Economy

Judges on the Supreme Court appear to have joined Just Stop Oil. In a landmark ruling, with profound implications for the UK energy industry, they’ve said that Surrey County Council cannot give permission to drill new wells on an existing extraction site, Horse Hill, which already has a couple of them. This is because the oil might be burnt – which admittedly tends to happen with hydrocarbon fuels. Net Zero campaigners who brought the original action against the ‘Gatwick Gusher’ as they called it back in 2019 are ‘over the moon’. The Scottish government, however, is not quite so sanguine. The Supreme Court’s ruling is illogical Could the ruling mean the end

The Bank of England has, unsurprisingly, held interest rates at 5.25 per cent for the seventh time in a row. Markets downgraded their expectations for a June rate cut some time ago. Once Rishi Sunak called a general election in late May, the prospect of an early summer rate cut became even more unrealistic. The Monetary Policy Committee notes in its minutes that ‘the timing of the general election on 4 July was not relevant to its decision at this meeting’. Instead, its decision was based solely on ‘what was judged necessary to achieve the 2 per cent inflation target sustainably in the medium term’. Central banks never want to

Why is Britain’s productivity so stubbornly low? Output per worker increased just 0.1 per cent in the year to April. Across swathes of the economy it is in absolute decline.  One theory, posited by those brave enough to voice unfashionable opinions, is that working from home is dragging down productivity growth. This has been dismissed by unions and the Labour party, who go to great lengths to show flexible working boosts output. Workers, they say, will get more done with fewer breaks, take fewer sick days, and are less likely to change jobs.  Such claims should be taken with a pinch of salt. According to new data from the Office for National Statistics,

Is Trussonomics making a comeback? That’s the suggestion today, as Jeremy Hunt was recorded on the campaign trail telling students that Liz Truss’s goals for the economy were a ‘good thing to aim for’. As Chancellor, he said, he was ‘trying to basically achieve some of the same things’ as Truss, but ‘more gradually’ compared to the former prime minister’s timeline. Is this a gotcha moment? Labour think so, insisting that Hunt’s comments show an ongoing ‘addiction to dangerous Trussonomics’. It’s a stretch, not least because Hunt is credited with undoing almost every part of Truss’s so-called mini-Budget, when he replaced Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor just weeks into her premiership. Hunt is

The Conservatives love trying to reduce their estimates for the cost of a Labour government down to a neat per-household figure, which makes it easy for voters to appreciate but comes with the danger that the figure will fall apart on closer examination. That is what happened with Rishi’s Sunak’s claim, made in his ITV two-way debate with Keir Starmer, that Labour is planning tax rises of £2,000 per household. That turned out to be over four years rather than one, as many people might have assumed, and turned out to rely on all kind of assumptions which were made by Conservative party researchers rather than the Treasury officials to

Regardless of who wins the coming election, taxes are going up. Spending plans from both Labour and the Tories suggest the tax burden – already at a post-war high – is going to do nothing but rise. During last night’s Sky News debate, Rishi Sunak laid the blame at the two ‘once in a century’ events the country has just emerged from. But the truth is that a huge part of these tax rises is needed to fund an ever-growing welfare bill. Analysis published this morning shows that one in every £44 of state spending will be spent on sickness benefits by the end of the decade. The report, published by the

There is something a little refreshing about the Green party. In contrast to Rishi Sunak, who has no option but to carry on pretending he has the slightest chance of remaining in Downing Street after 4 July, Green party co-leader Adrian Ramsay admitted at his manifesto launch this morning that his party isn’t looking to form the next government. The party’s realistic hope seems to be to double its number of Commons seats, from one to two. Nevertheless, the Greens do have a full manifesto for government, so let’s do it justice by taking it seriously. Mercifully, the Greens seem to have not bought into the fashionable concept of ‘degrowth’