Business confidence is falling. Companies are warning that profits will be lower than expected, and they are already planning to cut their output. The Chancellor Rachel Reeves might have hoped that this week would open with better news on the economy, especially as she is planning a major speech to relaunch her plan for growth on Wednesday. Instead, it has started with yet more bad news. In reality, a ‘Reeves recession’ is now a certainty – and the Chancellor won’t be able to escape the blame for that.
The CBI reported today that British businesses are braced for a ‘significant fall’ in trading over the next few months. There is ‘widespread pessimism’ across the private sector, with a net 22 per cent of private sector companies forecasting that they expect their output to decline between now and April.
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