Michael Simmons

A few weeks ago I thought a March interest rates cut was ‘near certain’. Inflation was coming down and Bank of England rate-setters’ concerns about wage growth were being replaced by fears that higher rates were contributing to rising unemployment. In my defence, markets agreed: they priced the chances of a cut at over 80 per cent. But since then, the world – and markets – have changed. The graph below shows something called the ‘overnight index swaps’ curve. Without getting too deep into the mechanics, it can be understood as a proxy for where traders think interest rates are heading. As you can see, the line had been steadily dropping before Donald Trump’s action in Iran sent it shooting back up – implying that a March rate cut has become much less likely.

The Epstein files lift the curtain on how power is exercised and influence traded by our financial elite. It is not a cheering sight. Business and economic gurus like the former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers asking for dating advice from a convicted paedophile does not build confidence in the masters of the universe. Distasteful as these details are, the most telling insights into the predatory behaviour of the private-jet classes relate to how they exploit all of us, not just the vulnerable young women who catch their eye. Institutional logic does not explain Reeves’s love-in with the banks. They seem to have made a Faustian pact Peter Mandelson may blush at some of the personal details laid bare in his emails to Jeffrey Epstein.

With Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership in perpetual peril, it seems instructive to pay closer attention to his potential successors. On that, there have been two noteworthy interventions this week. The first from Ed Miliband who told the Today programme: ‘I tell you what angers Keir most about this country, it’s class. It’s the class divide.’ Not to be outdone, Andy Burnham then told a Resolution Foundation think-tank event that the focus of British politics needed to switch to lower earners. They present a Britain where capital exploits cheap labour, resulting in profound and widespread poverty. But that’s not the Britain we’re in Both men seem to want to focus on a country that does not exist.

Wes Streeting was bang on when he told Peter Mandelson the government had ‘no growth strategy at all’. The Health Secretary's claim seems to have been confirmed by figures, just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which show Britain’s economy grew by just 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2025. On a per capita basis the numbers were even worse: we're in recession. What is worrying given the make up of our economy is that there was no services growth at all, and construction contracted by 2.1 per cent. The only area of the economy that expanded (by 1.2 per cent) was production.

By the end of last week, it was clear the Prime Minister is a goner – the debate moved to the pace of his demise. That sped up yesterday with the resignation of Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff. Starmer’s prospects looked very bleak indeed when I turned on the Today programme this morning to hear a defence of the PM being mounted by Baroness Smith of Malvern. I wouldn’t pretend to understand the government's communications strategy, but it doesn’t exactly scream confidence when the most senior spokesperson offered up for the morning media round is a junior skills minister from the Lords. A few hours later, the man in charge of that media strategy (and the fourth person to hold the job in 12 months), Tim Allan, jacked his job in and followed McSweeney out the door.