Economy

Nadine Dorries came out fighting over the weekend to declare it was time to discuss new ways to fund and sell the ‘great British content’ produced by the BBC. But it turned out she had little in the way of ammunition once she reached the Commons yesterday. There will be a two-year freeze in the £159 fee — a measure that will represent a real-terms cut in the corporation’s funding, but hardly the ‘mortal threat’ some alarmists have declared. In 2019–20, the BBC generated total income of £4.94 billion, of which £3.52 billion was public funding from the licence fee. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said the BBC

Nearly two years after the UK experienced its biggest economic collapse in 300 years, the economy has returned to pre-pandemic levels. GDP is estimated by the ONS to have grown by 0.9 per cent in November, almost twice what had been expected – making it 0.7 per cent larger than it was in February 2020. The US and Sweden managed to pass pre-pandemic levels last spring. China took just a few months. But Britain, whose economy fell further than almost any developed country in 2020, is catching up. Britain, whose economy fell further than almost any developed country in 2020, is catching up The below chart shows how UK growth

So farewell, Hunterston B, the nuclear power plant on the Firth of Clyde that shut last week after 46 years’ service. It will be followed this summer by Hinkley Point B in Somerset and in 2024 by Hartlepool and Heysham, leaving the UK with just four nuclear stations boasting five gigawatts of generating capacity between them — when they’re not suffering extended ‘outages’ for maintenance and repair. That compares with 15 stations and 13 gigawatts, meeting a quarter of UK electricity demand, at the UK’s mid-1990s nuclear peak. Meanwhile, the 3.2 gigawatt Hinkley Point C, developed by EDF of France and due on stream in 2026, ‘may be delayed after

A nudge on interest rates from the Federal Reserve. A gradual winding down of quantitative easing. No more stimulus cheques flying out of the White House window. And rising energy prices dropping out of the annualised headline rate. This was meant to be the month when the spurt of inflation in the United States turned out – as president Joe Biden and his officials insisted it would – to be mostly transitory. We were told that it would die down over the course of this year. For Biden and the US economy, there is now no easy way back But, whoops, if that was the plan, it has already gone

Is it time for a windfall tax on energy companies? Judging by a poll during the first lockdown – which found more than half of the UK public would welcome an additional tax on businesses that had thrived because of the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic – it would be a popular measure. A windfall is typically something you get for free, after all. Energy policy has become increasingly muddled in recent years Advocates often reference Chancellor Gordon Brown’s windfall tax on privatised utilities in 1997, which raised £5.2bn over a number of years and was justified on the grounds that corporate profits had risen due to failed government policy.

When the whole opioid crisis blew up, the Sackler family — whose fortune was substantially built on getting thousands of Americans debilitatingly addicted to OxyContin — withdrew for a period from their charitable giving. It was reported yesterday, though, that they’re back in the philanthropy business, and last year gave £3.5 million to various British causes — among them the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, the Watermill Theatre, King’s College, London, the homelessness charity Amber Foundation, various churches, academies and conservation projects. ‘The return of the Sacklers to philanthropy in the UK,’ the report stated confidently, ‘will cause outrage’. Really? I remember being similarly perplexed when green campaigners were protesting about the National

This week it was reported that Lufthansa Group – which also owns Brussels Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Eurowings and Swiss International Airlines – expects to operate 18,000 ‘ghost flights’ with no passengers on them between December and March this year. Other airlines will be following Lufthansa’s lead over the year. At a time when the world is meant to be tackling climate change why are airlines spending a fortune shuttling thousands of empty planes, each spewing tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, between airports? The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is European Union red tape. ‘The EU surely is in a climate emergency mode,’ Greta Thunberg sarcastically tweeted in response to the

We bemoan autocracies in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and China but largely ignore the more subtle authoritarian trend in the West. Don’t expect a crudely effective dictatorship out of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: we may remain, as we are now, nominally democratic, but be ruled by a technocratic class empowered by greater powers of surveillance than those enjoyed by even the nosiest of dictatorships. The new autocracy rises from a relentless economic concentration which has engendered a new and fabulously wealthy elite. Five years ago, around four hundred billionaires owned as much as half of the world’s assets. Today, only one hundred billionaires own that share, and Oxfam

Many of the thorniest problems of politics come down to the same thing: timeframes. Big problems generally require solutions that take a long time to develop and implement. But the decision to do this must be made by politicians who work to much shorter timetables: news cycles measured in days and weeks, ministerial appointments that last months, and elections that are never more than a few years off. The approaching pain of rising energy prices is a case in point. It may well be surprising and new that European wholesale gas prices rose by 800 per cent last year. It is neither surprising nor new that the UK depends for

What does the new year have in store for consumers — and families trying to make ends meet? A stumbling recovery at best, with a continuing tide of inflation that I predict will swiftly pass the Bank of England’s current forecast of ‘around 6 per cent by spring 2022’ and take much longer to turn than the Bank’s Cnut-like posturing seeks to suggest. And driving that surge will be the energy price spike, which could be the factor — far more potent than endemic sleaze and proven incompetence — that topples the Johnson regime. Fact: wholesale natural gas prices have quadrupled in the past year. They may drop again in

For once, yesterday’s Downing Street press conference included a worthwhile question, and not of the ‘why aren’t you locking us down?’ variety. In fact, it had nothing to do with Covid at all. Harry Cole of the Sun asked why, given that the Prime Minister had once cited the ability to remove VAT from fuel bills as a tangible benefit of leaving the EU, he was not now taking advantage of his new-found freedom, especially as bills are heading sharply upwards. Boris Johnson mumbled something about not wanting to help people who could easily afford their energy bills and that the government might consider more targeted help instead. The VAT

Tesla’s sleek, if expensive, electric cars are leading the battle against climate change. Its batteries are moving renewable energy into the mainstream, while its founder Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, likes to present himself as a free-thinking radical. It is hard to think of a company more right on than Tesla — well, okay, perhaps Unilever — or one that depends more on its politically correct credentials. But hold on. There turns out to be one opposed minority that Tesla couldn’t care less about: China’s Uighurs. Most of the corporate world will sooner or later have to make a tough decision: do they care about human rights? The company has landed

We do not need any further lockdown now and it should only be contemplated in the future as a last resort. The economic case against lockdowns and severe government restrictions is strong. It is based on two key factors, one of which is continuously overlooked in the present debate. Yet, if we are to learn to live with Covid both merit consideration. The first argument is one that is well understood: the cost of implementing restrictions. As we are seeing now, it hits certain sectors hard – such as hospitality and the creative sector – and has a wider economic impact, denting confidence. There is a significant fiscal cost too