My time on Hinge

Back to work, back to school, back to politics: the French call it la rentrée and my own summer idyll in their country must end soon too. Back to the miserabilism of Starmerland – where all news, especially good news, must be seen as bad.

What good news is that? I mean that shop prices fell this month by 0.3 per cent, after heavy discounting of non-food goods, for the first time since 2021; overall UK inflation having fallen close to the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. Which makes autumn interest-rate cuts all the more likely, improving the outlook for mortgage borrowers and increasing the chance that the last two quarters’ strong growth will be sustained.

In short, the Tories left a recovering economy for Labour to derail. And that’s what’s about to happen thanks to a public sector pay spiral, burdensome workplace legislation and tax raids in October’s Budget. When the prime minister says ‘things will get worse before they get better’ what he really means is that – hog-tied as he is by his electoral promises and his union paymasters – he knows he’s about to make things worse but he hopes voters will swallow the barefaced lie that it’s all his predecessors’ fault. ‘Dull but honest’ was the campaign spin on Starmer. ‘Depressingly dishonest’ turns out to be a truer summary.

Wisdom of youth

Beside the swimming pool, I chat to twenty-and thirty-somethings, some of whom I’ve known all their lives, about their career choices and priorities. This year, two words keep cropping up, sometimes together: ‘sustainability’ and ‘consultant’.