’t monitor how much time you spend on Facebook anymore, and you have plenty of time to bake sourdough bread/try out online pilates/read the whole of Proust (delete as applicable). A few of us might even be able to carry on
It didn’t help that it was unveiled by a swaggering Vladimir Putin. Or that it was called Sputnik V – a hardly subtle reference to the Cold War. Nor that we have grown used to Russian meddling and mis-information. Even so, there is still something a little surprising about the hostility towards the Russian vaccine
There are lots of different ways of measuring the terrible state of the global economy. The collapse in overall output. The fall in trade as ports and airports empty. The trillions printed by central banks, and the soaring price of gold as investors lose faith in a recovery. But one is surely this: keeping the
The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, took some time out from presiding over the worst collapse in economic history last week to deliver a short lecture on how women leaders have proved better at dealing with Covid-19 than men. According to the impeccably politically correct French politician, they were more ‘caring’, better
Just imagine what would happen if real money was at stake. Over the last four days, the leaders of the European Union have been furiously haggling over their Coronavirus Rescue Fund. France’s President Macron has been banging the table angrily, the Dutch have taken on the role vacated by the British of the ‘bad Europeans’,
A massively profitable American technology giant that pays small amounts of tax on vast profits, while massively over-charging for products that quickly become obsolete. Apple is a hard company to love, and an unlikely champion of anything apart from its own bottom line. And that might explain why many people instinctively cheered when the European Union slapped
A five hundred quid shopping voucher for everyone. Five per cent off VAT across the board. Maybe suspending income tax for a couple of months, or getting rid of corporation tax until the end of the year. As today’s disappointing GDP numbers landed on his desk, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak must have been tempted to
A huge increase in job centre advisers; special grants for companies taking on trainees; free cash for anyone insulating their home; cuts to National Insurance; reduction in VAT, and a £500 shopping voucher to re-boot a collapsing High Street. Oh, and an emergency GCRF, or Garden Centre Rescue Fund, to subsidise anyone who helps our
Huge infrastructure projects. A massive rise in public spending, and the creation of public works for an army of unemployed. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has started pitching himself as the new Roosevelt, modelling himself on the 1930s American president who spent big to pull the country out of the Great Depression, and re-wrote the rules of
