Economics newsletter
Keir Starmer’s Budget defence has surely doomed Rachel Reeves
You can always tell someone is in trouble when the Prime Minister calls an emergency press conference. A combined force of black cats and magpies arriving at your front door, bursting in and putting new shoes on your table while opening umbrellas inside would be less of a bad omen than Keir Starmer setting up
Pensioners don't need a £10 Christmas bonus
This week, 17.5 million people on various benefits including the state pension and disability living allowance will receive a £10 Christmas bonus. It’s about time though, that Keir Starmer played Scrooge and finally abolished the bonus altogether. For, unlike their Dickensian forebears, poor pensioners this Christmas won’t be going without food or warmth. In fact,
Rachel Reeves’s Budget was based on fiction
I think we will look back on this week as one of the most pivotal of this government. It was the moment when Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves revealed themselves. This week’s Budget showed clearly what Reeves’s revealed preferences are – and what they are not When we were all trying to work out what
Zack Polanski’s insane economics
When the ubiquitous Green party leader Zack Polanski was on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show singing the praises of wealth taxes last month, he said something that got my spider-sense tingling: ‘This isn’t about creating public investment, we can do that anyway, we don’t need to tax the wealthy to do that.’ On
Britain is giving up on work
Work is good. Work generates wealth, makes people happier and, maybe, delivers salvation. The Protestant work ethic is much disputed among sociologists and economic historians, but most people accept that some level of work is both necessary and desirable. This makes it all the more troubling that, buried in the OBR data under the Budget,
Rachel Reeves may have just killed the Great British pub
It is just after tea-time on Budget day, and my pub is already half-empty. A few hours ago, Rachel Reeves stood up and, in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility’, drove the final nail into what remains of Britain’s hospitality industry. By failing to address the devastation that Labour’s decision to hike employers’ National Insurance did
Rachel Reeves's Klarna Budget: spend now, pay later
After the frenzy of the Commons, comes the poring over the fine print. Rachel Reeves’s Budget is being studied across Westminster, following a chaotic lunchtime in which the OBR’s response was uploaded online an hour before her speech. That speech was heavily pre-briefed, with few real surprises. Taxes were hiked by £26 billion – though
The Budget has created a £2 million house-price limit
It has lots of original features. It is close to good schools, and with a few cans of Farrow & Ball it will make the perfect family home. The estate agents already have lots of familiar lines they use to sell a property. From next year, they will have one that will be more crucial
Badenoch's PMQs attack ran out of steam
Kemi Badenoch had two chances to attack the government today: first at Prime Minister’s Questions, and then again in response to the Budget. The Tory leader used her first bite of the cherry to try to frame the Budget speech as being part of wider government chaos. The attack started out well, but lost steam
Rachel Reeves’s Budget is a shambles
What we have seen today is unprecedented. The entire list of Budget measures announced by Rachel Reeves – along with their costings and economic impacts – were leaked by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) an hour before the Chancellor took to her feet. The OBR apologised and called it a ‘technical error’, but make